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Show HN: I built a navigation app that displays weather along the route (navimodo.com)

55 points by vkatluri ↗ HN
Hello HN,

I live in northern part of USA where winters are snowy. Whenever I took long trips, I always wondered what the weather along the route is going to be. For those who live in northern USA, you know weather can change frequently, so when you're traveling matters a lot, not just the route.

To solve this problem for myself, I built https://navimodo.com/. NaviModo calculates the route, and then checks weather along the route based on your start time, and displays weather along the route. Change start time, and the whole thing is recalculated.

I am not expecting any commercialization for this, just wanted to scratch an itch, and just did it. I have ideas for adding additional features (suggestions for when to take breaks based on bad weather, auto-suggestion of start time to avoid bad weather, etc.,) but will add more as time goes by.

Any feedback is welcome!

22 comments

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magesh_magi1
I've applied for a patent for this very idea easily 10 years back but didn't get past my company. I've faced the issue when I travel from my office to home easily 1 hour journey without knowing when it'll rain where.

Good execution. How accurate it'll be within city

vkatluri
Not very accurate if it's short distances. What challenges did you face with the patent application?
nonameiguess
I consulted for an Air Force project that was attempting to add a virtualization layer to ease hardware refreshes for client devices using software that does exactly this (in a data center if they have network, but disconnected if necessary as well). I have to imagine commercial flight planning has needed to know weather along the route as well. It's hard to believe this would have been patentable given all the prior art.
magesh_magi1
That was naive of me. I was searching this feature over internet in Google maps and other places I couldn't find any so I prepared one and applied through office . This was a practical problem I faced when I drove motor bike within city inget drenched when there is sudden burst of rains on the way
gloflo
Well good, this is such a trivial idea.
big_toast
I immediately did SF to Reno through sacramento and south lake tahoe. Wildly different even in four hours.

A URL that persists the entered route might be desirable (especially to demo here). Otherwise I'm sure the additional features are endless.

vkatluri
Thanks for the feedback. When you say wildly different, was the weather different? Or did the application behave differently? I will definitely consider sticky URLs!
doctoboggan
I’ve wanted something like this, but optimized for star gazing during road trips. I’d love for your tool to be able to tell me the best place stop along my route taking into account my expected travel location, light pollution, cloud cover, moon position, etc.

I live and spend most of my time in cities, so long road trips are some of my bests chances for seeing good stars out in the country.

Would your tool be adaptable to this use case?

wlesieutre
Similar concept to Weather on the Way, for the iOS folks

https://weatherontheway.app/

Looks good and I like being able to browse the map on a desktop, though for actual travel use the app with CarPlay support obviously has benefits

max8539
Just a week ago, I asked ChatGPT to find me something and found Drive Weather iOS app, which I started using. I was also thinking of building something myself, but this one is good enough. Have you tried it or any other similar apps? Why did you decide to build a new one and why is it better? (Building just for fun is an option as well!)
addandsubtract
I hate when there's "NetworkError when attempting to fetch resource" on my journey.
herpderperator
Nice app! I see that the page title says "client" and there's the Vite favicon still, which you might want to fix :)

I also think having a dropdown for the address search is somewhat expected these days, but is lacking here. That might be on purpose or due to a technical limitation, but just thought I'd mention.

emien
This is really nice, cool idea!

One thing I noticed: when I enter a destination that isn’t drivable like requires a flight, it returns OSRM API Error. Might be worth handling that case more gracefully or showing a clearer message.

dominka
Nice idea - I tested it on a route in Poland and it picked a pretty optimal path

One thing that felt a bit tricky: if I want to leave "now" and quickly try different route variations, the departure time becomes outdated almost immediately. A simple "leave now" option could help here. Also would be great to see alternative routes to compare weather differences.

Overall though, super useful tool. I can see myself checking this before longer trips

hahooh
I would appreciate the option to set the distance unit to KM.
skyberrys
Nice tool, I like how it updates the weather based on the time you will be driving through it. When I've driven across the country on road trips we used flight planning software to dodge thunderstorms.
RyJones
The route from Tallinn to Warsaw to Kyiv was pretty good! Nice tool.
bawana
St thomas to grenada gives ospm api error
eddyg
I'd like something like this for week-long+ road trips.

The day before we leave on a trip, I manually use 10-day forecasts from something like weather.com to help figure out what to pack and see if it's worth making scheduling adjustment. I'd like to know what the forecasted weather will be in each of the planned stops. High/low temperature and weather for each stop (we might be at a stop for many hours, so the weather can change), plus forecasts for any "overnight" cities, so we know what to expect while at the hotel/campground/etc.: at arrival time, the overnight conditions, and in the morning at expected departure time.

I'm more concerned about weather during planned stops than "weather on the way".

Something that integrates with https://furkot.com (the best road-trip planning tool ever!) would be great!

llagerlof
Interesting, this was exactly what my thesis was about, but was an Android app.