Latest on Storm Hawk

[Mike Smith]

www.usnews.com/usnews/culture/articles/050606/6weather.div.htm

We have a new web site at www.stormhawk.com

Mike

 

[Joey Ketcham]

StormHawk seems like it'd be a cool gadget to have while storm chasing, but good grief... $1,500 and monthly fees of about $40... I wouldn't touch that with a 10 foot pole!

That is WAY to much money for that.

 

[Mike Smith]

Consider: Storm Hawk costs far less than Wxworx (in that you have to provide a PC for Wxworx) and has a lower monthly fee. Storm Hawk is completely portable and it is easy to use outside of your car (try that with Wxworx!). The screen rotates (if you want it to) with your direction of travel at the top, so you can easily see what you are traveling into.

NWS warnings (full text) display automatically when you are in or within ten miles of the warning polygon and traveling toward it. Most distant warnings (full text) can be displayed simply by tapping on the polygon with the stylus. You can set the system to sound a tone and/or vibrate when you are in a warning area. The next version of the software, out shortly, will have a lightning alarm.

Plus, with our patented system, you can easily send storm reports and storm photographs (including short videos) with the Storm Hawk unit itself. The photographs are embedded with the lat/lon and time. Once the NWS gets their end of the system fully working, we will relay those reports to the NWS. No longer will you need to try to call them on the phone.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but that is a lot of capability for far less than the competition.

 

[Mike Smith]

I apologize for neglecting to mention two items:

All of the traditional PDA functions still work on the PDA that hosts Storm Hawk.

We are going to post some examples of the "Reporting" feature on the web site. They will hopefully be up in a day or two.

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

And XM was supposed to be such a waste of money to 'some'??? I'd say xm would win this battle hands down as you don't need a cell phone or minutes to get the info!

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

Originally posted by Mike Hollingshead
And XM was supposed to be such a waste of money to 'some'??? I'd say xm would win this battle hands down as you don't need a cell phone or minutes to get the info!

Wait, it charges ya minutes, too? I could see this being good competition for XM *if* it provided unlimted access with no connection costs (i.e., minutes) beyond the $40 a month. If you have to use minutes too, yeah, that's insane. I could buy a $500 pocket PC, use the NWS WAP sites, and point it to live radar at Dupage or whatever and save $1000 + $40 a month. Sure, it wouldn't be as good at what Stormhawk is offering, but it wouldn't be $1000 +$40 a month worse.

But $40 a month isn't bad if there are no additional useage plans involved. Then it would compete with XM. XM would beat it with coverage, of course; it would sure suck to be in the middle of South Dakota and have your Stormhawk crap out because it can't find a digital cell network. I'm guessing the Satphone usage charges are quite expensive and the data retrieval fairly slow.

 

[jaybarnsmith]

Mike Smith: Have a patent number for your "patented system"? Id be interested in reading about it.

Ryan McGinnis: If you read his page the cost of the storm hawk service is $10 a month, Im assuming the USNews.com story is including cellphone service cost and such.

Im guessing the device contains a GPS chip which more than likely accounts for a large chunk of the initial cost.

 

[Joey Ketcham]

From what I have read, at least it seems to me anyways that it uses some sort of cellular service… but I’m not 100% sure on that. I don’t know about the rest of you guys and gals, but when I’m looking at radar, GPS, maps, or whatnot I like to look at them on a screen that is bigger than what a PDA offers!

I had a Pocket PC that was one of Dell’s best at the time I bought it, I also bought the optional GPS for it and after 1 run with it I said “This sucks†and sold it. Now I have my laptop back, have my Delorme GPS, and plan on purchasing WX Worx for next season.

Pocket PC’s are not that great, and to me StormHawk is definitely not worth no $1,500. Having a laptop with WX Worx is more beneficial to me than StormHawk would ever be. For one, with all the WiFi connections I can just pull up to a WiFi hotspot, get on the internet, download data and go.

Then of course the GPS, but also I can connect a weather station to my laptop to record weather conditions for me, and plus I have games installed on it to play while waiting for storms!

Buy no means am I trying to be rude, I’m just speaking from a consumers point of view. Now if StormHawk was lowered to like $700.. then I may consider buying it.

 

[Mike Smith]

Monthly fees: You pay WeatherData $9.95/mon. for unlimited data.

Unlimited data plans using the various cell networks vary from $19.99 per month to $60 per month, depending on the carrier.

The $40 per month total (unlimited data and communications) was an average determined by the reporter. We work with each customer to determine the best combination of coverage and cost and choose the cell carrier most appropriate to their needs.

We are still tweaking the web site. The patent numbers will be posted in another day or two. Additional patents are pending.

 

[Edward Ballou]

If only I could install on my Treo 650...

 

[Jay Press]

Sounds like it's trying to be like Wxworx a little. XM is way better to have in the field, yeah there is cell coverage in most areas, but NOT all.
TOPSECRET:Wxworx is planning to have SPC reports added in the near future which will make it the complete wx chase tool. I used it May 11-13 and it put us in tornado watches 4 days in a row (with a little help from spc and ST discussions). That's truly amazing. Saw 4 tornadoes out of 4 days! WXwrx rules!

 

[Joey Ketcham]

I had WX Worx last year trying it out and it was awesome! I couldn't imagine owning anything other than WX Worx. If what you say is true Jay, that would be NEAR perfect.

I don't know what has been added since I had the system last year, but if it's not on there already I think the ability to view current MCD Discussions would be awesome as well!

 

[Tim Vasquez]

As this is a Marketplace thread please keep the discussions focused on the product presented. Though comparisons/pros/cons are fine here, extended discussion about competitors derails the thread and is more appropriate for the Equipment forum. I do appreciate Mike Smith's patience in sorting through the questions... too often the "big guns" don't stick around to represent their products.

BTW this was not posted at Mike's request.

Tim