[HN Gopher] Visualizing Weather Forecasts Through Landscape Imagery
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Visualizing Weather Forecasts Through Landscape Imagery
Author : lds133
Score : 577 points
Date : 2024-09-20 16:31 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Ha, this is great. I hooked up an old photo frame to OpenAI's
| DALL-E image generator, which is told to make an image based on
| the current weather data right now. It updates every few hours.
|
| This is what it's showing right now: https://ibb.co/8K5jZ3B
| riedel wrote:
| See also: https://github.com/blixt/sol-mate-eink (using city
| images)
| kbutler wrote:
| This is really lovely!
| tanvach wrote:
| Really cool! Thanks for sharing. Is there a reason rpi 5 is
| needed versus older versions of rpi (which I have plenty)?
| riedel wrote:
| Not my project and I only know it because a friend starred
| it. Guessing I would say you could run it with sth much
| less powerful as it just calls the openai based online
| service linked. Just thought the look is kind of nice.
| rickcarlino wrote:
| Love the monochrome artwork, great work on this project.
| 3abiton wrote:
| This is one of the best microcontroller projects I've encoutered
| recently! Amazing work!
| tamimio wrote:
| Looks great, would love if it was fully offline and interface
| with sensors directly
| celie56 wrote:
| Maybe I misread the docs, but it looked like it was generating
| a visual for the whole day. If this were offline you could have
| it double as a clock and regenerate the image every N minutes.
| nelblu wrote:
| Great work! That said if we are focusing on the UX, windy.com has
| got the best weather reporting experience.
|
| Ex: I am almost never interested in "30% chance of shower at
| 08:00pm" type of forecast. I am more interested in the trend in
| which the clouds/rains are moving. This helps me figure out which
| direction I can drive to get the best sunshine or whatever else.
|
| Is there anyone else who is doing it the way windy.com is doing?
| I really love them, and so far their experience is great (almost
| no dark UX patterns), that said I would love to see some more
| competition in this space.
| captainkrtek wrote:
| I'm a big fan of Meteoblue, they provide a lot of different
| forecast ensemble visualizations. While not the same as windy
| in terms of ux, it does a good job of conveying model
| uncertainty and model agreement.
| unanimous wrote:
| Zoom Earth is similar to Windy.com
|
| https://zoom.earth/
| adamfeldman wrote:
| Weather Strip (iOS) https://apps.apple.com/us/app/weather-
| strip/id1528594026
| jasonmarks_ wrote:
| > This helps me figure out which direction I can drive to get
| the best sunshine or whatever else.
|
| I published a road trip weather app that crunches forecasts for
| you if you're going for a drive and would like to avoid the
| worst of the weather. It's great for evaluating whether to
| start a trip during the evening or the next morning. Timestamps
| are built using Google directions so you have about as accurate
| a forecast as you can in 2024.
|
| > I am almost never interested in "30% chance of shower at
| 08:00pm" type of forecast.
|
| I understand this sentiment but that is sorta where medium term
| forecasting is right now.
|
| Android or iOS https://weatherthetrip.com/download
| kbutler wrote:
| We used windy.com earlier this year to choose our location for
| the total eclipse in Texas. Worked out perfectly - great view
| for the eclipse, then the clouds rolled in...
| xd1936 wrote:
| Love love love love this. This would be great for kids. I pitched
| a very similar "weather for kids" visualizer product idea on the
| very first episode of my podcast.
|
| https://spitball.show/@podcast/episodes/1
| jerjerjer wrote:
| From readme:
|
| > Traditional weather stations often display sensor readings as
| raw numerical data. Navigating these dashboards can be
| overwhelming and stressful, as it requires significant effort to
| locate, interpret, and visualize specific parameters effectively.
|
| Simply fascinating. The reverse holds true for me. Numbers
| provide easily identifiable and recognizable references, while
| sample images look incomprehensible to me. Without accompanying
| descriptions, I'd never guess what the author is getting at
| (except in the broadest of strokes). To each their own, of
| course.
| lds133 wrote:
| Don't take it too seriously :)
| jp57 wrote:
| It's an interesting idea, but some of the image semantics seem
| weirdly wrong. In particular, the sky shouldn't be light at
| night, and the sun shouldn't be high at sunrise.
