Hacking the IMD's Android App for hidden API

[Thejesh GN]

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Hi All,
IMD's own weather app is out. You can install it from the Play market

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dotsys.imd&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5kb3RzeXMuaW1kIl0


For this app to show weather data, there must be an hidden API provided
by IMD.

Can we do some network data capture and find more information about this
hidden API? and see how we can use that API for Public Good.

I think its a great idea for - Aaron Swartz Memorial Hacknight
http://hacknight.in/hasgeek/aaronsw-memorial

Let me know. I am interested in liberating it.

Thej
- --
Thejesh GN | ?????? ??.???
http://thejeshgn.com
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[Nisha Thompson]

Hey,

I think this is a really great idea! 

However just something be aware of IMD is very possessive with their data, much more than other places. They charge a lot for it and have stated to me that opening it up is not something they will never. 

But since citizens have already paid for this data and they insist on making terrible applications I say go for it.

Nisha

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[Anand Chitipothu]

On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 4:16 PM, Thejesh GN <i...@thejeshgn.com> wrote:

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Hi All,
IMD's own weather app is out. You can install it from the Play market

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dotsys.imd&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5kb3RzeXMuaW1kIl0


For this app to show weather data, there must be an hidden API provided
by IMD.

Can we do some network data capture and find more information about this
hidden API? and see how we can use that API for Public Good.

I think its a great idea for - Aaron Swartz Memorial Hacknight
http://hacknight.in/hasgeek/aaronsw-memorial

Let me know. I am interested in liberating it.

I've been downloading weather data from from www.imdaws.com since beginning of 2012. I'm not sure if it has everything that the weather app is providing, but it has ARG, AWS and RADIATION data for every station every hour.

Here is the data for y'day.

http://anandology.com/tmp/data/www.imdaws.com/ARG-2013-01-17.html

http://anandology.com/tmp/data/www.imdaws.com/AWS-2013-01-17.html

http://anandology.com/tmp/data/www.imdaws.com/RADIATION-2013-01-17.html

I've been downloading and archiving the HTML files with the data put in a big HTML table. It would be useful to parse it and publish.

The archives of 2012 are available at:

http://anandology.com/tmp/data/www.imdaws.com/archive/

Anand

[Pavan Srinath]

Thanks Anand - I was about to mention just this!

Thej, this would be a great place to start and in my opinion a lot better than the IMD live weather because:

There's data output at every hour. It's for a full host of about 500 stations - so you know that it's original station data and not an artefact of interpolation or any such thing. Also, thanks to Anand we now a full year of hourly data (2012) for all stations - which can act as a great reference when we go forward with 2013. 

Do let me know if you guys end up choosing this. I'm not in town for the hacknight - but I've been manually playing with this data for Bangalore (primary source of data for blog.knowyourclimate.org )and have an idea about the kind of data errors that exist that need correction, and what useful parameters can be culled out at the end of it. I'll be happy to share what I have.

Regards,

Pavan | @zeusisdead

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[Sajjad Anwar]

Sounds good.
Thej, do you think this will solve part of what you wanted to do?

We could parse this, may be build a nice API around it and publish it.

On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 4:26 PM, Anand Chitipothu <anand...@gmail.com> wrote:
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