Saturday, January 10, 2015

US Weather Radar Android App

Enjoy all the features of US Weather Radar  in our new US Weather Radar Android App:


Features recently added to US Weather Radar:
  • Celsius/Metric units
  • Weather charts
  • History of locations
  • Save config in Google™ cloud
  • Vertical Radar Cross Section
  •  Lightnings overlay up to 15min
  •  NOAA SPC reports
  •  Read forecast, alerts, ... on certain browsers (Chrome, Safari)
  •  Local Weather Tweets
  •  Weatherlink® station integration
  •  Option to hide maptypes
  •  Hurricane maptype on-demand

US Weather Radar can be enjoyed here:

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Chrome Weather Badge and Rain Alarm


You need a rain alarm telling you if it will rain in the next hour or how the rain distribution will be? This is one of the main features of our Weather Badge and Rain Alarm.

The Weather Badge and Rain Alarm for the Chrome browser offers:
  • Hourly rain/precipitation forecast 
  • Rain alarm 
  • Precipitation graph shown in chrome toolbar icon 
  • Summary of current weather condition when hovering over toolbar icon 
  • Notification with hourly forecast 
  • Reads hourly forecast to user 
  • Meteogram for location 
  • Alerts 
  • Link to US Weather Radar
It leverages the Text-to-Speech engine of the Chrome browser to read messages to the user and shows notifications based on the configuration. Uses data from forecast.io.




US Weather Radar now offers animated radar forecast for the next half hour

In case you wanted to see how the rain might develop in the next half hour - US Weather Radar shows the visualization. By analyzing the precipitation motion delivered by the Nexrad Radar images the US Weather Radar forecasts the precipitation for the next half hour. The forecasted movement is displayed on the map as shown in the screenshot below.

To activate this feature please select the location for your weather forecast on the map or in the configuration.

Saturday, March 23, 2013

US Weather Radar: New Features

March brings new features for the US Weather Radar!

Radar image animation now shows the progress of the precipitation and allows for planning outdoor activities. Also a national video forecast is available and new overlays have been added:
  • 24 hour precipitation
  • 1 day precipitation forecast
  • Wind barbs
  • Warnings
The configuration allows to hide the upper left zoom control to offer more screen space to see the weather coming.


Saturday, January 12, 2013

US Weather Radar now with Meteograms; Crispy Images in Real Indoor

New enhancement to the US Weather Radar: Meteograms. Meteoblue.com offers interesting Meteograms showing weather conditions over time:
  • Development of temperatures and sun visibility
  • Cloud levels and precipitation
  • Wind gusts, speed and directions
Here is an example of a Meteogram from Meteoblue.com for the Seattle area:

Streetview images in Real Indoor can now we tuned to your preferences. If you use Real Indoor with Chrome or Safari you can find options to tune contrast, saturation, ... in the configuration section: 


Tuesday, January 08, 2013

Real Indoor: New Hardware Integration with Arduino

We have been thinking about how to enable more integration of Real Indoor with the different workout devices like cycles, treadmills, .... And the answer is - Arduino.

With the Arduino Integration you can control your work-out device (magnetic brake, ...) as well as get information from your device like retrieving RPM values, heartbeats, ... Arduino enhances the approach Real Indoor had offered so far via webcam integration to retrieve e.g. the RPM value and adds much more flexibility.

Here is how it works under the hood:
  • The Arduino board I/O pins are connected to the work-out device to provide and retrieve input and output information
  • The Arduino board is connected to the computer via USB
  • Java-Applet talking via USB to Arduino
  • Real Indoor application providing the output information to control or retrieve input from the work-out device via Javascript from the java-applet

This approach is very flexible and offers for example 
  • Measurement of RPM e.g. via Reed-switch integration
  • Control of magnetic Eddy current brakes of e.g. cycles via application of the control voltage
  • Control of inclination cycles or treadmills based on the present slope by application of the control voltage from the Arduino device
  • many more ...
As the Arduino integration typically needs some knowledge of hardware we are not yet providing the Arduino hardware integration publicly but for selected projects. Please let us know if you are interested in learning more about the new hardware integration or would like to start an integration project via our feedback form in Real Indoor or here.

BTW - Real Indoor now supports choosing imperial or metric units.

Saturday, October 13, 2012

US Weather Radar now as standalone webpage


The popular US Weather Radar Gadget has been ported to a stand-alone webpage. Please check it out at Weather NG.

Now the US Weather Radar can be viewed as normal webpage also from your smart phone - or you can integrate US Weather Radar in other homepage technologies like Protopage, Netvibes, ...

US Weather Radar at Weather NG

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Control Real Indoor with Webcam Gestures and Cadence Sensor

Real Indoor uses webcam images to allow user gestures to control the Real Indoor user interface and retrieve additional information like the spinning cadence (RPM). While you sit on your spinning bike it is difficult to control the computer e.g. with a mouse and adjust power, cadence, ... - to overcome this we developed the unique gesture control.

This is build leveraging the new HTML5 features of browsers like Chrome which enable to access the video taken by the webcam of your laptop or a connected USB camera. Of course the browser will ask you if you allow access to your webcam so please confirm the question appearing just below the upper browser bar.

Below are some screenshots of the movements detected in the webcam image which then allow identifying the sensor activation and triggering the respective actions. And please remember ... all is done in your browsers javascript engine ;-)

Cadence/RPM detection:




The arrow shows the sensor where RPM calculation is triggered from. When a object (head, shoulder, crank, ...) repeatedly moves into this area the cadence is calculated and influences the power applied and so the driving speed with which the driver is moving forward on the track.

Of course you can drag the RPM sensor to the most suitable position depending if you want to measure your head movements or the rotation of the crank.

Power control:



You can control the slider on the right with the finger or hand the to adjust the power applied.

Heading control:



While driving you might want to look around. When you control the heading slider the Real Indoor driver stops and you can enjoy the beautiful scenery around you.

All controls are optional so you can choose which suits you best while spinning at full power.

User interface:



















Technical background: The webcam images taken via the HTML5 "getUserMedia" javascript API are constantly monitored against changes between the present and the previous image. If movement is detected in the different sensor areas the respective control is triggered.