RiverFlows Android app

[robinj]

Greetings, Buzzards!
I wrote an application for Android phones (Droid, Droid X, Incredible, etc.) called RiverFlows that allows you to quickly view hydroplots from USGS streamflow gauges. While I hope this will partially fund my intractable whitewater addiction in the future, I'm not going to start charging any money for it until all the bugs have been wrung out. Consequently, RiverFlows is a free download at the Android store for a limited time. Either open up the Android Market app on your phone and search for "RiverFlows" or go to riverflows.mobi using the browser on your phone and click on the "Get It Now" link.
Since I don't actually have an Android phone, it's only seen a limited amount of testing on actual devices.
It would be AWESOME if all 3 people on the Buzz who've got Android phones to check it out and let me know what they think. Bug reports and feature requests will be greatly appreciated!

P.S. That's Mania in the homepage photo- I've illegitimately appropriated his likeness to promote RiverFlows. Mania in no way endorses the app, although hopefully he will do so in the comments thread!

[robinj]

Ok, I'm an idiot- the site is riverflowsapp.com, not riverflows.com.

[freexbiker]

currently downloading will let you know.

[go big]

So far it doesn't seem to want to download, for me.......

[freexbiker]

Originally Posted by go big

So far it doesn't seem to want to download, for me.......

Ditto. no go for me either. Running on a moto droid

[Nathan]

Mine wont download this or any other updates. I wonder if it is a market issue.

One question without having it downloaded, is it only USGS gauges? If so is there anyway to add dwr stations?

[afox]

I was able to download and install it I have an HTC Hero running android 2.1

-Some important gauges are missing from the list. In Colorado I could not find "Poudre at Canyon Mouth", or "Big Thompson below lake estes".
-Its a little slow loading the list of gauges and the graphs but not too bad.
-If the gauges were organized by drainage might be faster to load and a little easier to find your gauge.
-The Favorites option is great! This should make it really easy to quickly look at the gauges you're interested in.
-It would be really cool if there were some sort of alarm option, gauge goes over a certain flow and you get a text message or email, etc...

[robinj]

Thanks for all the comments so far- it looks like the Android Market is having some issues.

Crap. Murphy's layin the smack down with his law again.

To answer the questions:
It's only USGS Stations at the moment. USGS has a uniform web service for getting data from everywhere in the US, so it was the path of least resistance to build an app using that service. As far as I can tell, there's not a lot of difference between DWR data and USGS data, but I haven't looked at it that closely.
I am considering using data from NOAA's AHPS services in order to display forecasts and flow stages, etc.

As for the difficulty in finding a gauge, did the onscreen keyboard show up when you arrived on the site listing page? It should, but if it doesn't you can make it appear by holding down the menu button. You can then filter by site name.

I have thought about an alarm capability- however, before I write that I want to build the ability to regularly reload favorites in the background so they will still display relatively up-to-date data even if you lost cell reception hours ago. With that in place, it should be easy to add alerts.

[brandob9]

- Installed in under a minute
- Took about a minute to fetch sites "Loading Sites..."
- In list search function is awesome
- Star to favorite is sweet
- Graph looks good
- Feel and flow is good

The summary is that you have an excellent start.

If you can also patch in the NW River Forecast Center's info, you'd have the ultimate weekend planning tool for Paddler's Pint!

I'm running a Samsung Fascinate (Galaxy S) on 2.1 and ATT

[brandob9]

Originally Posted by robinj

Thanks for all the comments so far- it looks like the Android Market is having some issues.

As for the difficulty in finding a gauge, did the onscreen keyboard show up when you arrived on the site listing page? It should, but if it doesn't you can make it appear by holding down the menu button. You can then filter by site name.

Market worked perfectly for me. I was a little weirded out by the keyboard just being there until I took a couple seconds and figured out to just start typing. Can you add a little flag for the first time through?