[HN Gopher] Show HN: Briefsky - a free Dark Sky clone for multip...
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Show HN: Briefsky - a free Dark Sky clone for multiple weather APIs
Author : vsergeev
Score : 88 points
Date : 2023-02-28 18:23 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (briefsky.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (briefsky.app)
| Zetice wrote:
| Nice!
|
| Small feature request; when I paste in from Google's "copy
| coordinates" feature, it could detect my paste contents are
| "coord,coord" and populate the form appropriately, splitting on
| the ",".
| vsergeev wrote:
| Thanks, I'll add it to my list. At some point I was thinking of
| adding a location search too, just depends on a free & reliable
| geocoding API.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Can someone explain to me why weather data is seemingly hard to
| get/provide? Isn't data from the US government (weather.gov) in
| the public domain and completely free? What did Dark Sky and
| similar provide on top?
| manwe150 wrote:
| For me, it was the history data. I could check if it snowed in
| the last couple days in a new location and whether it melted
| yet. With most weather apps, the furthest back I can see is
| midnight, which does not even answer the question of whether
| there are going to be puddles/snow/slush/ice on the ground that
| formed since the time I went to sleep.
| lostfocus wrote:
| Yes, absolutely this. Dark Sky was very generous with their
| historical data, none of the others is doing that.
| vsergeev wrote:
| The main issue I ran into with the NWS API was a lack of stable
| conditions codes/icons (something like WMO codes that could be
| easily mapped). They encode some weird dynamic image URL that
| renders a summary of the weather, but isn't machine readable. I
| think they're deprecating it anyway. Otherwise, it had pretty
| much everything through one endpoint or another.
|
| For the others, I tried to document the main limitations here:
| https://github.com/vsergeev/briefsky#unsupported-providers
| npilk wrote:
| I agree this data should be free and easy to access from the
| government.
|
| Personally, I've found weather.gov APIs hard to work with.
| There's no geocoding included, and you can't even use lat, lon
| directly. But the bigger dealbreaker is that I have about a
| ~10-20% success rate querying any given endpoint, where
| sometimes I just get "An unexpected problem has occurred." And
| this is an automated twice-a-day query, so I don't think I'm
| hitting any rate limits...
| vsergeev wrote:
| You can use lat,lon with the points endpoint:
| https://www.weather.gov/documentation/services-web-api , then
| properties.forecast and properties.forecastHourly endpoints
| from there to get daily and hourly forecasts. I don't have
| enough experience with it to comment on rate limiting,
| though.
| meteo-jeff wrote:
| That's exactly what I want to change with my open source
| weather api https://open-meteo.com
|
| It collects raw weather mode data and redistributes weather
| forecasts with simple APIs
|
| Briefsky is also using it :)
| vsergeev wrote:
| Seriously, thanks a ton for providing an API-key free weather
| API! That's why it's the default for briefsky. Sorry if
| there's a load spike today ;)
| O1111OOO wrote:
| For a long while, I had been looking for Weather Apps with great
| UIs. They seemed so hard to find.
|
| Now I have two that look great on the Desktop and easy on the
| eyes (ie; without the chaos I find on other sites):
|
| https://merrysky.net/ and https://briefsky.app/
|
| Only tested on the Desktop but I'm finding I have to do a bit
| more work (vs MerrySky) - that is, I have to keep clicking each
| day.
|
| Usability could be improved if today's weather information bar
| automatically displayed when accessing the page. Maybe the
| settings could add a toggle ON option for:
|
| (-) today only
|
| (-) all days
| vsergeev wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. Will make a note of auto-expand
| settings.
| zie wrote:
| The US government has a public, free API for getting weather
| data, and it will spit out JSON even. http://api.weather.gov
| documentation here:
| https://www.weather.gov/documentation/services-web-api
|
| I never understood why people go through all these other API's
| that consistently get shut down, cancelled or become pay for use
| eventually.
| vsergeev wrote:
| Unfortunately, the NWS API is missing machine readable
| condition codes/icons in the daily and hourly forecast, which
| is why it isn't available in briefsky. The API has nearly
| everything else, though. If I had a solution for those icons, I
| probably would have added support for their weather alerts too,
| and also made it the default for US locations.
|
| See here for notes on other unsupported providers:
| https://github.com/vsergeev/briefsky#unsupported-providers
| gpm wrote:
| Seems to be limited to the US only? Plugging in a random
| location in Canada and I get "Unable to provide data for
| requested point 45.5451,-78.8739"
|
| Which is really disappointing, since the weather models they
| use must model the entire world...
| redavni wrote:
| Briefsky only offer Open-Meteo without an API key. This is a
| Europe Centric model (if they integrate HRRR, they don't state it
| anywhere I could find. I could be wrong) while MerrySky uses
| Pirateweather.net which among others does integrate the HRRR
| model, which is a US model and is higher resolution (3km vs 4km).
| vsergeev wrote:
| Yup, all good points. I've found Open-Meteo's default to be
| subpar for US. Briefsky offers Pirate Weather too, but will
| require a free API key. (MerrySky is Pirate Weather, so it's
| baked in.)
|
| I was actually hoping to make NWS the default for US, but ran
| into some limitations with their API missing machine readable
| conditions codes/icons. Open-Meteo does have https://open-
| meteo.com/en/docs/gfs-api, which should probably be used in the
| meanwhile for a better default forecast with US locations.
