New radar app for Droid

[Brian Hurst]

I really like the radar app so far it has been really stabile and the sound it makes when it updates is really cool. I think thats it's great to let you know that the radar has updated.Really quick to load and I was in a 1x area and it updated there.

 

[Darren Addy]

Kudos to Mike Brady for his comments in this thread. With a "dog in this fight" (apologies to Michael Vick and PITA for the expression) he could have held back his complimentary comments about the competing app. But he didn't, which boosts his credibility/standing in the chase community IMHO.

Competition is a good thing for the marketplace, so I hope that Mike's app development will continue. I think it would be in the best interests of chasers to monetarily support BOTH apps, at his stage, especially as inexpensive as they are.

If the other app developer is an ST member, I hope he chimes up and responds to his users here (feature requests, etc.) like Mike has. If he's NOT an ST member, I hope he becomes one.

 

[Darren Addy]

Since I know Joe the developer of PYKL3 Radar app, I will respect his privacy by not posting too much here, unless he starts posting on Stormtrack. But just to let you know that you should not have any concerns over the development of the app. He is very knowledgeable of weather and programming. He has storm chased in the past and still does given time. I'm confident that he will continue to develop a quality radar app and willing to take input on features users would like to have.

Mmmm, yeah. It appears that what Scott says here is a bit of an understatement. Privacy isn't his biggest concern, or he would have masked his identity when he purchased his domain name. However, when your email address includes "@noaa.gov" (like Scott's) we probably shouldn't question his interest/knowledge in weather.

He's not a current ST member, but I hope he becomes one!

I'd also like to add that I hope Droid radar app developers will also make sure that their apps run on the upcoming Droid Tablets. I don't know (spec-wise) if the tablets have fewer resource restrictions than the phones do, but I do know that the greater screen real estate would be very welcome in the vehicle/on the chase. Verizon/Google and others are supposed to be developing Android Tablets. Also, you can download Android emulators for your desktop machines, so (with that installed) does anyone know any reason that you couldn't run this (or other) Android radar apps on your Windows laptop?

 

[Brandon Sullivan]

I did talk with the developer about some ideas I would like to see as a chaser, and he sounded enthusiastic and replied very quickly! I see this as becoming a fabulous app...


That said, Mike has been great, and I definitely plan to keep using his app too, and I am excited to see the future of it as well!

Reference the looping, Mike and the developer of the app said the same thing.. Memory!

 

[Dave Rennie]

Well, I installed all three aps mentioned in this thread (many orders of magnitude cheaper than WxWorx!) and will try them all out once storm season arrives.

 

[Darren Addy]

Not being an Android developer, I don't know if this is practical or not but it just seems like overkill to me, especially for resource limited devices, to download the entire Level3 data down to the device and process it there. How much latency would there be, for the Level3 data to be crunched by a server and then have the rendered result delivered to the phones? The app would then be more like an RSS reader that would just show the most recent "snapshot" or loop of the last x number of snapshots. Impractical?

 

[rdale]

At that point you just have a GIF image though, so panning/zooming would look horrible. To have it look nice - you'd need a large image file, but then you can't shrink it and have to worry about a large download. L3 data files are VERY small.

 

[Ben Holcomb]

Yeah, we already have a radar app that uses images and tiles. While it is adequate, it isn't nearly as cool as what you can do with Level 3 Radar files.

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

The other issue you'd run into is service selection and server reliability. With an an app that utilizes a proprietary Level3 -> GIF service, you're stuck with the service that comes with the app. Right now, there are some very reliable data choices out there with great up-time numbers (Allisonhouse, etc.). If that goes down, there are other sources to use as backup. It wouldn't work that way with an app that couldn't read raw Level 3 data.

 

[Jarrod Cook]

There is an update coming out that I've offered to help test that will have GPS location and ability to upload location updates to spotter network!

 

[Christopher E. Kincaid]

From the app developer:

Chris,

Thanks, I’ll put you on the list (to beta the new version). As for the background maps, yes, I am contemplating a number of options. I might edge toward a user-defined shape file that they can put whatever they want in there. Another option would be to create a map for each radar site and store it. Definitely something I’m thinking of. I’ve put in the request for joining Stormtrack, but I have not heard back from the webmaster. I followed up today, but hopefully they will fix me up sooner than later. My request was submitted last Saturday.

Joe

Any chance his membership could approved ASAP???

 

[Jason Moreland]

I just promoted this app on Facebook. Hopefully this thing will take off....I think it's our best hope for getting an android app comparable to radarscope.

 

[Tyler Allison]

I think it's our best hope for getting an android app comparable to radarscope.

Oh I don't know about that

But the app does look promising!

 

[Christopher E. Kincaid]

I just bought Mike Brady's StormChaser app - beta. I love it! It's nice watching two apps progress... Mike's and the PYKL3 Radar.

 

[Scott Hammel]

I'll be curious to see how Mike's app runs with the new Google Maps which uses vectors instead of tiling. Should be quicker load times...