"wX" Android opensource/free weather app - new beta release 3.4

[Joshua Tee]

Here is the full change log for the release this past Tue via google play:

-Last night and for the 2nd time this year during a major severe weather outbreak the existing NWS stream of tor/tstorm/ffw alerts was severely delayed. For this release a new NWS data source has been selected that performed far better last night. For now warning polygons in the radar, severe dashboard, and if selected alert count in MISC tab should perform better then last night.

- Additional formatting changes to make the app more consistent impacting most text product activities.

- In settings one can now control the size of the NWS Icons and is specified as a number representing the percentage of the screen width. In general tablets might need this number reduced to the 10-15 range.

- Additionally NWS icons were added that were found to be missing ( there is no accurate comprehensive list of NWS forecast icons unfortunately and they have nobrowse set for the directory containing images such as this: http://forecast.weather.gov/newimages/medium/few.png )

- CC2 layout changes mostly related to text formatting and to make it look more like the 7DAY2 cards.

- HRRR Model activity now saves/restores the time last used ( like all other model activities already had )

- bugfix: when the floating action button ( FAB ) was added to some activities recently it caused an issue in settings->locations in which the 2nd location could no longer be deleted if one was attempting to just have one location. This has been fixed

- bugfix - current conditions card was showing windspeed in knots instead of MPH in some situations. fixed

- bugfix - In Settings -> Locations -> Add if no lat/lon is listed and the user touches the map icon it crashes the app. Fixed.

 

[Joshua Tee]

3.7342 released:

New icons made for the “Material Design” theme are now used. They are noticeably smaller and work better with the builtin icons to access submenus and to go backwards. All but 2 icons are the same in design ( icon to show a map in radar and afd activities is now a globe and in settings playlist the icon to engage text mode is a series of lines ). As a reminder you can always long press over any icon in the toolbars for a short textual description.

Most activities that are not based off a single image have been migrated to card widgets for consistency and to ease support of the white theme mentioned below.

New dark themes have been added including “mixed blue” and “dark blue”. Dark blue is similar to how the app appeared before the conversion to Material Design last winter. Mixed blue has a different blue used for the toolbar versus the background of the card widget.

New white theme has been added which uses colors from the default theme along with all textual cards using black text on white background. This theme is now the default for new users.

The formatting for the CC2 ( current conditions ) card has been modified slightly. The heat index or wind chill has been moved onto the top line and the temp and related index or chill have been removed from the 2nd line to save space.

In Settings->Playlist if one taps on the download icon a notification is no longer issued but instead the time/size for playlist entries will automatically update in the list.

In COD 1km/2km the ir/wv menu entries will only appear when at the 2km or less zoom level.

In the GOES activity the radar icon will only appear at zoom levels that support this overlay.

Tab widget at top of screen has been migrated to the Android Design Libraries Tablayout which should offer more capabilities going forward. In the meantime the noticeable changes are a fix for an occasionally seen truncation of text and, larger default font size, font sizes are scaled down when various weather alerts are selected to be shown and are non zero numbers, and the tab headers don’t scroll off the screen but rather are given equal spacing w/o the scroll capability.

Certain UI settings have been added to a new activity ( User Interface settings ) accessible from the main settings activity

Formatting changes in the sunrise/sunset card.

You can now tap on the sunrise/sunset text to reload the forecast data on the main page.

Settings -> Playlist. A pop-up “toast” message is no longer displayed if the “download all” function is chosen as the update time will automatically change at the completion of the bulk download.

Numerous activities ( such as screen used to manage favorites ) that had previously been ListView widgets are now converted to RecyclerView widgets which allows CardViews and thus consistency with the rest of the app.

SPC Storm reports - bugfixes and UI enhancements

Dialog and datepicker are now styled with colors to match the rest of the app.

Black theme was enhanced.

pre Android 5.0 devices will now use the Material design on/off switches in the various settings activities.

In SREF/COD/NCEP/HRRR one can now use floating action buttons ( configurable under settings->UI ) for the left/right arrow instead of having smaller icons in the bottom toolbar. I personally have difficulties doing repeated taps when in the bottom toolbar and thus an option to have larger buttons above the toolbar for this function.

In settings->UI one can now change the corner radius of the cards. Default is 0 for square corners but one can tweak this for a rounded effect.

In settings -> UI one can now change the text in the tab headers.

Settings -> Location -> Add - toolbar icons have been moved around and the save icon is now in a FAB ( floating action button )

All scrollviews now don’t show a scrollbar.

Most listviews have been moved to recyclerview widget ( with cards ) and floating action buttons are used when appropriate.

NWS 7 day text has a colon in “New Year's Day” so added logic to disregard this.

