I’ve made a small update to my DoppleViewer widget which fixes a few bugs — notably, the radar images are now in a logical order, and the widget should always have the correct aspect ratio when resized.
Download DoppleViewer 1.7 here.
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70 Comments
Hi. Very cool doppler widget. How can I change the location from Seattle (where I’d like to be), to Philadelphia (where I am)?
Mouse over the widget, then click the “i” icon in the top right corner. That will allow you to choose a radar location.
Click in the view to cycle through available radar displays for the currently selected location.
I just downloaded v1.7 and see that it’s a great improvement to an overall great widget. Clever idea hiding the legend until the mouse is brought over the widget. I see that the NWS enhanced the information (graphic overlays) they can display on the radar images. It will be interesting watching them put to use over the year.
I read through the Jetstream website and noticed that the NWS have added a bunch of bells & whistles that can be included via the enhanced RIDGE radar view. I don’t know if your widget will be able to include the information they speak of in the future…tempting though. I suspect that it’s more information than the widget could display due to the apparent maximum size limitation of the widget. I still wish the NWS, however, would allow zooming in on the image to get more detail on an area of interest.
Anyhow, a hardy ‘thanks’ for all of your effort. This is the widget I use most often. I sincerely appreciate all the time you’ve put in on this.
You’re welcome! I’m certainly considering an option to enable/disable all the additional layers that the NWS provides.
Thanks for the feedback!
This IS a great widget, it’s the main reason I turn ‘em on. Is there any info on whether the gubment will allow it to work again?
It doesn’t work right now??
Great Widget, glad to see it’s working again.
How do I resize the radar screen? I’d like to make it a little smaller so it doesn’t take up so much area.
I’m using PowerBookG4, OS 10.4.7.
Drag the bottom-right corner… there should be a little control that looks like a sequence of lighter-colored grey diagonal lines, like you’d see on a normal Mac OS X window.
On an earlier version of Dopplerviewer, I could see just a view of my city Raleigh,NC. Now it seems to only let me view the whole state. That is not nearly as useful to me. I realize that this may have to do with the feed and not your widget.
I used to pop Dopplerview up before going to lunch, now i can’t tell much of anything.
Thanks – I do your widget
Oh, that’s … I do like your widget.
Thanks
The NWS’s new “short range” radar image is what I’m displaying — and unfortunately it covers a much wider area than it used to.
Regrettably, there’s not much I can do about this… :(
It had a white page blanking it out. I got the new version & it works great. YEAAA!
Thanks, GREAT widget!
Great Widget. I’ve had it installed for some time, but I’d noticed the last version I had the map of Michigan (I’m in Grand Rapids) seemed to have the wrong aspect ratio – Michigan was showing nearly as wide as it is tall. The new version 1.7 I see a note that you’d fixed that, but it’s still showing a weird shape for Michigan. Another indicator is that the “circle” that shows the range of the radar is very egg shaped. Is this just me, or is there still something amiss with this?
Many Thanks for your efforts
Roger
Try deleting your preferences file in your user folder at Library/Preferences/widget-com.swannman.widget.doppleviewer.plist. When you add the widget again, it should have the correct aspect ratio.
Thanks!
I’ve tried that, twice, but not noticeable difference in the map. I’ve put a screen capture of it and Radar in Motion beside it for comparison here
http://lisaandroger.com/doppleviewer.jpg
which shows what I see when it’s set to Grand Rapids, Michigaan. The same seemingly squashed shape appears if I select Detroit.
I also tried putting DoppleViewer onto my iBook which has never had it and got the same seemingly squashed image.
Thanks
Roger
Looks like that’s the image that the NWS is providing — there’ve been complains about the map projection they use, but I can’t do anything about that. Sorry!
Thank you for checking. I’ve now found this on their site
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jetstream/remote/radarfaq.htm#projection
which gives their reason for what they’re doing. This change is reasonably recent I think – as I don’t remember the image always being squished.
Again, Thanks
Roger
Any chance we’ll get the option for looping radar? This would be a great addition!
If the NWS offers that option, I can look into it.
Greetings –
I too would like to commend you for a really _useful_ piece of software. Integration and overall execution are very good. Thank you. If you’d like to broaden your horizons, there is another source of weather radar data at Canada’s AES. Can you work your magic on these sources? http://weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/radar/index_e.html
Interesting… I can certainly look into it. Thanks for the link!
Great widget! However, I noticed that version 1.7 it does not always display a county background for some locations. For example, the Detroit Michigan radar image does not display the counties so you do not have any reference points. Might be a problem with NWS.
When I add the option to toggle all the layers that the NWS provides, that problem should be solved. Thanks for pointing it out!
Matthew,
Until you add the option to toggle all the layers, is there any way to get the landmarks to show up in version 1.7? That is cities, counties, etc. At this point no landmarks show up for any radar location in either Michigan or Minnesota. (Probably other locations, but I have not tried many.) I have two suggestions for improvements:
1. When you upgrade this widget, is it possible to have a background that is not black. Something similar to what appears on the NWS site for Detroit (http://radar.weather.gov/radar.php?rid=dtx&product=NCR&overlay=11101111&loop=no) would be great.
