River Levels Widget v1.2.1
Adam Franco February 10th, 2008
This version is a re-release of version 1.2 which had a corrupted archive missing some necessary files.
The RiverLevels widget provides an easy way to monitor the amount of water flowing in your favorite streams and rivers right from your Dashboard. The RiverLevels widget is of particular interest to whitewater kayakers and canoeists.
Once any United States Geological Survey (USGS) stream-gauge station is selected, it is automatically refreshed to always provide you with the latest graph of the water-level. As of version 1.2 you can choose between two graph styles: discharge in cubic feet per second (CFS) and water-height in feet.
This widget is Free software, licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 3 or later.
Requirements:
- OS X - 10.4 “Tiger” or later
Change Log:
1.2.1 (2008-02-10)
- New zip archive includes the ‘library’ directory missing in the 1.2 release.
1.2 (2008-02-06)
- Fixed Leopard (10.5) compatability bug.
- Added the ability to choose Gauge Height (ft) in addition to discharge (CFS).
1.1 (2007-01-08)
- Fixed graphs extending off bottom of widget
- Fixed invisibility of front refresh icon
This fixed my 10.5.1 issue that I logged on the 1.2 page, obviously a package problem. Thanks for the quick update.
Hi Adam,
Thanks for the River Levels widget. Being both a mac addict and the son of a fly fishing shop proprietor (http://forwardcast.net), I quickly saw how useful this could be for the shop. However, I thought that your widget could be extended to mobile devices too (e.g. iPhone). Therefore, I’m currently working on Ruby on Rails implementation of your widget only less graphical and more text based. Although, now that the iPhone SDK is available, your widget might make a good iPhone/iPod Touch application too.
Chase
Adam,
Great widget. Is there any way to add USGS stations? I’d like to have the South Platte above Lake George (PLAGECO).
[...] the storms and floods so much of the central U.S. is going through, I thought I’d offer up a little widget I just came [...]
Todd, the station list is built dynamically from the USGS site with a URL similar to the following (with ‘ny’ being the abbreviation for New York:
http://waterdata.usgs.gov/ny/nwis/current?index_pmcode_STATION_NM=1&index_pmcode_DATETIME=2&index_pmcode_00065=3&index_pmcode_00060=4&column_name=station_nm&column_name=site_no&sort_key=station_nm&sort_key_2=station_nm&format=sitefile_output&sitefile_output_format=xml&rdb_compression=file&list_of_search_criteria=realtime_parameter_selection
The same page in HTML format instead of XML:
http://waterdata.usgs.gov/ny/nwis/current?index_pmcode_STATION_NM=1&index_pmcode_DATETIME=2&index_pmcode_00065=3&index_pmcode_00060=4&column_name=station_nm&column_name=site_no&sort_key=station_nm&sort_key_2=station_nm&rdb_compression=file&list_of_search_criteria=realtime_parameter_selection
These are urls are built from the real-time water data search form. If the station doesn’t show up there, then it won’t appear in the list.
The graphs displayed in the widget are pulled directly from the USGS site and not generated in the widget. Therefore, the station page will need to have graphs on it for which I can get the URL. If you give me a url to the station page I might be able to figure out why it isn’t showing up in the list and if it will be possible to add support for it and similar stations.