I’m interesting in developing a personal Garmin app that uses my iKitesurf Pro subscription to read wind data from the Weatherflow stations nearest to me, shows that on my watch while I’m recording an activity, and also uses the wind direction for calculating some tack/jibe statistics.
I reached out to support@weatherflow.com, and heard back a couple days later that I had to produce a formal proposal for an app, and if accepted there would be an additional $250/year charge for API access.
This is particularly developer unfriendly, especially for a personal usecase like this. What have other’s experiences been?
I have spent thousands on the equipment to provide the wind and weathercams for my area. My other flying friends have also contributed towards my costs which gives me enthusiasm to improve everything and your idea onto the Garmin watch sounds great and something I would also like to do if I could.
But people who bought Tempest weather stations were also led to believe that they would receive payments from Weatherflow in return for mounting their Tempest and allowing Weatherflow to sell their data. Weatherflow are still in the process of creating our income and giving everyone free access to API’s probably would not help that.
There is a simple solution. If you approach the owner of the best Tempest locations that you wish to use and offer to contribute towards something that benefits them they can get a key for their station to access the API which they can share with you.
Different owners will benefit from different things. Some of us would love some one to code the App for their Garmin watch to display their weather! Win Win!
Another approach which is unreliable but might work for you is that anyone can already access Weather Undergrounds readings and there may be stations near you which already publish to Weather Underground that might suit.
cheers Ian
I have spent thousands on the equipment to provide the wind and weathercams for my area.
Thanks for doing that! Imagine that’s super helpful for those near you.
For my specific usecase (kiteboarding/wingfoiling in the SF Bay Area), the individually owned Tempest stations aren’t helpful. Weatherflow has a series of their own weather monitors at key locations in the bay (e.g. Crissy Field, Sherman, 3rd Ave, Waddell, Point Blunt) that get clean wind reads for what you’ll experience on the water. I pay for the iKitesurf Pro subscription because the real-time data from these is super helpful. This is the data I wanted to surface on my Garmin watch while it’s recording GPS tracks/etc.