2.Sometimes I forget where I am in the sequence of images. A label on the image as to what the user is looking at would also be great.
You have a great widget here Matthew, and I thank you for your efforts.
Unfortunately this isn’t possible without editing the widget’s source code by hand.
I’ve considered adding a label but haven’t found a place to put it… the display is pretty busy as it is. Any ideas?
The text at the top of the display and at the bottom are the same, I would pick one of these locations to add the label, probably the top.
On another matter. I reported earlier that the display for Detroit MI has no landmarks. This morning (8/10/06) the county lines re-appeared! It worked for most of the day, but now the county lines disappeared, but I now have city landmarks. If I access the other three MI sites, I get no landmarks at all. Do you know what is going on? Is this a problem with version 1.7 or NWS?
Sounds like something specific to the NWS… all my widget does is pull images from them.
Matt,
Is it possible to get an earlier version of DoppleViewer? I believe I upgraded from version 1.5. Prior to upgrading I was always able to get landmarks: cities, county lines, etc. Now I get no landmarks at all for all stations in Michigan and some stations for other states. I took a look at your code and when I manually enter the URL for a landmark image in my browser, I get the image, but not with DoppleViewer 1.7. I’d like to see if there is a problem with NWS, or version 1.7, or my ISP.
What URL are you browsing to?
I’ve stated earlier that I will be adding support for all the various overlays that the NWS provides — I just haven’t done it yet.
I’m assuming that the following line is what causes the counties to show up:
document.getElementById(‘county’).src = “http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ridge/Overlays/County/Short/” + currentID + “_County_Short.gif”;
When I substute “dtx”, Detroit MI, in for currentID to get
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ridge/Overlays/County/Short/DTX_County_Short.gif
The counties show up in my browser window, but they will not show up when I select Detroit, or any other Michigan radar site, in DoppleViewer.
The county boundaries in that image are drawn in black, so they don’t appear when the weather is displayed on a black background.
Interestingly, the NOAA shows lighter-colored county boundaries on their own Detroit page:
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ridge/radar.php?rid=dtx&product=N0R&overlay=11101111&loop=no
The option to display the topo layer should solve this.
Thanks Matt. I love your widget and will look forward to your revisions.
You’re welcome!
Matt,
Just a note to let you know that DoppleViewer 1.7 is now working for the Detroit station. All landmarks are now showing up. Seems that all of the problems I reported earlier were on the NWS end.
I don’t know what is going on with NWS. Once again there are no landmarks showing up for any station in Michigan. I have tried several other stations in a variety of states and all landmarks are showing up. Just seems to be Michigan. Do you know what is going on?
I don’t, unfortunately — does the NWS site list a contact email address?
I have not been to their site lately, but when this happened in the past the landmarks showed up on their maps. It’s just that they do not show up in Doppleviewer for Michigan radar stations.
Well that’s an odd one..
Found another odd state. Missouri has three radar stations: Kansas City, Springfield, and St. Louis. No landmarks for the first one, counties only for the third, and everthing for the second. This odd behavior only started after upgrading to version 1.7.
I installed DoppleViewer 1.7 on my test machine here at work, and I don’t see this issue. Here are screenshots of what I’m seeing for Detroit, Kansas City, and Springfield.
Am I missing something?
Do not understand this. You are seeing exactly what I see on the NWS site with a browser. However, on my machine at home, I see no landmarks for any Michigan radar station and what I reported above for Missouri. I am working on a 2.3 GHz G5 with plenty of memory running OS 10.4.8. I am connected to the Internet via DirecWay because that is all I can get here. I have access to a G4 running the same OS that is connected to a T1. DoppleViewer 1.7 works fine on it. I’m wondering if it is the satellite connection, however previous versions of DoppleViewer always worked fine with this setup.
I’m guessing it’s a caching issue — if the image failed to load once, it might be cached and thus isn’t being fetched a second time.
I’m unsure where the cache would be for this — perhaps the Caches folder in your user account’s Library folder?
I could not find the cache anywhere, so I used Tiger Cache Cleaner to do a medium clean. The problem remained, but disappeared after a deep clean. Thanks, I’ll keep this in mind if it returns.
Good to hear!
I hope that you will be enjoying a nice Thanksgiving today. All of a sudden, Doppelview v1.7 doesn’t show any image whatsoever of any location. Something caused my Mac G5 to freeze yesterday, which forced me to reboot. I wonder if that broke some data file (plist perhaps). Any suggestions?
Does deleting the preferences file in your user folder at Library/Preferences/widget-com.swannman.widget.doppleviewer.plist correct the problem?