| jnovek wrote:
| This (and every other Dark Sky replacement I've tried) is missing
| one feature that is crucial to me: hour-by-hour barometric
| pressure forecast.
|
| I get frequent migraines and big changes in the weather trigger
| them. The easiest way to predict big changes is by watching for
| swings in the barometer. There's nothing out there that gives the
| hour-by-hour barometric pressure prediction (at least on iOS) and
| it's so significant that it has impacted my overall quality of
| life.
| cnanney wrote:
| For a web alternative, on https://merrysky.net/ you can expand
| "More charts" on the graph to see barometric pressure.
| cobythedog wrote:
| I could be wrong, but I am pretty sure that Windy (windy.com)
| offers that: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/windy-com-weather-
| radar/id1161...
| mutagen wrote:
| Windy.com shows pressure on their meteogram and is an option
| for their map display.
|
| https://community.windy.com/topic/14827/how-to-read-
| meteogra...
| GiorgioG wrote:
| CARROT (iOS) has it.
| perfecto_maduro wrote:
| What kind of changes are you looking for? and how would knowing
| the forecast help you prepare or avoid headaches?
|
| Anecdotally my headaches correlate with weather changes but was
| never able to pinpoint exactly the markers.
| JZL003 wrote:
| yeah I've wondered too. Although I think for me I just feel
| better when it's colder
|
| I did debate writing how 'headache'y I felt periodically with
| timestamps (e.g. make a telegram bot -> google sheet) and
| then add in some weather data and see if it was actually
| correlated if I plotted them
| barometric wrote:
| I'm in the same boat with weather pains, so I decided to make a
| site with an hourly barometric pressure forecast and history.
|
| https://barometricpressure.today/
|
| It's currently tracking a lot of cities, so please check if
| you're close to any, otherwise, I will soon add a search for
| specific locations.
|
| I'm open to any feedback.
| gwoplock wrote:
| > This (and every other Dark Sky replacement I've tried) is
| missing one feature that is crucial to me: hour-by-hour
| barometric pressure forecast.
|
| I think Carrot weather also has that feature
| npilk wrote:
| FYI, the iOS Weather app does have this now. If you click on a
| day in the 10-day forecast, you get a detail view with hour-by-
| hour forecast data for many metrics. One of them is pressure
| (although I don't normally look at barometric pressure so maybe
| this different than what you need).
|
| Edit: You can also click on the "pressure" widget and it brings
| up the same hour-by-hour detail view.
| jnovek wrote:
| Thanks for the heads-up! It's not quite as nice as it was in
| Dark Sky, but I will give this a try.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| "Chance of precipitation" isn't one of them though, they'll
| only give you a predicted inches of rainfall. Should I assume
| that if there's a nonzero amount of rain in the graph it's a
| definitely going to happen and I should carry around my
| umbrella?
|
| Darksky used to make that really easy to check for the entire
| day and I'm not loving Weather as a replacement.
| KerryJones wrote:
| I love the UI but it seems to be missing what location it has
| loaded for? I know it asks for it, it is useful for me to see
| what location it is reporting on.
| vsergeev wrote:
| Yeah, this probably requires some explanation. Currently,
| briefsky doesn't depend on a geocoding API, so it can't map
| locations to coordinates or vice-versa. It just uses the
| lat/long from the browser's geolocation or manual coordinates
| in the settings. But ideally it'll have location search and
| location text at the top.
|
| The way I use it is as a bookmark with a pre-configured
| provider and the location in the title. briefsky stores all
| configuration in the URL, so you can bookmark multiple
| locations / providers.
| nirav72 wrote:
| I miss the dark sky alerts indicating that its about start
| raining in the next x number of minutes at my location and how
| long the rain will continue. Was great when I was about to step
| out for an errand and could wait until it stopped raining.
| goplayoutside wrote:
| Is there a Dark Sky API replacement that provides brief text
| descriptions in the 10 day forecast yet?
|
| When I checked the other day, it looked like Pirate Weather was
| still waiting on donations to fund the development work for that
| feature.
| JZL003 wrote:
| For any other person who wants more advanced weather, I like
| meteo-blue's multimodel graphs
| https://www.meteoblue.com/en/weather/forecast/multimodel/tex...
| Much more information dense, if less pretty but it's helpful to
| see a bunch of models to get a sense of the uncertainty. It's
| what meteorologists I know do often, and you can quickly learn
| which models are short vs long-term and uncheck them
|
| I do wish I could make my own graphs but parsing all the
| different weather models is a pain, maybe there's some API I
| don't know about or an open source consistent parser
| JZL003 wrote:
| Also meteograms are a nice consise way of getting a sense of
| the weather
|
| https://www.meteoblue.com/en/weather/forecast/meteogramweb/t...
|
| When I look at science data I don't look at lists of numbers, I
| don't know why that's always how weather is presented visually
| WraithM wrote:
| I've needed a Dark Sky clone for ages! This is great.
| zikduruqe wrote:
| Here's an alternate also... https://merrysky.net/
| Gys wrote:
| Would be nice if it automatically uses degrees Celcius instead of
| Fahrenheit if the location is Europe. Also for visibility and
| wind speed, km instead of mi.
| vsergeev wrote:
| I considered handling this with some coarse longitude
| heuristic, but settled on just using the browser's locale for
| now, so it should default to metric for non-US locales. In the
| metric setting, the visibility and wind speed will be km and
| km/h, respectively.
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(page generated 2023-02-28 23:00 UTC)