EirPollen - a live pollen data widget for Ireland

donaghhorgan

Last summer, I got really bad hayfever for the first time. I soon discovered Met Eireann's pollen service, but I always forgot to check it when I woke up in the morning... To compensate for my poor memory, I've designed a pollen data widget for Android that parses Met Eireann's website and displays the daily pollen count for my region on my Android home screen. So far, I've been finding quite useful, if a little unnecessary given the weather lately.

It's free and open source software, licensed under GPLv3. You can grab a copy of the source code at https://gitorious.org/eirpollen or, if you want to download a free copy on the market, search for EirPollen. It's my first Android app, and although I've tried to make it as bug-free as possible, I'd appreciate any feedback/criticism.

snowstreams

Thats a nice idea.
Im not sure if I have full hayfever because I only experienced it a few times this year for the first time.
This could be useful to track pollen levels and see if it correlates to a runny nose!

octo

Copyright Notice

http://www.met.ie/copyright/default.asp

Pretty sure you're contravening it.

youngblood

Do all the weather widgets and apps pay/credit where they get their info from?

brian ireland

Removed my post because i did not read thread properly

donaghhorgan

Hi octo, I'm not sure if that's correct. Met Eireann's copyright policy allows for the non-commercial use of data where they are acknowledged as the provider of that data (see paragraphs three and five of http://www.met.ie/copyright/default.asp). As EirPollen is free and open source software, licensed under GPLv3, and I have acknowledged Met Eireann as the data provider in-app, in my previous post and on the Gitorious repository, I believe I am in full compliance with their policy.

donaghhorgan

Apologies for the downtime today. Due to some inexcusable stupidly on my part, the widget can only understand double digit dates, so July 1st has it rather stumped. I'll make the necessary changes as soon as I get back from work today. Expect an update tonight-ish.

ch750536

Iancar29

My hay fever has been real bad the last few days... had to take TWO tablets throughout the day...

donaghhorgan

I just pushed an update to the Android Market. It should be available now. In case anyone is wondering, the widget is grey because it's tomorrow's data, not today's, so the widget *thinks* it's out of date (I might address this in the next update). Again, apologies for the mistake. Poor programming on my part, I'm afraid.

donaghhorgan

In case anyone is interested, I've had reports of the widget not working on Android 2.3. I've tweaked my code a bit, and it seems to be working fine now (just grab the latest update on the Android Market). If you have trouble after updating, try removing and re-adding it to your home screen - it should work fine then.

donaghhorgan

Hi everyone,

I just pushed out an update to my EirPollen app. There aren't many major differences from the previous version, save some updated graphics and layout, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

I've been getting some frustrated feedback about the infrequency of pollen data updates in-app. Just to clarify, EirPollen uses data provided by Met Éireann. When they update their website, EirPollen will update the pollen indicator on your phone; if they don't update, then EirPollen doesn't update either. Hopefully, this clears up some of the recent ambiguity.

I'd like to see more frequent pollen updates too. It's now April and the weather (with the exception of the past few days in Cork) has begun to improve, so it would be nice to see some updated data as we head into hayfever season. If you'd like the same, then I recommend contacting Met Éireann directly with your request. In any case, I appreciate all the constructive feedback (and app reviews) I've been getting!

Thanks,
Donagh