This sounds like a connectivity issue, as though the image files aren’t being downloaded for some reason…
Hmm, I’m actually having the same problem over here…
NWS is having technical issues on their end:
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ridge/radar.php?rid=dtx&product=N0R&overlay=11101111&loop=no
Matt,
Sorry I didn’t get back to you earlier as I’ve been busy preparing dinner tonight. I tried out Doppelview just a few minutes ago and found everything working as it should. It’s good to see that it was NWS issues. It seems strange, however, that the entire U.S. Doppler radar service appeared to go down. What threw me off was being able to view the 1800-mile Northwest radar image via the “US Weather Plus” widget. Perhaps it was an earlier image prior to the NWS problem.
Now that you are in Seattle, I hope you were able to avoid getting a house or apartment near any of the rivers in the Puget Sound region!
Anyway, thanks for looking into the issue.
No problem! I’m glad we were able to get to the bottom of the issue so quickly.
We’re plenty far away from the Sammamish River basin, so we’re in no danger of flooding :-)
Happy Thanksgiving!
After the problem with NWS yesterday my landmark problem returned. Some locations worked fine, some not at all and, some would show either cities or counties but not both. Very odd behavior. However, after some searching I found the location of the cache file: ~/Library/Caches/DashBoardClient. If anyone is experiencing the same problem I have been having, delete this entire folder, then log out and back in (or reboot). This should correct the problem.
Matt,
I hate to sound like a broken record (probably DVD in today’s world), but the landmarks keep disappearing. The only way to get them back is delete the DashBoardCleint folder as described above but it’s a hassle. Is there any way to avoid this or is it just the Detroit MI station that is having trouble?
It sounds like Mac OS X is caching the images. I can add a fake URL parameter that will cause them to be reloaded every time, but it’ll cause updates to be that much slower.
Send me an email (my inbox is my to-do list) and I’ll code this up so you can try it out.
Hi Matt,
Thanks for a great widget! Is it possible to zoom in? I thought that was possible on a previous version?
thanks!
Jeff
Unfortunately, the default view is the zoomed-in map. The NOAA changed what maps they provide (or, more precisely, their map projection), so their closest zoom no longer feels very close. I wish they’d change it back!
Doppleviewer V1.7 is currently saying
“Radar is not available, Radar is currently undergoing maintenance”
for all sites in the drop down menu that I have checked.
Yep, and it looks like they suddenly got really strict about upper/lower case in the URL. I’ve updated DoppleViewer to fix the problem — if you re-download it (after clearing your browser cache, if necessary) it should work fine.
I’ll go ahead and make a new blog post and update the various sw update websites. Thanks for letting me know!
Matt,
Mac.Com has blocked access to your download site. Please advise when this is rectified.
Try again after midnight tonight. Or, download it from VersionTracker, MacUpdate, or Apple’s Mac OS X software library.
hello! i’m french but us nothink where I’ can looking for a dopple for france?
Does France have government-provided Doppler radar images up on the web?
Matt, thanks for the great tool. I wanted something just like this, and I need it today, as Iowa is looking at some tornados this afternoon. I have one request: on the NWS website the various radar overlays are a little transparent or something so that I can see landmarks underneath the radar overlay. I want to use this as I use the website. That is, I want to see the storm wall approach the city and only interrupt my work to go to the basement just as it gets close enough. That generally means a five-ten minute bike ride, so I really need to gauge it finely. Could DoppleViewer also present the radar overlays with less opacity?
That’s a good idea, John. I plan to have checkboxes to enable/disable the various overlays in the next version, though I don’t know when it will come about.
Thanks for the suggestion!
All of a sudden I can’t resize DoppleViewer’s window. I can drag it all I like, but I can’t resize it–it’s stuck at the smallest size, which on my new MacBook is TINY. Something I did with the trackpad (shaky fingers) scrambled it somehow.
Tried deleting DoppleViewer’s preferences, deleting Dashboard preferences, changing the radar site (preferred is KFSM), turning the widget on and off, everything…no dice.
Alex – You should be able to delete the widget-com.swannman.widget.doppleviewer.plist file from ~/Library/Preferences to remove the widget’s size and position info. It isn’t stored anywhere else – the plist literally just contains height, width, and location.
Thanks for the fantastic widget!
Any chance of a version for us Canucks?
I believe this is the site that you need. If not I can keep looking. Al
http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/radar/index_e.html?id=WSO
I think there is a problem. Whenever I flip the widget to the back and click on the ‘more info’ button, my browser tries to connect to a web-site, resulting in this: Not Found
The requested URL /jetstream/remote/ridgeimages.htm was not found on this server.
Apache Server at http://www.srh.noaa.gov Port 80
I’d like to figure out what the differences are between the legends are and anything else that could be informative.
Thanks
Good catch — the updated More Info link should point here:
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jetstream/doppler/radarfaq.htm#diff
I’ll try to release a new version that corrects this in the near future.
Update: DoppleViewer 1.7.7 fixes the More Info link and can be found here:
http://homepage.mac.com/swannman/DoppleViewer.zip
Others have commented in the past, but is there a way to add a description as to what layer you’re looking at – like base reflectivity, wind rotation standard precip radar (default?)
I’ve used this since day one, and have no problems otherwise.
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