

Scientists crowdsource atmospheric data from phones to improve weather forecasts - cryptoz
http://www.geekwire.com/2013/uw-scientists-crowdsourcing-atmosphere-data-smartphones-improve-weather-forecasts/

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cryptoz
I'm the developer of the pressureNET app and CEO of Cumulonimbus. We're
looking to dramatically increase our measurements per hour (12,000 right now
globally, need to get to 100,000 and then 1,000,000 by summertime). Building
the pressureNET SDK is our focus right now as it will allow other app
developers to include pressureNET in their apps, thus helping us grow quickly.
There's also a data access API (which is what the scientists are using) if
you're interested. Last month I left my job to build this full time. I have
only some savings left - so we're looking for funding. We just got the YC
rejection email, but there's a lot of other opportunities out there so I'm
quite confident we'll find something.

The most excited part about this right now is the Galaxy S4 coming out in a
couple of weeks: It has a barometer, hydrometer and thermometer so we'll be
collecting all sorts of new sensor data as well. All of our work is open
source on GitHub if you'd like to help out!

Data visualization: <http://pressurenet.cumulonimbus.ca/>

GitHub: <https://github.com/Cbsoftware?tab=repositories>

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dbaupp
Do you interact much with the OpenStreetMap community? They are a group who
are no strangers to putting geotagged information on to the internet, and are,
for the most part, keen on open source, so I'm sure you could pick up a few
users there.

Also, I recently saw OpenWeatherMap[1], which seems like a project that would
be aligned closely with you. I'd be interested to know if you've communicated
with them/if you've got some sort of partnership going on?

[1]: <http://openweathermap.org/>

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cryptoz
I have been investigating a switch from Google Maps inside pressureNET to OSM
for a while but haven't interacted with them yet. Thanks for the tip, I'll
look more into it!

OpenWeatherMap looks fantastic - I definitely want to use their API in
pressureNET. Thanks, I hadn't seen this before. We really want to focus our
work on collecting large amounts of pressure data, so building top-level UIs
and other features like regular forecasts hasn't been priority. But this API
looks great.

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dbaupp
Nice, looking forward to the switch to OSM.

A message to the `talk' OSM mailing list might attract some attention,
although there may be a more appropriate list.

An idea I had was that maybe you could form an arrangement where any OWM apps
include PressureNET reporting. (In fact the same for OSM apps, you could talk
to some of the developers (there are lists of android apps on the OSM wiki)
because I know a few apps already include optional reporting of other things
to Open _XYZ_ Map-like projects)