 

[Joshua Tee]

3.7377 released:
- Canada and Australia support has been enhanced significantly with support for cards+icons for current conditions and forecast. CA has a new soundings activity. AU has a new GFS model viewer along with new vis imagery in the radar viewer.
- Added additional error checking for newly added radar city labels. Please see http://stormtrack.org/community/thr...eather-app-new-beta-release-3-4.27745/page-10 for additional details if you are still experiencing issues.

---
In response to one crash report related to the new city label additions additional error checking was added. If this still doesn't work please contact me directly with more configuration data. In the meantime there are two ways to prevent the crashing. First, you can install the 1st WX diget and then access the hourly activity via the "tear drop" icon. Once there the submenu has a back door into the main settings for the program and in settings->radar cities can be turned off. The 2nd option is to just clear the data for wX via the Android app interface and since cities are disable by default it should at least get the app going again. If the latest release is still crashing ( I recieved one crash report ) please send me a screenshot of settings->homescreen and settings->location. Thanks!

 

[Joshua Tee]

3.37495 released:

• Lower right icon in SPC tab is now a link to an interface for the models at tropictidbits.com . Most models are present
  
  
• MISC tab last row has two new icons added. First is for an interface to images from the NWS OPC and the 2nd is for GOES Full Disk images.
  
  
• COD Models GFS/NAM had low level lapse rate added
  
  
• in US warnings, warning maps were added for HI/AK
  
  
• SPC Storm reports can now share image, text, or both.
  
  
• SPC mesoanalysis had the “Classic” and “Beta” submenu added along with one new parameter in composite and 3 new ones in winter weather.

 

[John Erwin]

Does anyone know why Google Play says this is "incompatible with my device"? I have a Samsung Note 3, Android 5.0 and more than enough memory etc. I haven't tried using an .apk file yet..

 

[Joshua Tee]

John,
You are in Canada? Till recently I've only distributed via google play in the US because most of the content was applicable to the US. It is surprising you can see it but can't install it and the error is not that informative !

Recently a lot of effort has gone into Canada and at some point soon I probably will lift the US-only restriction. Till then you can side load the APK and it should work just fine.
If there are Canadian weather resources you use that aren't present please let me know.

thanks,
Josh

Does anyone know why Google Play says this is "incompatible with my device"? I have a Samsung Note 3, Android 5.0 and more than enough memory etc. I haven't tried using an .apk file yet..

 

[John Erwin]

Hi Josh,

That explains it then.. the app doesn't appear as an option on my phone but I can see it on a computer with the "incompatible" message.

I'd venture to say that most Canadian Storm Chasers are looking at U.S. data sources at least some of the time; not only because we venture south at times but because many of us live in "overlap" areas and we want to see the "big picture" (weather knows no borders after all

I'll sideload the .apk and give this a try; it looks quite promising!

Thanks very much!

 

[Joshua Tee]

3.37534 released:

• COD has updated the HRRR graphics and added more parameters. This caused the existing interface to break. URLs were fixed and new parameters were added.
  
  
• COD HRRR now shows %complete for current run like most other models
  
  
• In settings you can now select soundings to check COD graphics instead of SPC. Canadian locations use COD by default. (beta)
  
  
• SPC Mesoanalysis, added 3 new hail parameters
  
  
• (bugfix) SPC Compmap will fail to start in some circumstances. Thanks to whomever submitted the crash report and hope this fixes it. Please email me if not,
  
  
• New “orange” theme available in Settings->UI (beta)
  
  
• New interface to NWS Observation sites ( prior 3 day history ) in MISC Tab last row. Data itself is still shown via the web page but navigation via state->site uses native android widgets.
  
  
• (bugfix) Canadian radar notifications were crashing when tapped on.
  
  
• Added 20 new text to speech abbreviation translations.
  
  
• Australia forecast activity - add bottom toolbar with text to speech and share support.
  
  
• Lightning activity - add selections for Australia and New Zealand
  
  
• Canadian 7 day forecast. Minor tweaks to better match forecast verbiage with NWS icon selection ( locations in US, CA, and AU all use NWS icons for consistency )
  
  
• (bugfix) text products pmdsa and pmdca were no longer showing correctly
  
  
• (bugfix) SPC Mesoanalysis. One parameter and one parameter label were corrected in in the submenus in the bottom toolbar.
  
  
• (bugfix) US alerts activity - fixed crash if alert had expired
  
  
• Canadian 7 day forecast. Initial support for parsing out wind speed, wind gust, and direction and adding to headline for current day ( similar to US )
  
  
• added numerous additional graphics in the “WPC image viewer” - no longer necessarily just WPC as images from CPC and AWC added as well.
  
