

The average color of the New York City sky, updated every 5 minutes. - shashashasha
http://nskyc.com/

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sjwright
A clever idea, however his data source is irrevocably corrupted by the auto
exposure and auto white balance of his webcam. The result is, sadly, more
influenced by the algorithms in his camera than the sky itself.

Notice how there's some outrageous and short-lived tones during sunrise and
sunset -- that's the white balance jumping around (Possibly an automatic
saturation gain too?)

Then notice how the brightness doesn't peak and fall during the day, instead
jumping quickly from darkness to "full" brightness with frequent dramatic
shifts far greater than reality would allow. That's because the moving cloud
cover is triggering the auto exposure to jump around incessantly.

The ideal fix would be to replace the webcam with a digital camera capable of
tethered shooting and fully manual operation. You'd fix the shutter, aperture
and ISO values to a level that minimizes clipping, set the white balance to
daylight, and point the camera in a direction least likely to be in the sun's
path (in the southern hemisphere, that's south).

In order to capture the dynamic range fully, you could allow the camera to
automatically choose the shutter speed, then compensate in the algorithm by
reading the shutter speed from the EXIF data.

That said, full points for the idea, and for a great web app to visualize the
data!

~~~
seabee
Some webcams have manual settings, I know mine does. Just enabling those
should get you 90% of the way of a tethered digital camera, "all that remains"
is getting sufficient dynamic range and fixing the curves/compensating for
human perception.

~~~
sjwright
Many cheap/consumer devices let you disable _some_ automatic adjustment, but
rarely do they let you disable everything. For example, I've seen webcams that
can fix the white balance but have automatic saturation adjustment that can't
be turned off.

The cheap option that comes to mind would be an old and/or second hand Canon
PowerShot capable of running CHDK firmware. Ask friends and family; you'd
probably be able to score one free from a dusty cupboard draw.

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rads
The average color of the Seattle sky, updated every 5 minutes: #DDDDDD

~~~
zachrose
#DEDEDE every now and then when a Boeing plane flies over the camera.

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joshwa
I always wanted to make a wall-sized version of this with really bright LEDs--
kind of like a light therapy box, but programmed with the full progression of
color and brightness of various locations and seasons around the world -
summer in NYC, Paris in the springtime, New England in the winter, LA on a
non-smoggy day, etc., with options for real-time data feeds, too.

So you could feel like you were in the best location in the world on the best
day of the year. Or just synchronize your work/sleep schedule with some other
timezone.

Small versions as nice gifts, big custom versions for the luxury/institutional
market. Chumby app. Wall mounted LCD/LED and/or LED dome projection.

Any hardware hackers feel like pairing up? I'm a short flight from Shenzhen.
;)

~~~
JonnieCache
You could definitely sell these I reckon.

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arethuza
If the size of each block was reduced to a few pixels square you could fit an
entire year in a single image (4 pixels * 12 * 24 = 1152 wide, 365 * 4 = 1460
high) - which might be nice way of visualizing what the weather is like in a
location.

~~~
sjwright
If you were making the blocks that small, I'd make the axis meaningful and go
365 blocks across -- one column for each day of the year -- then midnight to
midnight from top to bottom.

This would be a great visualization of daylight quantity and quality over the
year.

~~~
shashashasha
A similar visualization to what you're talking about is an old project by Lee
Byron: <http://www.leebyron.com/what/daylight/>

~~~
arethuza
Yeah - that's similar to what I had in mind, I don't know if making it bigger
would show the effects of weather more.

What those do show is:

\- The huge variations in day length due to latitude

\- How those of us in higher latitudes spend in the gloaming - my favourite
time of day

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barmstrong
Clever idea - I think it would be even better with some thinner lines (either
vertical or horizontal) like <http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/>

This would more closely match the progression of time, instead of making rows
of squares.

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mmaunder
Brilliant idea! The site is a little slow, so in case it didn't work for you
first time, mouse over each panel to see the actual photo that was used for
the avg color calculation.

I'm often looking for color inspiration, so will use this. Would be amazing to
have this for Colorado skies, especially as the sun sets over the Rockies.

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phatbyte
It would be pretty cool if he it make his could available on github so others
could do the same at their cities.

~~~
chanux
I looked around. and found this <http://jsfiddle.net/xLF38/>

Hope it's helpful.

a bug fix:

`document.body.style.backgroundColor = 'rgb('+rgb.r+','+rgb.b+','+rgb.g+')';`

should be

`document.body.style.backgroundColor = 'rgb('+rgb.r+','+rgb.g+','+rgb.b+')'; `

~~~
lurchpop
Weirdly on that demo it derived an average color of green even though the pic
looked to be 80% blue.

~~~
chanux
hence the fix.

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matmann2001
I'd love for a way to interface with this site. Perhaps something that let's
me get the current color and update my website's background color with it.

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tanay46
Great idea. Its already gone viral :) It might be better if you provide thin
strips of each color rather than whole thumbnails as it can more accurately
tell hows the skys colors is changing

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HoyaSaxa
Pretty cool. Might base my next color palette off of this.

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reustle
No API?

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ZackOfAllTrades
That looks terribly depressing to me. Just saying.

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jish
Should totally add thumbnails. The mouseover would be more convenient for
users and bandwidth costs would be lower.

~~~
jish
Or maybe they already are thumbnails, and the site is suffering from the
Hacker News effect... =o

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rorrr
At which color balance though?

If it's auto color balance, it's completely useless.

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Wickk
Interesting. Not sure why this on the front page unless I'm missing something
very important, but interesting

~~~
rrrhys
I like it because it is different (Inspiring maybe?), and it is someone's
hacky project. Maybe a bit simple, but fits in IMO.

