Echo - Weather/Radar - A New Take on Your Forecast

[node36]

6/27/17
In response to user and press feedback, i've addressed some of the most pressing shortfalls, bugs, and issues in an update released today. See my latest post for the changes.


Hello,

We would like to introduce our new app to the Universal Windows Platform. Echo is a wonderful weather radar app - there are 10+ layers to choose from including Wind Chill, Heat Index, and Dew Point. We've integrated some of the best, most accurate weather data directly into the radar service. You can add new locations by simply tapping or right-clicking the radar map, or entering them in manually with Search.



Weather App Mode
When you just need the forecast - for any location around the world - just flip on Weather App Mode in settings - and Echo transforms into an immersive weather app, complete with beautiful visualizations, 24 to 72 hours of hourly forecasts with Echo Pro, and an overview of your entire week with Echo's 7-day daily forecast.
Pricing
Echo is a free app with a majority of it's features available at no charge. However, the free edition is ad-supported with ads placed in the most non-intrusive possible locations. If you want to add more than two pinned map locations or more than two active animated or static layers, these features - as well as extended Hourly forecasts and ad removal - are available forever for just $1.99 with Echo Pro.



More Features

• International Support for most layers including Radar, Tropical Storms, Temperature, and more
• Customize and Reorder your active layers with Layer Editor to create your ideal map experience
• Customize your unit preferences for the US, UK, Canada, or other Metric countries

Download Now

 

[spicypadthai]

Just tried it on PC and it's a good combo weather/radar app. It may replace MyRadar as my go to radar. I upgraded to the ad free version. A transparent tile with some display options on mobile would be nice. Hopefully it automatically updates location, which for some reason the MS Weather app tile doesn't do now on the CU.

 

[node36]

Excellent, thank you! I'll look into the transparent tiles on Mobile, but this has gotten harder under UWP, as we use adaptive tiles - we display the same tile using the same code across all platforms - and there are very few provisions in this framework to do something like that specifically for Mobile users.

 

[SlideWRX]

Looks nice! Functions well on my Lumia 950. I will try it out for a while. I have a request:
can you make the lighting information more specific? I currently go to lightningmaps.org
America :: Archives :: Maps :: USA (Big) :: LightningMaps.org
to get my lightning fix. It looks like your lightning data isn't animated , so overlaying it with the radar, it doesn't line up.
EDIT: Oh! it has a separate animation button. I couldn't see that until I switched to landscape mode. Also, it isn't synchronized with the radar. The radar is showing a 2 hour window and the lightning is showing ~5 hours?
Anyway, I'll keep it on the main screen for a while. Thanks!

 

[node36]

I'll look into the lightning data. This may or may not be possible - we might have to change our data source for lightning data to display anything more detailed then what is available right now. It might be a few updates out as our next update, in the coming weeks, will focus on Windows Central's suggestions such as image resolution, some user suggestions regarding settings, and a flipping live tile with radar imagery. The live tile, at least, will push out before the update as this is a change we can make via our webserver in the backend.

Also, FYI, in portrait mode on a phone, the animation buttons can be accessed by scrolling horizontally along the bottom of the screen. This will work regardless of how many layers you're using, and saves you the hassle of rotating the phone.

As for the discrepancy between the layer animations, this is related to the differences between when data is made available. For example, you're going to get Radar data every fifteen minutes from the satellites/NWS, but Lightning data, or temp data, for example, might only be made available every 30 minutes. For cloud cover, there might be an update every hour. We wanted to provide the most up-to-date radar imagery whenever possible, rather then trying to sync it with something else that only receives imagery once an hour. This is something we've been looking into, as we want to allow users to run multiple animations concurrently with synced times. We've yet to decide on a solution, but our general consensus at this time involves changing the behavior and timing entirely when you're running more then one animation - ex, radar would continue to run fast as it updates every fifteen minutes, but the cloud cover would wait to be in sync with the radar before continuing it's animation. In short, you'd see four frames of radar before the cloud cover continued one frame.

 

[node36]

6/27/17 - Echo Backend Update
This update addresses two critical issues made aware to me through user and press feedback as well as bug fixes and performance improvements.

Radar Image Resolution
This update addresses a problem with low-resolution radar images.

Before today's update:
View attachment 136465

After:
View attachment 136466

Users will also see an immediate boost in loading speed and animation performance on some layers, most notably HD Radar.

Live Tile
I've added radar images to the live tile. This is effective on medium, wide, and large tile sizes. If you don't see the radar images yet, just open and close Echo.

Thank you for the great feedback. We're working on an app update in the coming weeks addressing additional issues we couldn't resolve in the backend, as well as some great new features!