  
• NWS Goes viewer -- added JMA and EUMET sectors to cover western pacific
  
  
• In MISC and SPC tab the number of tiles per row is now configurable in settings -> UI
  
  
• OKHTTP upgraded from 3.0.1 to 3.1.2.
  

Suggestions, bug reports always welcomed.

 

[Joshua Tee]

The following will be published on google play today or tomorrow but can be sideloaded from the usual download location at any time if desired ( downside is inability to report crashes ):


3.37585 released on March 5, 2016:

• GPS integration into radar interface when auto-refresh enabled ( does not apply to the homescreen only the main radar interface and dual-pane which is discussed below )
  
  
  • If autorefresh, show location dot, and location dot follows gps are all enabled under radar settings then the location dot will update provided 20 seconds or more has passed and you have moved 30 meters. As a reminder the color and the size of the location dot is configurable. When you start the radar interface ( provided you have location services enabled with GPS ) you will see the GPS icon at first greyed out but eventually white once it is getting data. Initial placement of the location dot during this time is via a last good known location from any source ( gps/network/wifi )
  • Please make sure location services using GPS is enabled to use this feature.
• New “dual-pane” radar interface ( last row MISC tab for now )
  
  
  • This activity is beta, please do report bugs along with a comment on how it was triggered
    
    
  • This activity provides easy access to showing different radar products for a single site or two different radar sites, etc.
    
    
  • In general this is similar to the main radar interface with a few exceptions. In order to control the bottom radar you must select it from the sub-menu. The top radar is active by default ( when I say active I mean the bottom icons and a long press control that radar ) and you can use the sub-menu to switch back to it once radar 2 is active. When you choose to share it will do so based on whichever radar you have selected.
    
    
  • An option exists in radar -> settings so that the radar site / lat / lon / zoom level is synced between panes. If you want to look at different products for the same radar site this is the best option to use.
    
    
  • The concept of favorites and the dropdown menu present in the main radar interface have been removed for dual pane as there simply isn’t enough real estate to accommodate this. Your last view ( radar sites, products, zoom, and centered lat/lon are remembered and restored on the next start )
    
    
  • As a reminder you can single-tap to zoom out, double tap to zoom in ( and it will center on where you tap ) and long press to switch to the closest radar.
    
    
  • City labels are currently not supported.
    
• Add 72 and 144 frame animations in radar interface
  
  
• Add timestamp in subtitle for radar interface (wxogl) animations.
  
  
• Add pause icon in radar animations that shows once the animation is in progress. The difference between stop and pause is that stop once touched will trigger a new download for the animation where pause will resume from where it left off and use the files already downloaded to your device.
  
  
• Newly added locations in Canada or Australia will now show sunrise/sunset time at bottom of main screen. For existing locations you can resave them navigating to the edit screen location and touching the checkmark icon. This will query and save the lat/lon which is used for sunrise/sunset calculations.
  
  
• (bugfix) radar autorefresh now supports refresh of animations
  
  
• (bugfix) If location is Canada and soundings is chosen activity would crash
  
  
• (bugfix) Tropical tidbits model interface was not properly detecting completion for nam12/nam32
  
  
• (bugfix) legacy 4bit radar products base velocity and storm relative motion would sometimes cause a crash
  
  
• (bugfix) “Add..” pull down item in main radar interface was not presenting the appropriate radar sites
  
  
• (bugfix ) Canada 7 day - small token changes to assist in displaying NWS icons based on textual forecast
  
  
• Canada 7day - add support for detecting thunderstorms in text and displaying appropriate NWS icon
  
  
• Upgrade to Support Library 23.2. Some pretty substantial code changes were needed to support this upgrade which now uses vector drawables to a certain extent.
  

Suggestions, bug reports always welcomed. thanks, Josh

 

[Ted Angeli]

Looks great! Thanks for your hard work!

 

[Joshua Tee]

Looks great! Thanks for your hard work!

thanks Ted !

 

[Joshua Tee]

3.37609 released on March 12, 2016:

• Long press icons in tabs and drag to new location (within the same tab). Tabs 2-4 support this.
  
  
• Most animations now have an extra pause at the end to more clearly show the last frame.
  
  
• Settings->Radar now has an option to have the lightning icon in the bottom toolbar invoke the dual pane radar
  
  
• Tropical Tidbits HRRR - added new params
  
  
• bug fixes including share of nexrad radar images causing a crash
  
  
• Upgrade ndk and support lib 20 23.2.1

Suggestions, bug reports always welcomed. thanks, Josh

 

[Joshua Tee]

3.37611 released on March 13, 2016:

• (bugfix) for locations east of CDT, SPC day2 was not working correctly in the first issuance after daylight savings has changed. A new method was implemented to detect daylight savings change.
  
