Auroral Activity App

[Grayda]

I hate to necro an old topic, but I was inspired by this forum post to create an aurora activity app, and about a month ago, I finally finished it.

The app (or rather, suite of tools) is called Auroras.live. There's a mobile app (for iOS and Android), a Pebble smartwatch app, a website, an API, and (coming soon), a desktop app that lives in your Windows system tray / OS X menu bar.

There's still a ways to go before it's where I want it to be, but it's out now!

If you're keen to see it, check out https://auroras.live for the website. There's links to the watch / mobile apps, plus the API documentation in the Extras menu 

[Guest Vortice]

It's great to see that something has come out of this thread! :-D    I wouldn't think about this as necroposting, but as a follow-up.

I just bought the app without trying it (I love to support and hate publicity), but I could couldn't really try it because my location is not supported (Buenos Aires). I know for sure it's not prioritary, but please don't forget about we guys in low and middle latitude. Maybe, for starting, you can push a notification when Kp index reaches -say- 7, which is a rare event and when the aurora can be photographed in uncommon latitudes?

Also, I may be able to travel south in a 2-day notice if a big geomagnetic storm is predicted, to try to photograph the aurora in the horizon. So, maybe you can add some other not-so-common locations? Or maybe, a list of possible locations, so you can push notifications for different places. Or notifications for high predicted Kp indexes.

Please don't think I'm bitching because I payed for the app and i coulnd't use it, I'm just telling you my case so you can think about possible using scenarios and improve the app accordingly.

 

Thank you for resurrecting this thread.

 

Regards

[Grayda]

Thanks for the feedback

The app has a feature for setting your own Kp levels. It's in the settings page, you just need to tick "Show Advanced Settings" in the Push Notifications section, then you can easily set your own Kp levels and get a notification when it goes over that particular threshold. However this applies to the 1-hour Kp forecast, so it's not really useful in your area if you plan to travel.

I'm actively looking at ways to improve the notifications, so yes, utilizing the longer forecasts in notifications is a good idea. I might add a feature that lets you pick the three day Kp forecast, so you'll get notified when higher Kp's are expected for the next 3 days. I've created an issue over on GitHub so you can keep track of its progress.

Until that's done, you can still turn on the 3 day (and 27 day) Kp forecasts in the settings page and check every day or so to see what is coming up. Or if you're handy with code, you could whip up your own alerts system using the threeday portion of my API and your programming language of choice to play a sound or display a box or do something else when the Kp is expected to reach a certain level.