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.