compass – Ajnaware's Weblog

Ajnaware’s latest app “See Breeze” has just been approved by Apple, and is now available from the app store. This app has a universal binary – so can be installed onto either iPhone 3GS or onto iPad from the same purchase.

Like Sun Seeker, this app pushes the boundaries of what augmented reality on mobile devices can be used for. The app description is as follows.

Provides both a FLAT VIEW COMPASS and an AUGMENTED REALITY 3-D VIEW showing the local wind and weather conditions with animated wind vectors.

Ideal For:
– Aviators, Sailors, Surfers, Windsurfers, Kite Flyers, Cyclists, Fire Fighters, Weather Hobbyists and any other outdoor enthusiasts

Main Features:
– Compass view showing animated wind vectors for nearest weather stations with wind, temperature and humidity readings
– 3-D augmented reality view with animated wind vectors
– List of local observation stations (up to 10 nearest), from which any may be selected for individual wind viewing
– Map view of all local stations with weather arrows showing direction, speed and temperature
– Uses official Bureau of Meteorology data within Australia, and NOAA metar data (from airports) for rest of world

Feature Device Dependencies:
– iPhone – interface runs only in portrait mode, 3-D View is shown as an overlay on the camera view
– iPad – interface runs in any device orientation, 3-D View is displayed with an opaque background (due to absence of camera)

I had the idea for this app about the same time as I had the idea for Sun Seeker, but I had to choose just one to do first, and even when I did start it, I found that it took a lot longer than expected due to the various technical challenges involved. The first major challenge was learning some OpenGL ES, and the second one was figuring out how to get OpenGL ES to respond correctly to device orientation and heading changes. Many thanks to Jeff LaMarche for some great blog articles on the former, and as for the latter, I pretty much had to figure it out for myself. I did post on Stack Overflow, but ended up answering my own question.

Adapting the app to iPad was also an interesting issue to deal with. I ended up with quite a few conditional branches in the code to deal with cosmetic differences. But the end result more than justified the extra effort. It looks superb on the iPad. Credit for the excellent app artwork goes to Peter Fellows once again, whose work on the Oz Weather program was brilliant. Here are a few screenshots from the iPhone app.

and one from the iPad app, which of course has much nicer mapping ability…

I am pleased to announce that my new app “Sun Seeker” was approved by Apple on the second attempt, 31 days after the initial submission, and is now available in the iTunes appstore. Note – As it requires use of a compass, it will only work with the iPhone 3GS devices.

I have recorded a brief video demo showing how it works.

This app shows you where the sun is now, and what path it takes through the sky, either for today or for any day of the year, for your current location.

It has two main views.

A flat compass view
An augmented reality camera overlay view

It is valuable for real estate buyers (to find the sun and light exposure of any room throughout the course of the year), for gardeners and landscapers (to find hours of sun exposure for any location in the garden), for photographers (to find when the sun will be shining at the right angle), and for anyone interested in daily variations of rise and set times of the sun.

Sun Seeker The above shot shows the opening view – which displays the sun’s day/night path segments using the flat compass. Typically you would hold the iPhone horizontally in your hand, and then you can easily see the directions of the rise point, set point, and which direction the sun is in right now – the yellow triangle. The other information displayed here is:

Current latitude and longitude (from built-in GPS)
How long since the sun rose, and until it sets; or if at night, how long since it set and how long until it rises
The sun’s heading (azimuth) angle and elevation. If you watch these you will see them ticking over as the sun moves.
Shadow ratio (length of shadow in comparison with the vertical height of a an object) and path length (the multiple of atmospheric thicknesses through which the sunlight has traveled).

Tapping the camera icon changes the app into its augmented reality overlay view.

Sun Seeker AR View

The types of information you see here are:

If the sun is not already in view, then a pointer showing which direction to turn towards to find the sun
The current heading (azimuth) and elevation of the centre of your camera view
The sun’s current position and its opposite shadow point
The sun’s path throughout today with hour positions marked – including the nighttime segment below the horizon
Optionally also in blue the sun’s path on the shortest day of the year, and in red for the longest day of the year
Grid lines of equal heading (purple for cardinal compass directions E/S/W/N and red for others) and elevation (blue)
The horizon line (green)

You may find this especially valuable if you look towards the rise and set points near a room’s window or on a balcony. You can then see the range of directions through which the sun rises (or sets), and therefore when it will shine through that window or onto that balcony, and for roughly how many hours at different times of the year.

Further details you can obtain are shown in the following view.

Further Details

So you can see that this app uses augmented reality a little differently from most other newly released apps, and it can provide genuinely valuable information that is not easily available by any other means. It effectively turns your iPhone into an advanced sun tracking device.

I created this app because I was myself in the process of buying property, and it was just what I needed myself. I hope that some of you might also find it useful, as well as fun to use and to show off your iPhone!

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More recent news and discussion about Sun Seeker on Facebook: