Tool to estimate the head wind while driving !

[xy46]

I want to say that mochouinard has been helping try to figure out what the issue is with getting the weather underground version of his page to work for me with the API key I have obtained from them. We haven't been all that successful, so if anyone if using the weatherunderground version if his page, in MPH, and has it working well, I'd be interested in hearing about it.

That being said, today I used this tool in my car for the first time. Though I couldn't get the weather underground site to work, I was able to get the URL using the forecast.io site to work. I was driving along and the site was telling me I was driving directly into a headwind of anywhere from 9.6 to over 12 miles an hour for a while. Since mochouinard had said himself he wasn't happy with that site's accuracy, I was wondering about whether this was true or not. And then I passed some flags. The flags were flying straight out, and indicating that the wind was, in fact, coming from exactly where the website said it was coming from!

This is a very useful URL!

@ mochouinard - thank you so much for taking the time to do this.

@ Andyw2100 - although I am not in my car right now, I was able to take mochouinard's directions and get the following to work, including getting it to show me the correct GPS location:

http://matesla.ca/headwind.html?unit=imperial&w_engine=wunderground&wunderground_key=YOUR_PERSONAL_KEY_HERE

I am on vacation right now but am excited to return to my car this weekend to put this to use for my 170+ mile drive home.

 

[David99]

Tested it out over the last few days. It works great! Thanks!

 

[Andyw2100]

@ mochouinard - thank you so much for taking the time to do this.

@ Andyw2100 - although I am not in my car right now, I was able to take mochouinard's directions and get the following to work, including getting it to show me the correct GPS location:

I'll have to try it again from the car.

When I try it from my web browser, in the location I'm in now, it appears to work, but gives a wind speed of 0. I guess it is possible that for some reason the location that I'm picking up is somehow "broken" and just not reporting wind speeds or something.

Thanks!

 

[xy46]

I'll have to try it again from the car.

When I try it from my web browser, in the location I'm in now, it appears to work, but gives a wind speed of 0. I guess it is possible that for some reason the location that I'm picking up is somehow "broken" and just not reporting wind speeds or something.

Thanks!

I am testing it on my web browser here in Puerto Vallarta, and it appears to be giving me fairly accurate windspeeds. I will repost my results here once I try it out in the car on Friday night.

 

[wycolo]

I would think that the best place would be by one of the wing mirrors. Reading should be accurate and it should be relatively easy to mount. The main problem will be how to measure side winds.

Reading would be exaggerated by air rising off hood and around windshield but this might not matter as long as it is consistent. It could be zeroed out on a no-wind day (?).

Seems there used to be more plastic bags caught on cattle fencing to indicate wind speed and direction. Lately I have to rely on the few windsocks and flags that are available. Or of course wind farms. CO has started attaching small black triangular flags to the top of all the reflector posts up near the Continental Divide - very helpful!!
--

 

[MajesticSound]

Thanks for all the effort, we appreciate it!!

 

[Zextraterrestrial]

this tool is super useful for anyone who hasn't seen or used it
bump bump

 

[FlasherZ]

Tools like this are very helpful. I keep teslaweather.com up in my browser, which tells me the winds and direction and follows me with refreshes. Great job!

 

[Peter_M]

I just found this cool tool a few days ago and tried it this past weekend. Unfortunately, it always showed a wind speed of 0 and a wind heading of 360, even though I know from weather reports that I had a 24 km/h tailwind. Is it working for other people? I just now noticed the &debug=true tip - I'll try that tomorrow to see if it adds any useful info.

BTW, this trip really showed that denser air is the main reason we lose range in the winter. Going west on Friday at about -5°C and 118 km/h with a mild headwind, consumption was about 230 Wh/km. Today, going east at the same speed and temperature, but with a 24 km/h tailwind, I was getting about 190 Wh/km average, and down to 180 at one point, which is lower than I would normally get at that speed in spring or fall weather without wind.

I hope Tesla soon incorporates wind speeds and the temperature effect on air drag into trip energy calculations.

 

[Lon12]

I like using nullschool.net for winds. Nice visual and you can zoom in and tap on your location to get the direction and speed. Not sure if it works in the car. Haven't tried that yet.

http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-81.71,44.40,3000/loc=-79.920,43.143

 

[Andyw2100]

Are the matesla wind speed sites no longer functional?

 

[kort677]

there is a weather underground page you can use in the cars browser, you can get up to the minute weather and wind data there.

 

[InTheShadows]

Thank you very much for the page you made. It's quite common that it is the only page our web browser accesses. We use it all the time when it's windy out.

I do have a request however. Would it be possible to put a button on it to toggle between day and night colors. The bright white screen is hard to use at night. I was thinking of the button would invert the colors to make it white on black background it would really help for its use at night time.

Again thank you so much for making a useful web app for our cars. Really helps when doing long trips in sparse supercharger areas.

 

[SomeJoe7777]

Are the matesla wind speed sites no longer functional?

The site is still available but I don't think it's loading the wind data.

I used this site all the time on road trips to help estimate how my energy use would change from what's predicted. I assume many others did too, and that's probably why it isn't working anymore. All of the places where you can get weather data through an API are limited in how many calls per day/month you can do for free. If you want to do more than that, you have to pay.

I've been building a replacement web site for this one that does winds and elevation. But to release it, I'd have to charge for it to pay for a server to host it on, and pay for the weather and elevation API calls. The site itself isn't that much work, but putting all of the other stuff in place to charge for it is actually more difficult.

 

[ZBB]

I've been building a replacement web site for this one that does winds and elevation. But to release it, I'd have to charge for it to pay for a server to host it on, and pay for the weather and elevation API calls. The site itself isn't that much work, but putting all of the other stuff in place to charge for it is actually more difficult.

Could you build it so that each user could host it themselves with their API accounts? For individual use, the freebie api accounts should be sufficient...

 

[SomeJoe7777]

Could you build it so that each user could host it themselves with their API accounts? For individual use, the freebie api accounts should be sufficient...

Yes, I was thinking of that. That would be the easiest approach, and then the site could be free. I'll have to add a small dialog box to the interface to let the user type in his API keys (one for weather, 2nd one for elevation), verify that they work, and then redirect to the main site with the API keys in the URL so that it can be bookmarked.

I'll see if I can get this working properly.

 

[Johan]

Thank you very much for the page you made. It's quite common that it is the only page our web browser accesses. We use it all the time when it's windy out.

I do have a request however. Would it be possible to put a button on it to toggle between day and night colors. The bright white screen is hard to use at night. I was thinking of the button would invert the colors to make it white on black background it would really help for its use at night time.

Again thank you so much for making a useful web app for our cars. Really helps when doing long trips in sparse supercharger areas.

The creator of this app has at least one real, dedicated user. "Often the only Web page we have open" and is requesting GUI refinements (night mode). Well done @mouchinard

 

[ZBB]

Yes, I was thinking of that. That would be the easiest approach, and then the site could be free. I'll have to add a small dialog box to the interface to let the user type in his API keys (one for weather, 2nd one for elevation), verify that they work, and then redirect to the main site with the API keys in the URL so that it can be bookmarked.

I'll see if I can get this working properly.

That would be awesome. Thanks!

 

[InTheShadows]

How do the API keys work. If we self host this then will that get around the running out of free calls problem because the calls will be coming from a different server?

 

[SomeJoe7777]

How do the API keys work. If we self host this then will that get around the running out of free calls problem because the calls will be coming from a different server?

There are two services that my app uses, one is openweathermap.org to get current conditions, which includes the wind data. The other is geonames.org which has elevation data.

Basically, what a user will have to do is register for a new account on each web site, and then obtain an API key (you do this online in your account page). The API key is just a long string of numbers and letters, similar to a product license key. You'll then go to the car, bring up my app in the Tesla browser and it will ask you to type in both API keys. Once you've done that it will redirect you to the app's main page, which you can then bookmark, and that will save the API keys.

The issue is that these two services (openweathermap.org and geonames.org) provide the weather and elevation data for free only if the app calls them below a certain number of times per month or per day. This limit is well within what a single person would use, but not enough for me to release the app using single built-in API keys.

I can still host the app for everyone myself on one server, you do not have to host it. The API calls are not done from the server, they are done from the Tesla browser in the car. By using individual API keys for each person who is using the app, everyone will stay below the API call limits for their key.

By the way, the user interface and all functionality is completed and the app is working. I just need to put in the mechanisms to let the user type in the API keys and verify that they're valid.

(And I'll start a new thread when I release it).