  
• Enhanced Sun/Moon data ( beta, not finished due to rushed release for bugfix above ): If you click on the icon to the left of current conditions a new choice is listed for enhanced Sun/Moon data that now includes Moonrise/set times, phase of moon, and twilight times for sun.
  
  
• Canada location management enhancement. You can now use the top search bar to add Canadian locations. However, you must select one of the suggestions and not just enter an arbitrary location ( will work on this later ).
  
  
• As of yesterday , wX is now available to those in Canada via GooglePlay
  

Suggestions, bug reports always welcomed. thanks, Josh

 

[Joshua Tee]

3.37632 released on Saturday March 19, 2016:

• (bugfix) US tornado watch notification was not ignoring test VTECs
  
  
• Existing “conditions” location specific notification was enhanced to show temperature in the status bar and NWS icon in the expanded notification.
  
  
• Canadian locations now also have conditions and 7day notifications offered as an option.
  
  
• Radar dual pane - initial load and on location switch both radars are updated in parallel instead of sequentially
  
  
• Sun/Moon data accessed via ICON to left of current conditions now presents formatted data instead of raw data from provider
  
  
• COD radar/vis/ir/wv - add mesoanalysis overlays not present at time of initial product addition to app: Vorticity,Theta,Moisture Divergence,Wind Vectors
  
  
• Canada forecast/warnings/hourly. Add bottom tile mentioned data is from EC and providing ability to open browser to EC URL - needed per EC terms of use.
  
  
• Remove “no” option from restart dialogue for settings changes that require a restart. In some cases if a user chooses no the app will crash on navigation back to main screen as assumption that old setting is in effect still exists. Would rather immediate restart occur which really has little impact anyway.
  
  
• NDK upgraded from android-ndk-r11 to android-ndk-r11b
  

Suggestions, bug reports always welcomed. thanks, Josh



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Google play summary:


Bug fix for US tornado notifications. Enhanced conditions notification and now available for Canadian locations. Radar dual pane performance improvements. Additional options in COD vis/rad/ir/wv mesoanalysis overlays. Canada data has tile at bottom with URL to EC website. Mandatory restarts now enforced for settings changes that require a restart ( theme, simple mode, etc )

 

[Joshua Tee]

3.37669 released on Saturday March 26, 2016 - thanks to those that suggested these features.

• Main radar ( including dual pane and when on homescreen): submenu added under main menu which allows the action performed on long press to be chosen. Default option is at top and that continues to be to change the radar site. 2 new options are to show warning text if you long press inside of a flash flood, tornado, or tstorm warning. If you long press a spot that has two warnings ( such as a tor warning inside a tstorm warning ) both text products will be shown in overlapping dialogue boxes. The other option will show the decoded METAR for the closest NWS observation site. Whatever option is chosen will persist across radar views and across app restarts.
  
  
• Spotter network data is now an optional overlay in the main radar and dual-pane. Size of marker and color are configurable. Additionally, in the main screen submenu access to a new spotter activity is provided. With the spotter activity you can manage a favorites list ( which appear at the top ), show a spotter on a map, and show a spotter on radar. Additionally, you can touch email or phone to open respective apps to email or call. Both features are a work in progress with more features to come.
  
  
• COD NAM4KM was upgraded by COD and URLs changed as a result.
  
  
• In settings->color tor and tstorm warning color is no longer used for the tor and tstorm watch color. Both watches now have their own color and default to a slightly different color. If you have modified tor and tstorm warning color it will not be impacted but please note in this release the defaults for watches will now be used ( red for tornado watch and yellowish orange for tstorm watch )
  
  
• (bugfix). If you long press on a storm report you will be presented with options to see radar from the time of the report. This menu was incorrectly offering Level 2 data for TDWR sites.
  
  
• (bugfix) If location marker follows gps is enabled in settings->radar, long press on a storm report and showing Level 2 radar data will not show a location marker at the location of the storm report
  

BUGS/CRASHES: If you are experience any crashes or bugs and have submitted crash reports but do not see resolution with this latest release please contact via email. It’s not always possible with the crash data automatically submitted or the comments to figure out what is going on.


Suggestions, bug reports always welcomed. thanks, Josh


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Google play summary:


Added spotter overlay for radar and spotter activity from main submenu. In radar can now control action performed when long press: switch radar site, show warning text, show closest obs. If experience any crashes please see the release notes ( URL in app description at bottom ) for more info. Thanks to those that suggested these new features or reported bugs.