Tag Archives: weather

New Joggler Apps!

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Not technically new apps for the Joggler and as I’m not expecting to see any of those again, I cheated: all these apps run very well on the Joggler… after installing Android! I think my quest to find a better alternative to the stock Joggler software is finally at an end.

There are still a few apps left to find a replacement for but I didn’t use these ones much anyway: O2 Calendar, Video, Games, YouTube and Messages (SMS). Here’s what I do have working so far:

Clock

I’m still looking for something to use as a standby screen but, if all else fails, I can write my own now. I like the retro clock widget for a date display on the home screen though.

Photos

Perhaps not the obvious choice for showing photos. I quite like the RealPlayer app, unfortunately it doesn’t play music from my media server, so for now it’s only there for photos.

Music

It doesn’t seem to want to display album art, and the Joggler doesn’t do wma files, but this is definitely an improvement over the Joggler’s standard music player!

News

Works reasonably well on the Joggler’s screen and has feeds for pretty much anything.

Sports News

Added a whole page of news for Jo’s team!

Weather

At a glance weather. All weather forecasts are a work of fiction anyway aren’t they?!

Traffic

The Google map traffic layer is a definite improvement on the Joggler’s original traffic map.

Tools

I have to say, the Button Savior app was a genius suggestion; no more getting stuck in full screen apps!

App Shop

Android Market has that pretty well covered, although the AndAppStore also works, so another massive win over the Joggler’s selection.

Internet Radio

It’s pretty basic but, with a local radio added from Global Streaming, AndroRadio does a solid job. I’m leaning towards Resco Radio at the moment though since the UI is a bit nicer, plus it has a volume control which is very handy without any hardware controls.

Google Maps

Yes!

Probably the best addition to the Joggler is having a working web browser, so for loads more stuff there’s no need for an app. I can check bus times with www.mytraveline.mobi, and look up trains on www.nationalrail.co.uk for starters. Definitely the best value gadget I have!

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Weather Underground + Mashup Hub + Pachube = orb food

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The hardware side of my ambient orb project is almost finished, so I’ve been making a start at the other end: getting some data to display. Top of my wish list is to display a basic weather forecast on the orbs, which looks like it could be nice and simple thanks to the very handy Weather Underground service. There’s a decent weather station nearby for current readings, and the forecast for Southampton has been pretty accurate so far, both of which are available through the Weather Underground API.

I could process the resulting XML on my home server but, having been doing some work with mashups recently, I thought I’d create a feed mashup instead. I’ve played with Yahoo Pipes in the past but this time I created a feed using Mashup Hub on Lotus Greenhouse:

So that screen shot is probably not all that helpful in understanding what’s going on; this style of graphical programming is fairly common these days but I would personally like to see more advanced ways to document and share diagrams like this. Still, this one is pretty simple, so here’s a quick overview:

  • The path at the top extracts the current temperature from the local weather station data
  • The middle path makes use of some very handy date functions in Mashup Hub to pick out entries 12 hours ahead from the forecast data
  • The bottom path does a lookup on the forecast conditions to replace a text forecast with a numeric code

Which all ends up being published as a much simpler piece of XML. I could just grab this XML directly and process it on the Arduino, or I could save some effort and convert the mashed up XML to an even simpler comma separated list using an XML to CSV converter written for the Pachube community. Well, now it would be trivial to create a Pachube feed for the weather forecast as well… so here it is…

Perhaps not the most direct route for getting a weather forecast but I think it’s a nice example of how anyone can pull together data they are interested in without any programming, or a server of their own. I’m also quite please with the results of the forecasts so far; 13 C and clear tomorrow in theory!