|
| If you have to learn counterintuitive things like "the appearance
| of the sun anywhere in the sky indicates sunrise", and "nighttime
| is indicated by, well, idk what exactly, but it's not darkness",
| it kind of fails at it's main purpose, I think.
|
| EDIT: I'll add that many weather apps have a left-to-right
| timeline of some sort, and indicate sunrise and sunset with
| intuitive iconography.
|
| EDIT2: The Windy.com timeline view shows sky condition,
| day/night, moon phase, temperature, precipitation, and wind speed
| and direction in a nice compact left-to-right timeline. (click
| the summary in the upper left)
| yaj54 wrote:
| It's like a line-scan camera for the weather.
| SebastianKra wrote:
| If you'd like to see this implemented in a practical way, check
| out Weather Strip.
|
| It's a master class in information density while also being
| intuitive and readable.
|
| https://www.weatherstrip.app/
| anonova wrote:
| Note that this kind of visualization is just the collapsed form
| of a standard forecast graph, e.g.
|
| https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=37.39&lon=-122...
|
| https://www.wunderground.com/forecast/us/ca/mountain-view
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Dang Mountain View has some enviable conditions...
| groby_b wrote:
| To enjoy those conditions, however, you have to endure
| Mountain View.
|
| (Seriously, it's not a great place. The surroundings are
| great, but the place itself is strip mall central)
| lb1lf wrote:
| In a somewhat related vein, the wonderful Ootside[0] website
| gives you the weather with a Scottish twist.
|
| Mostly, the weather around where I live is described as 'Mostly
| shite'.
|
| [0] https://ootsi.de/
| grahamj wrote:
| Mine is "Glaekit", whatever that means.
| bazzargh wrote:
| It means 'stupid' in Scots so... probably just a joke by the
| author? Or maybe they were reaching for some similar words
| and missed - like 'drookit' (soaking wet), 'gloweret'
| (ominous sky), 'gloamin' (twilight), 'glaupit' (slimy,
| muddy), 'glamsy' (sky a mix of bright and dark)
|
| There's a dictionary here https://dsl.ac.uk/ but glaekit is a
| common enough word in normal conversation in scotland, most
| people here would know what it means.
| bobabob wrote:
| It looks lovely but it's absolutely incomprehensible beyond
| "maybe it'll rain" and "maybe i'll be sunny". Without the
| explanation of what the symbols meant I'd never guess.
| lds133 wrote:
| Yes, this is part of the fun. Kind of having a binary clock on
| the table.
| pilooch wrote:
| Can't wait for the stable diffusion version :)
| lds133 wrote:
| Now there are two of us.
| qnleigh wrote:
| This is super-fun. Kinda makes me want to do the following: set
| up a camera to take regular photos of a greenspace near my house.
| Record couldcover data and date stamps alongside the images, and
| then then show the most similar image to the current forecast as
| a background, maybe on my laptop. Wouldn't convey as much
| information as this project, but it could be very satisfying.
| bazzargh wrote:
| I noodled with a project a couple of years ago to pick art based
| on the weather https://bazzargh.github.io/weather/
|
| put it on 'manual filter' and try setting some of the filters,
| you can see the tagged images it comes up with. I wasn't really
| interested in this being an accurate weather report, I was
| thinking more of using it in a photoframe or as a desktop
| background for mood.
|
| the image tags are all in here
| https://github.com/bazzargh/bazzargh.github.io/blob/master/w...
|
| and were largely done manually, I started by picking paintings I
| liked, then looking for gaps in the tags and trying to find
| paintings to cover those.
| duck wrote:
| Your page is getting flagged for phishing on Chrome.
| lbotos wrote:
| In FF as well, Just reported it as "not suspicious"
| bazzargh wrote:
| Huh. That's new. I'm guessing it must have been someone who
| read it here, I don't think I ever even posted it anywhere
| else. I'm not sure what they could think it's phishing for;
| there's no links out, no redirection, and nowhere for you to
| enter any personal information; the only thing it does is
| pull images from wikimedia, plus the source code is right
| there for all to see?
|
| If it was anyone here who reported it... mind telling us why?
| lxe wrote:
| Cute, and with small adjustments, I'd be legitimately using this.
