Status Update ~ 2016-03-14

theo-armour commented 8 years ago

Happi PI day

A lot of today was about cleaning up the code. But some nice things happened too. There's now a fairly easy way to get the local time at a remote location given lat, lon and UTC.

The big remaining issue is drawing analemmas correctly. No real effort was put into this issue today but the work helped clear the decks and set up the terrain for finding the problem and solving it.

The interesting question will be finding out if it is a silly error on our part or an issue with SunCalc.js

My entire lifetime experience with analemas is less than a week old. Going through the issues, however, is a fun challenge and a great learning experience

Analemma 2D

Features

2D plot of Sun azimuth and altitude once an hour at the 21st of each month.
Default is lat/lon of San Francisco
Latitude and longitude sliders - with real-time updates
Buttons to display data for New York, Isfahan, San Francisco and Sydney
Midnight highlighted in red. Noon highlighted in green
Hourly data output in degrees
Permalink support
Slide-out menu support - helps with use on tablets
Latest update: 2016-03-14 /R3
Rename from 'Analemma Sandbox' to 'Analemma 2D'
Adds slide-out 'hamburger' menu
Code clean-up
Adds latitude and longitude sliders - real-time updates
Display and text readout calculated in degrees ( was radians )
Permalink support
Issues
Funky stuff happens when using latitude slider
- Is this our error or a SunCalc.js error?
  Analemma 3D
  
  Features
3D plot of analemmas of Sun azimuth and altitude once an hour for days 1 through 28 of each month.
Default latitude and longitude is San Francisco
Sliders update latitude and longitude of analemma in real-time
Displays map of location
- Nine maps styles to choose from
Buttons available for selected cities
Midnight highlighted is red. Noon highlighted in green
Placards indicate the hour of each analemma
Permalink support
Slide-out menu support
Latest update: 2016-03-14 / R3
Code clean-up
Issues
Has math error: noon and midnight analemmas are not opposite each other.
- Observe this error when viewing latitudes near Equator
Map not positioning correctly
Time Remote Given Lat Lon UTC

Features
Uses Google Maps Time Zone API to determine time zone
- Handles day light saving time and local time zone anomalies
- Ocean locations are timeless
Default latitude and longitude is San Francisco
Sliders update latitude and longitude and recalculates time in real-time
Sliders update UTC time
Buttons add selected cities
Permalinks support accepts latitude, longitude and UTC time input
Calculates and displays remote day and time - given UTC hours ans minutes
- Displays universal time
- Displays time zone and time zone ID
  Latest update: 2016-03-14 / R3
Rename from 'Time Now Given Lat Lon]' to 'Time Remote Given Lat Lon UTC'
Add UTC hour and minute sliders
Add buttons
Requests Google Date only as needed and not always
Adds UTC date and time to permalinks
Improve display mechanism
Add remote universal time display
SunCalc Sandbox

Features
Built on SunCalc.js
Calculates and reports Sun times and position in radians and degrees
Calculates and reports Moon illumination, times and positions in radians and degrees
API that creates, updates and accepts permalinks
- Accept date, time, latitude and longitude
Buttons provide data for selected cities
Latest update: 2016-03-14 / R7
Code clean-up
Display data in UTC plus in the time zone of the remote location
Redesign permalinks
Add buttons

mostaphaRoudsari commented 8 years ago

@theo-armour I forked the repository to check the numbers for the math errors. I will send a pull-request for your review if I can get it to work.

theo-armour commented 8 years ago

@mostaphaRoudsari

Not to worry. I'm on to it.

And it's interesting. SunCalc.js provides azimuth and altitude with the origin being at the location of the observer on the face of the earth. So imagine you are on the earth and looking out. You would see the analemmas as depicted in the current series. What we are looking for, however, is a different set of coordinates - those pertaining to an observer in outer space looking at the globe as a whole.

I am looking at your code and the original NOAA code - written it's own peculiar JavaScript way.

There's another bunch of issues relating to the way JavaScript handles time and getting drawing drawing maps. And these aspects are crucial in me being able to test various hypothesis.

So. perhaps, wait a day or two and I will have made a good amount of progress and will have new stuff to show.

Theo

mostaphaRoudsari commented 8 years ago

@theo-armour,

Thanks. Interesting. I don't fully understand your explanation about SunCalc. Solar azimuth and altitude are pretty standard definitions and it's strange if a library changes the definition!

I'll hold on this then. It was a chance to learn from your code about THREE.js. I'm looking forward to your update. :)

mostaphaRoudsari commented 8 years ago

@theo-armour,

Sorry! I couldn't stop myself to check SunCalc.js. I just sent a PR for your review.

ladybug-tools / ladybug-web