Switch to a different provider for weather data

codeka / weather

Android Weather Widget

Apache License 2.0

24 stars 14 forks source link

Switch to a different provider for weather data #3

Open codeka opened 5 years ago

codeka commented 5 years ago

Apparently weather underground have shut down access to their API. Weirdly, it's still actually working for me (mostly), but I assume it's just a matter of time before it's gone completely.

It might be a good idea to switch to a different provider of weather data. One that's actually free (so I could honor #2 and actually release an APK).

IzzySoft commented 5 years ago

Pointer: On F-Droid we had a discussion on Do our weather apps need the NonFreeNet AntiFeature?. That discussion mentiones several APIs – those who are NonFree, but also those that are free and thus don't need the AntiFeature.

codeka commented 4 years ago

Some candidates:

https://www.rainviewer.com/api.html

Pro: at least it seems to work
Pro: nice-looking maps
Con: Doesn't have fully global coverage (but I don't think anything really does)
Con: Radar images only (would need another API for other parts)
? Unclear license

https://openweathermap.org/

Pro: free, pretty popular (probably won't be shut down soon)
Con: The weather maps look really ugly

https://www.weatherbit.io/api

Con: No radar images
Con: Free tier kinda sucks

https://developer.accuweather.com/apis

Con: Free tier is only 50 calls/day, very limited
Con: Imagery is really expensive

https://www.climacell.co/weather-api/ http://api.weather2020.com/

IzzySoft commented 4 years ago

Btw: Despite the "Open" in the name, OpenWeatherMap isn't really "open" (on F-Droid, it would raise the NonFreeNet AntiFeature). But the same is probably true for at least wheatherbit and accuweather as well. Cannot tell for the others. If that's not a K.O. criterion, you might also wish to take a look at Swiss Meteotest, which offers a variety of world-wide weather data via API (CSV, XML, JSON, YAML). I didn't check their conditions, though.

For other services, also see here and here. I didn't dig in deep, though – looks like there's no "real free" (in the sense of FOSS) one in those lists.

codeka commented 4 years ago

Yeah, based on the list you linked previously (https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/issues/1439) there's basically no weather APIs that would be considered free, with the possible exception of government sources, but then I'd be on the hook for combining them all into something usable (which, from what I can tell, is basically what RainViewer does)... not really feasible for a project that's mostly just for my personal use anyway :)

IzzySoft commented 4 years ago

Yepp, that's why I didn't even mention those (and yes, they're the only FOSS ones I know). Could have been something popped up meanwhile I thought. But I'm not really looking, so I will certainly have missed it unless someone put it right on my nose…

IzzySoft commented 2 years ago

@codeka as it no longer seems to work (I just tried it today but only got a blank screen), I'll remove the app from my repo for now. Should you find a solution (NonFreeNet is acceptable) and want me to re-list it, just give me a ping – metadata is just archived on my end, so it's easily re-established. :crossed_fingers: