

How Dark Sky Works (Weather prediction using computer vision) - thegrossman
http://blog.jackadam.net/2011/how-dark-sky-works

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itsnotvalid
I like the idea except it is U.S. only.

Okay back away from trolling, I thought these kind of modeling was something
to be done on server side, but you app seems to be doing it on the client
side. What's more, there are many more interested in these (including weather
stations) things but I am guessing there is no way you guys are giving away
the algorithm to make the prediction.

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thegrossman
We definitely want to expand it beyond the US! But dealing with each country's
different network of weather radar is a daunting task.

As far as giving away the algorithm: Unfortunately, it isn't a single
algorithm that can be packages nice and neatly. So I'm not sure how that would
work.

But, we do plan on developing an API that 3rd-parties could use.

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itsnotvalid
Since I know it would be impossible for a small team to develop such thing for
every different observatory on the world, you may try federating with them one
way to another to have them feed the data in the API.

However from my heart if such use is organized I feel ethically bad if the end
result is not free of charge or expandable to other platforms.

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thegrossman
As promised in an earlier thread
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3186978>), I've written a blog post
describing how Dark Sky operates under the hood.

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maxerickson
Have you compared the results of your computer vision approach to the velocity
data provided by the NWS?

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thegrossman
You mean the wind velocity data directly from the doppler radar? Yeah... it
turns out that wind velocity isn't super accurate for predicting where the
storm is going.

If you watch a storm building up over time, you'll often see it staying in one
place or even moving against the wind. Almost like a traffic jam on a highway.

So that's why we take a computer vision approach rather than basing it on
wind-speed.

