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Comment by cryptoz | Hacker News Reader

Using the barometers inside phones to improve weather forecasting

All Clear Weather: https://www.allclearweather.com/

I'm also hoping to use raw photos of the sky as weather data: after building a large training dataset of labelled photos, I think an ML classifier could begin to identify weather features in outdoor photos

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I once took a look at traffic coming from my (Android) phone and IIRC the pressure was being sent to some Google server at a regular interval. I wonder if they use it for weather forecasting.

The official line is that they use it mostly for improving elevation estimates for Maps. But that info is _old_ - maybe they're using it for more than that now! Some researchers (Cliff Mass?) attempted to get Google (and Apple) interested in barometers in phones for weather forecasting years ago, to no avail.

Hopefully they're trying something out with forecasting!

The app Dark Sky (on iOS at least) sends pressure data from my device.

If you want to be a more active weather participant check out the mPing project.

Say I have a spare Android phone sitting around. Could I just plug it into a charger, aim it at the sky through a window, and let your software snap a pic whenever it feels the urge?

Interesting question! Not yet as that feature is a UI button with no automation, but I will certainly consider adding something like that. Fascinating. Cheers!

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