iPhone Barometer, Eat My Weather Dongles!
The iPhone 6 and Apple Watch were announced today. One of the "big" pieces of news was that the watch now comes with a barometer inside. First of all, I got a digital watch with a barometer in it for my 10th birthday in 1985. Secondly, Android cell phones have had barometers in them for years. There's a whole app written off this principle, and at AMS the developer said there were 300 million phones that already have one. Here's a graph from my Samsung Galaxy from week before last:
So eat that, Apple.
Many Android phones also have additional weather sensors onboard. When I bought a Samsung Galaxy S5, I was super-disappointed to find out that they dropped the thermometer/hygrometer (temperature/humidity) sensor, in exchange for waterproofing the unit and adding the Finger Scanner and Heart Rate Sensor.
That left me with only pressure, so I looked to outside vendors for a more complete weather station. Yes, having any weather sensors on your phone seems kind of silly... how much wind would you really put your phone in front of, and how far away from the phone would the temperature sensor have to be to be accurate, and what happens when you take the phone inside? These are all good questions, but let's take a look anyway.
PRESSURENET (SOFTWARE):
Before we go into the various weather dongles, let's talk about that app "PressureNet." Jacob Sheehy, CEO & Co-Founder, gave a presentation at the Summer 2014 American Meteorological Society meeting, which I attended. His aim is to have access to pressure data on hundreds of millions of phones. Yes, the data needs to be quality controlled and his team has a number of inventive artificial intelligence ideas for that.
The app plots your pressure readings along with other nearby sensors on a map, and graphs the data (although the Graph button frequently would say "no data;" if you click on "My Data / Graph," it worked better). While the short-term graphs looked pretty good, for example, my six-hour graph from the phone docked in York, Pennsylvania, on the morning of Aug. 31, 2014, shows the pressure falling slightly as a cold front approaches. However, the long-term graphs (see my week graph) had spikes and dips which were probably due to picking up the phone or traveling in the car. More quality control is needed on a per-phone basis, but I love the fact that it plots it on a map and graphs past data.
SKYWATCH WINDOO: The first phone dongle we'll examine is one that plugs into the headphone jack and costs $63 to $106 USD. The Skywatch Windoo 3 is a full-fledged weather station, even containing a tiny anemometer. Here's what it looked like connected to my Samsung Galaxy:
It displays and graphs wind, humidity, temperature (wind chill / heat index) and pressure. It also stores the last 30 days of data in the cloud on a map. Unfortuntely it didn't work with the Samsung case (because it wouldn't plug into the headphone jack all the way, and even without it, I got bizarre readings that were way off. It was supported on the Galaxy 4 so I assumed it would be supported on my phone. UPDATE: They say the hardware is not compatible with the Galaxy 5; I have requested the new version of the device. For what it's worth, here's what it's supposed to do:
If I can get it to work, I think it will be one of the neatest devices out there.
The Thermodo device is a very simple thermometer for your phone, costing a much more reasonable $30-$45. It works on a larger range of phones than Windoo, but it still won't fit into the headphone jack for most cases. The current temperature display is more advanced than Windoo and was accurate (although still higher than it should have been, even with the calibration turned on). What Thermodo lacked, which caused me not to use it as much, was any storage of historical readings for graphing (there is an iPhone-only cloud storage & graphing app -- Apple, you win again).
Both Windoo and Thermodo recommend a headphone extension cable for better readings, but as a person who prefers his phone to be untethered, the only situation I could see myself using that would be hiking or perhaps biking. Overall, these devices aren't quite up to specs yet, but hopefully as technology grows, they'll improve. Meanwhile, PressureNet and your phone's built-in barometer may be the way to go.
One device I haven't been able to review yet is the StormTag. It was on Kickstarter and got 10 times its goal, but it doesn't ship until November. It can be pre-ordered for $59. I have high hopes for this one because it allows the sensor to be separated by bluetooth, for more accurate readings. It adds UV Index along with the temperature, humidity, barometer sensors that the previously reviewed stations had (no wind). Here's the scoop:
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