Improved radar images on mobile phone

Last week, I found the a to some PHP scripts on a local website that
allow you to view the BOM radar images on a WAP-enabled phone.

To take things a step further, I decided to hack up my own version,
adding some extra functionality (and a significant speed increase)
along the way.

The base script is located at http://baconplanet.com/wap/radar.cgi

If you hit this with your PC web browser, you'll see an example of the
output (in PNG format). If you don't provide any parameters, the
default city is Melbourne, zoom level is 80% of original, image centred
and of dimensions 180x150 pixels.

Here's the nifty bit. By providing parameters in the URL that you
request, you can change the view considerably. Using these
customisations, you should be able to get the images looking good on a
variety of small-screened mobile devices, and tailored to suit your
area.

Simply add ?PARAM1=XXX&PARAM2=XXX&PARAM3=..... to the end of the URL.

Valid parameters are;

city (MEL, SYD, PER, CBR, ADL, BNE, DRW, HBA)
zoom (% of original BOM image - default is 80)
width (desired image width, default is 180 pixels)
height (desired image height, default is 150 pixels)
xPan (horizontal pan this number of pixels. Negative numbers for left,
positive for right, default 0)
yPan (vertical pan this number of pixels. Negative numbers for up,
positive for down, default 0)

Some examples of the above usage are below;

Sydney, 90% zoom, image shifted left 10 pixels, and down 10 pixels.
http://baconplanet.com/wap/radar.cgi?city=SYD&zoom=90&xPan=-10&yPan=10

Perth, 120% zoom, image size 320x240 pixels.
http://baconplanet.com/wap/radar.cgi?city=PER&zoom=120&width=320&height=240

Enjoy!

 

Thanks to those "beta testers" who unsuccessfully tried to crash my
sever by inputting 10000 as the zoom level.

 

This is a link to the index of all Australian weather radar sites.

http://telstra.pni.co.jp/premium/imagery/aus_radar/index.wml

When you select a radar there is also option to "animate radar" which
will show the animation same as on the BOM website.. I think most new
phones should be able to handle animated gifs.

Nev..
'04 CBR1100XX

 

Rod, This is excellent and very useful. Nice one.

How long will you keep it running on your server?

Couldn't get the x & y position shift to work though. any thoughts?

 

1. At this stage, I can see no reason why it won't stay up there
permanently.

2. Make sure the xPan and yPan variables are entered with the correct
case (the capital "P"). I just tested it again, and it's working fine.

Cheers.