We are happy to announce that one of our products — API for UV-index has got significant improvement

We are happy to announce that one of our products — API for UV-index has got significant improvement.
- Now besides current and historical data, you can also get UVI forecasts for periods of 8 days.
- Syntax has got considerably easier, it has become clearer and more unified like other APIs version 2.5.
- There is a new feature to request data on any geographic coordinates without limits on accuracy.
- Accuracy of UVI modeled data has been increased twice (the interpolation grid step decreased from 0.5 to 0.25 degrees).
- Soon the support of search by city name, city id and zip-code will be available.

You can find the instructions for the updated version here http://openweathermap.org/api/uvi

Please pay attention that during 2 weeks UV-index data will be in open access. Further, access to this data will be available only for paid plans starting from Developer. For more information on our plans please visit http://openweathermap.org/price

The previous version of API (http://openweathermap.org/api/old-uvi) will be announced deprecated soon, and no support will be provided for this version.

We are glad to introduce a new version of our satellite image processing platform VANE

We are glad to introduce a new version of our satellite image processing platform VANE.

So, what’s new:

Now a request with an error or invalid values will return a response with the recommendations on how to fix it. Also the validation of values became stricter. For example, the “select” parameter takes only a definite amount of bands. Parameters’ specifications themselves have gone through some changes

You can find  the detailed description here http://owm.io/vaneLanguage.

It’s easier to work with colors now by using default color schemes and palettes. A corresponding default color palette is automatically generated depending on an operation (the “op” parameter) and a current data source (the “from” parameter). And of course you can make your own color scheme.

VANE Global Base Map

The product we are launching today continues our freemium strategy — Global Base Map. It’s available as a part of VANE platform and opens the easiest way to start working with satellite imagery and connect it to your own application.

You can choose from a number of presets that provides imagery in a way most fitting for your project. And as a result you get the tile URL to connect maps to your client apps with the instant access.

Get your #satmap at owm.io/sat

The product remains free for open satellite imagery and will be extended with commercial satellites with higher resolution and cadence.

The free for all “VANE Global Map” constituted of middle resolution Landsat and Sentinel imagery — still continuously updated as new imagery become available. To make a global mosaic we applied special color processing algorithms for both of the imagery data sets, thus it can be used in one single layer as opposed to Landsat-only or Sentinel-only mosaics.

And for low-zoom levels (1–5) — to observe Earth on a daily or hourly time basis — we added low resolution imagery from Aqua and Terra satellites that can be vividly combined with weather layers — previously we posted about this part of the work on our blog. We process MODIS imagery in minimum time as for Web Mercator based apps — which means you can get tiles directly in any popular mapping library from Google Maps to Leaflet. The delay between satellite overpass and the publishing on our server is about 2 hours, yet we look forward to reducing this time. About every 30 minutes new imagery comes from each of satellites.

MODIS — Aqua and Terra layers on the Global Base Map powered by VANE platform

What could be even more fascinating about Global Satellite Map — you get it not only in one RGB state (as we get used to browsing on web-mapping services) or not only in the provided number of presets but with all capabilities that are brought to you by the power of VANE Language — select, combine, apply color processing and more.

All operations you can do with imagery online including applying your own analytcs algorithms and raster calculation formulas — this is the next step we are looking forward to move to, meanwhile you can learn some of these advanced functionality from JUPYTER based examples.

For now developers of Smart Farming applications can get a vegetation map (so called NDVI) from the same base map and calculate NDVI values to detect the amount and healthiness of a vegetation and compare its dynamics for the certain area of interest.