| There are just better ways to interpret things:
|
| 1. Make the bending trees signify wind direction. Have to get
| creative with north and south, but a tree bent down vs out can
| do, and the bend or size and clustering of trees should signify
| magnitude of the wind.
|
| 2. Put sunrise and sunset as literally sun over the horizon, not
| the sun and moon.
|
| 3. Make the night sky shaded differently than day
|
| 4. Don't start at "current time" but rather a fixed point, either
| morning or midnight, and specify the "now" via the location of
| the house
| folli wrote:
| All good points, agreed. Except #4, would be cute if there's
| some animal that moves along instead of the house.
|
| And perhaps playing with some kind of isometric perspective
| could help visualize wind directions?
| xattt wrote:
| > Would be cute if there's some animal that moves along
| instead of the house.
|
| I can suggest a snail with a shell that has a window and a
| chimney out the back!
|
| It can also be a something man-made but playful like a
| freight train with a caboose. You'd only see the back end of
| the train and it would move off screen over the course of the
| day.
|
| Mind you, trains are now ruined for me with John Oliver's
| production of Thomas the tank engine.
| efitz wrote:
| Maybe shadows (length and direction) could give a sense of time
| of day, along with shading of sky and land.
| lds133 wrote:
| The idea offers plenty of room for creativity, but I was
| limited by the small black-and-white screen. There's no way to
| show trees bending in the wind or snails crawling across it.
| However, there's still space in the sky to add fun elements,
| like a stork for someone's birthday or Santa's sleigh during
| the holidays. I'm waiting for larger, full-color E-Ink screens
| to become affordable.
| andai wrote:
| Another comment posted a project using waveshares 7 inch
| color epaper ($85).
| darrylcodes wrote:
| This is really cool! I would use this daily if it were an app
| leobg wrote:
| These are gorgeous. What a great idea.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| I've been using a similar concept for my Android wallpaper for a
| while now[1].
|
| I love the idea of artwork that actually conveys useful
| information.
|
| [1]:
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=kaka.wallpaper...
| freddie_mercury wrote:
| I've had this live wallpaper for years and always liked it.
| hinkley wrote:
| Reminds me a little bit of Tad Williams' Otherland series.
| vages wrote:
| Reminds me of the main view in the Yr.no app, which visualises
| the weather as a picture of how things would look outside a
| window at different times of the day. It is actually quite easy
| to get a feel for the amount (and type) of precipitation, as well
| as the wind, from the animations.
|
| However, you only get to see one moment at a time, requiring you
| to scroll horizontally through the day, and the temperature is
| only shown as a number.
|
| https://apps.apple.com/no/app/yr/id490989206?l=nb
|
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=no.nrk.yr&pcam...
| danny8000 wrote:
| How much effort to create a weather app for ios or andriod that
| works like this? Maybe so something for the nest home max or echo
| show? I love the idea, but what is the easiest way to get this
| onto the most number of devices?
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Love it! It's like the Chernoff face[1] of weather forecasts.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernoff_face
| lds133 wrote:
| Thanks everyone for the valuable feedback. In addition to the
| description in the readme, I'd like to share my specific use case
| for the project, which may not be immediately obvious.
|
| I have the screen set up on my desk, and the image evolves
| throughout the day. Watching these changes is surprisingly
| enjoyable. For example, rain might appear from the right side and
| disappear after a few hours, or trees might start to grow.
| Meanwhile, the sun and moon steadily move forward, marking the
| transition between day and night.
|
| Another fun aspect is how the setup resembles a binary clock.
| People often suspect it represents something meaningful but don't
| always know how to interpret it. Still, the simplicity of the
| design invites them to try and figure it out.
| kohlerm wrote:
| Really nice"
| pcl wrote:
| Chamonix does something like this for their weather forecasts. It
| works really well! Lots of info available at a glance, especially
| once you get accustomed to the format.
|
| https://en.chamonix.com/weather
| unknown2342 wrote:
| Very nice and inspiring idea I will try to implement it and my
| project
| sieste wrote:
| I fully expected an llm hooked up to an image gen ai that turns
| weather forecast into hyper realistic images, and was pleasantly
| surprised to see a good old deterministic mapping of data onto
| carefully chosen visuals in a system where an actual human made
| actual design choices. how strange!
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