Weather Report applet not updating (15.04)

Support & Help Requests
#1

The “15.04” is a bit redundant because I think this is a MATE problem, not a Ubuntu MATE problem …

Does anyone else find that the Weather Report applet doesn’t update on a schedule? I add it to the panel, set London City Airport as the location, it picks up the first update (20 or 50 minutes after the hour according to when this was done) … then doesn’t update afterwards even if the refresh interval is set.

The only way to update it is to force the update by changing the location momentarily then reverting it.

It is odd that I have been all over the search engines (including obscure ones like StartPage and Qwant) and found nothing about this, as it is so obvious.

Working temperature widget?
#2

It’s been a long time since I used the Weather Report applet, so I can’t remember if it was reliable at updating. It is quite an old applet. (© 2005?)

If you’re just looking for an icon and temperature reading, you could enable the weather with the clock applet instead. It looks exactly the same on the panel, but it doesn’t bring up a report when clicking on it (only a mini one when hovered). I can confirm that the clock applet updates just fine.

#3

I’ve had a look at the code for MATE 1.8. It is lengthy (the main program is 51KB of C and there are numerous functions broken out) but I note a few things:

  • The weather is obtained from METARs at an obsolete Web location,
    which redirects multiply to the current one;

  • There is a comment /* FIXME: i'm not sure this works as intended anymore */ at a crucial point (I suspect it doesn’t);

  • Another comment is Wind chill calculations as of 01-Nov-2001 with a
    suggestion that these would be updated “soon” …

All that said, kudos to the original author for implementing some complex calculations, and for choosing a source of weather information which is robust (subject to server changes) - METARs will be around as long as there is aviation.

The big question is how one triggers a general review of code. I might do it myself, although I will have to polish up my old language skills :flushed:

#4

Confirmed on 1.10 (exactly the same behaviour).

#5

I have noticed a problem which may be related - my location does not update, although one rather further away does. This airfield no longer takes aeroplanes, but does take helicopters - and the MetOffice is still showing data for that area, so I don’t think it has stopped reporting.

I have switched the clock weather on to see if that changes for that location.

#6

Use “My Weather”:

It works in UM 15.10 no problem if you select the latest package here:

http://ppa.launchpad.net/atareao/atareao/ubuntu/pool/main/m/my-weather-indicator/

(Download the “all.deb” package and install with Gdebi). :smiley:

Edit:

I could only get it to run on my Nvidia rig (works fine on my ATI laptop!) by right clicking the desktop icon and “Run as admin”?. :frowning: