[HN Gopher] Show HN: I built a navigation app that displays weat...
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Show HN: I built a navigation app that displays weather along the
route
Hello HN, I live in northern part of USA where winters are snowy.
Whenever I took long trips, I always wondered what the _weather
along the route_ is going to be. For those who live in northern
USA, you know weather can change frequently, so when you 're
traveling matters a lot, not just the route. To solve this problem
for myself, I built https://navimodo.com/. NaviModo calculates the
route, and then checks weather along the route based on your start
time, and displays weather along the route. Change start time, and
the whole thing is recalculated. I am not expecting any
commercialization for this, just wanted to scratch an itch, and
just did it. I have ideas for adding additional features
(suggestions for when to take breaks based on bad weather, auto-
suggestion of start time to avoid bad weather, etc.,) but will add
more as time goes by. Any feedback is welcome!
Author : vkatluri
Score : 38 points
Date : 2026-04-06 13:58 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (navimodo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (navimodo.com)
| magesh_magi1 wrote:
| I've applied for a patent for this very idea easily 10 years back
| but didn't get past my company. I've faced the issue when I
| travel from my office to home easily 1 hour journey without
| knowing when it'll rain where.
|
| Good execution. How accurate it'll be within city
| vkatluri wrote:
| Not very accurate if it's short distances. What challenges did
| you face with the patent application?
| big_toast wrote:
| I immediately did SF to Reno through sacramento and south lake
| tahoe. Wildly different even in four hours.
|
| A URL that persists the entered route might be desirable
| (especially to demo here). Otherwise I'm sure the additional
| features are endless.
| vkatluri wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. When you say wildly different, was the
| weather different? Or did the application behave differently? I
| will definitely consider sticky URLs!
| big_toast wrote:
| It behaved properly.
|
| I pictured someone using it on a 2 week road trip. But even
| within a couple hours traveling in SF/bay area, it can be
| pretty hard to know what weather you'll encounter. Even if
| you're a local.
| doctoboggan wrote:
| I've wanted something like this, but optimized for star gazing
| during road trips. I'd love for your tool to be able to tell me
| the best place stop along my route taking into account my
| expected travel location, light pollution, cloud cover, moon
| position, etc.
|
| I live and spend most of my time in cities, so long road trips
| are some of my bests chances for seeing good stars out in the
| country.
|
| Would your tool be adaptable to this use case?
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Similar concept to Weather on the Way, for the iOS folks
|
| https://weatherontheway.app/
|
| Looks good and I like being able to browse the map on a desktop,
| though for actual travel use the app with CarPlay support
| obviously has benefits
| imp0cat wrote:
| Or mapy.com and their "weather en route" - weather forecasting
| directly on planned routes.
| vkatluri wrote:
| Hello,
|
| Yes, there are a few options available already. This was a
| passion project of mine, and I am reviewing all the use cases
| I can add. My primary aim was to have a website that works on
| both desktop and mobile. Did not prioritize mobile
| apps/CarPlay/Android Auto support yet.
| max8539 wrote:
| Just a week ago, I asked ChatGPT to find me something and found
| Drive Weather iOS app, which I started using. I was also thinking
| of building something myself, but this one is good enough. Have
| you tried it or any other similar apps? Why did you decide to
| build a new one and why is it better? (Building just for fun is
| an option as well!)
| addandsubtract wrote:
| I hate when there's "NetworkError when attempting to fetch
| resource" on my journey.
| vkatluri wrote:
| Yikes. I wonder if I got throttled due to Hacker News traffic.
| Can you share more details?
| addandsubtract wrote:
| Oh, turns out uBlock Origin is blocking requests to
| router.project-osrm.org. No clue why, though. I mainly use
| the standard lists.
|
| Also, one more improvement while I'm here; can you set the
| date/time forward by ~30mins? Currently, you always have to
| adjust it manually or else the date/time will be in the past.
| herpderperator wrote:
| Nice app! I see that the page title says "client" and there's the
| Vite favicon still, which you might want to fix :)
|
| I also think having a dropdown for the address search is somewhat
| expected these days, but is lacking here. That might be on
| purpose or due to a technical limitation, but just thought I'd
| mention.
| vkatluri wrote:
| That's embarrassing... will fix the title and favicon.
|
| Thanks for the feedback regarding addresses, on my TODO list to
| add support for dynamic search.
| emien wrote:
| This is really nice, cool idea!
|
| One thing I noticed: when I enter a destination that isn't
| drivable like requires a flight, it returns OSRM API Error. Might
| be worth handling that case more gracefully or showing a clearer
| message.
| vkatluri wrote:
| Thanks for catching this! Will fix.
| dominka wrote:
| Nice idea - I tested it on a route in Poland and it picked a
| pretty optimal path
|
| One thing that felt a bit tricky: if I want to leave "now" and
| quickly try different route variations, the departure time
| becomes outdated almost immediately. A simple "leave now" option
| could help here. Also would be great to see alternative routes to
| compare weather differences.
|
| Overall though, super useful tool. I can see myself checking this
| before longer trips
| hahooh wrote:
| I would appreciate the option to set the distance unit to KM.
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(page generated 2026-04-08 23:01 UTC)