Hey everyone, been a little while! Finished with exams for the year, so had some time to work on an update. I also have had to think about how the software can be managed in the future, and would like to discuss my thoughts, so please read below the update notes for that. I would greatly appreciate your feedback on the matter!
Update ( 1.1.8 ):
Notable changes:
- Option to only show Watts per Meter Squared on solar gauge. (To activate this, add the following to the ‘solar’ section of ‘gaugeSettings’ in your config file: mode: “Watt”).
- Option to disable particular graphs if desired.
- Trend arrows added.
- Windchill/heatindex gauge now changes tooltip accordingly.
- Changed ticks and scaling on some gauges to produce nicer numbers.
- Null (blank, “—”) forecasts are now suppressed.
Full changelog: https://github.com/Yerren/FreshWDL/blob/master/Changelog.md
What you need to do to utilise update: Nothing, unless you want to change the new config settings regarding solar or hiding graphs (see below).
New config settings can be seen in action below:
gaugeSettings = { //Gauges: apparent temperature barometer windChill graphHandlerBarometer graphHandlerRainfall graphHandlerTemperature graphHandlerWindSpeed humidity moonSun solar status rainfallTitle rainfallDay rainfallMonth rainfallYear UV windDirection windSpeed
solar: {
enabled: true,
mode: "Watt"
},
},
graphSettings = {
barometer: {enabled: true},
humidity: {enabled: true},
solar: {enabled: true},
temp: {enabled: true},
uv: {enabled: true},
windDir: {enabled: true},
windSpeed: {enabled: true},
rainfall: {enabled: true}
};
Discussion:
So, I’ve come to realise that people want different things out of FreshWDL. A big one is that people need different (new) gauges - dew point, fire index, snow data, web cams, cloud base, and the list goes on - as well as wanting different styles of gauges. The issue is, there just isn’t the space to put all these gauges on the FreshWDL page! Even adding extra temperature sensors is a tradeoff, and I am sure that you would much rather be able to choose which gauges you lose/make smaller yourself, rather than having a prescribed layout.
On top of this, I’ve quickly realised that you are all very creative people! You have pushed the limits which the small amount of flexibility that FreshWDL currently offers, and given the opportunity you’d be designing amazing pages yourself I’m sure.
So, my dream would be to have some way that you can, yourselves, design the layout of your pages, with more options for gauges (see: wind-speed in the old speedometer style, choosing your own colour schemes, etc.). However, this is a lot easier said than done. To keep it brief, to do this, I’d need to:
- Completely re-haul the backend of the software.
- Implement customisation through coding.
- Create a (simple) web-app to let you customise without needing coding knowledge.
- Create the new gauges people want
- Figure out all the things I didn’t realise I would need to do to make this work (I have a feeling it will need some server integration…)
Long story short, this would be a massive, massive task. It is also the only way I can see FreshWDL progressing in this way. Unfortunately, dedicating my time and resources to this just isn’t feasible if I am putting off payed work for this hobby project… So, now I have a question for you: are these features important enough that you’d be willing to pay for them? If you would find these enhancements imperative enough to be worth paying for (maybe a few dollars a month to access them? Remember, this is purely hypothetical at this point!) then I could justify putting aside paid work to develop this.
If all of this isn’t actually important to you, than the other option is to keep going as is, with a few set layouts, mostly the same, with minimal flexibility. I wish I could offer more for free, but I just cannot justify the time, or loss of income.
So, the bottom line is: Would you be interested in paying for the sort of flexibility as described above? If you would be, than I will consider working on it (though, I already have my summer and next year booked up, so it would be a little while till I’d have the capacity to do so, I’d say. That being said, I could make a good start now, before other work starts). Or, on the other hand, are you content with how it is currently, and devoting all this effort into the project would be a waste of my time and income for no major reason.
I am really interested in everyones thoughts on the matter, so please let me know what you think! I’m open to hearing anything!
Thanks again for all your support and patience with FreshWDL
-Yerren