Mythweather - any users of this?

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muss3000
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Mythweather - any users of this?

Post by muss3000 »

Hi All,

Does anyone still use this plugin and is there much interest in it with the availability of weather data on smart phones these days?

Back 15 years ago I used to use it frequently but thought I would take a look at it with my media centre setup and I was disappointed with the lack of support now for Australian locations.

Oddly on the mythweather page there are reference to Australian scripts but scanning the latest and older tags in github, I don't see these scripts in there. Were they once there but removed? Does anyone know the history on this?

I see support for UK, Canada and the US but I can also see errors when using them in some. There is one for wunderground but you need an api key but it can only be obtained if you have an existing weather station. Given what I have seen in my testing it makes me wonder if this plugin is still utilised and is there demand for it.

Just to see how hard it was to get Australian data I wrote some perl scripts sourcing data from the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) public ftp server to get the current conditions, 3/6 day forecast and animation (radar) maps and was surprised how easy it was to stand up for those weather screens. I plan for my own usage and amusement to create other weather screens for Australian locations and I am happy to share these. Also given my knowledge is fresh I can perhaps take a look at the other scripts as well.

I guess before I bother with all of this the initial question I wrote still remains... do people still make much use of this plugin? Are there any metrics that shows it does get used? Would there be interest in further enhancement of other countries data?

Thanks...
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pvr4me
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Re: Mythweather - any users of this?

Post by pvr4me »

Like any feature in any piece of software, there will be a few users who love it and use it all the time.

But overall, MythWeather is doesn't earn its keep. AIUI, the various weather services have regularly made breaking changes to their APIs so that MythWeather needed pretty regular maintenance...but only got sporadic fixes.

If it were implemented as a pop-up that could overlay the corner of a current video, perhaps it would have more utility. But with a phone, tablet or other second screen I think the time of MythWeather is done.

IMHO

Craig
Formerly the MacPorts guy.
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