Long range weather forecast

rougie · Joined: 14 Jun 2006 Posts: 31

Hello,

I am a Microchip MCU user and using CCS's compiler to create, debug and compile C code for Microchips micro-controller units.

I am looking to get the long range forecast informations from a weather station's website or a local airports website via my MCU. For example, I would need to know today's weather and the next 3 to 5 day's weather. I must find this information in terms of data such as the temperature, humidity, winds etc... respective to a date. It would then be my responsibility to display this information along with the desired graphics.

I know that CCS (CCSINFO.com) has a kit that shows you how to build an internet connection with a microchip micro-controller and I am debating on weather I should buy it. I have never done this and I have some preliminary questions about how I am going to do this.

1) Even if my MCU is able to connect to another website showing the long range forecats, how would I be able to download the data mentioned above?

2) Is this at all possible to do with a Microchip controller?

All informations related to this post is greatly appreciated!

Regards
Robert

crystal_lattice · Joined: 13 Jun 2006 Posts: 164

In a bid to alleviate your PIC from doing some hard work, you could have your own server based web page. Then have his page run a script to get the data from the weatherpage and let your PIC query this page.

I don't have much knowledge on this but a friend of mine used the "webpage script" approach for share prices from another stock exchange site. You might have to use ASP (Active Server Pages) to keep the data up to date, or it could update once the PIC sends a request.

This approach will also enable you to keep your hardware the same and only update your webpage if the site you are leaching from ever changes.

There might be a direct approach but this is what comes to mind...

SherpaDoug · Joined: 07 Sep 2003 Posts: 1640 Location: Cape Cod Mass USA

Maybe you should try doing this on a PC first. Then maybe adapt it to a PIC. On the PC you will have more and better tools for extracting data from web pages than you will ever have on a PIC. Also you can get PCs the size of a business card nowadays.
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