I did this Google-Maps project and i'd like some feedback from you guys.
Consider yourself beta-testers.

This is for a company that sells upscale weather-stations. They have about 2700 that are currently reporting to their website and the project was to create a google map of all stations.

First, i had to come up with some sort of "clustering" to group together several stations when your zoom level is low, otherwise your browser would come to a standstill trying to display all 2700 stations at once.

I thought it was pretty cool to implement a color coding according to average temperature. The number on the clusters is the number of stations in that cluster.
I used a 10 degree grid (Latitude and Longitude) which is broken down into 4 subsections when you start zooming in.

After zoom level 4, if a cluster has less than 5 stations, i start displaying the individual stations.

After zoom level 8, i just display the stations.

Station icons are also color coded by temperature. You can click on a station, then click on the station name, to view a detailed page with more info.
A gray circle means the station has not reported within the last two hours.

http://www.weatherlink.com/map.php

Any feedback is appreciated.

Admins, feel free to move this to the sandbox, if needed.
Andy

PS: IE is by far the slowest browser for displaying the map, firefox, opera and safari are about the same and chrome is the fastest.

PPS: If this works out OK, i'm considering using the same code for a 914world members map since the frapper map is no longer active.

Seemed straightforward and easy to use to me. Zoomed in using the wheel on my mouse, picked one of the stations in Toronto and confirmed it's still winter.

The site worked great. The weather was wrong, but that's probably not your area. 6" of snow and the site showd 0 precip.
Any chance of plugging in street view to the 914 members location?

Nice work Andy! Intuitive, great implementation. I love the Google Maps API.

Hmmm ...

The map shows current conditions. It refreshes every 15 minutes. So if it's currently not snowing where the station is, it should show 0 ...

Andy

I like it. The only thing would be cool to be able to get a forecast as well, so I would know if i can drive my leaky car.

It does have a 12 hour forecast. You need to click on a station, click on the station name and go to "Summary".

For example:
http://www.weatherlink.com/user/nuttsriver...y&headers=1

When you're looking at a station summary, you can click on "Map" again and it will zoom in on that station on the map ...
Andy

Now that I see it it's very cool. Maybe it should be a little more obvious, but then I don't know if this is for the general public to use or what. I like what you have done though!

It's open to the general public, but the main use is for the actual weather-station owners.
The idea is to give them an easily accessible summary of their data on the web.

They can also set a station to "private" so it does not show on the map for everybody. Only the owner can see the data if they're logged in.
Andy

Cool stuff!

Each station on the map has two web pages, a short summary and a more detailed list.
For example ...


Map of station:
http://www.weatherlink.com/map.php?station=nuttsriver

Short Weather Summary Page:
http://www.weatherlink.com/user/nuttsriver/

Detailed Weather Summary Page:
http://www.weatherlink.com/user/nuttsriver...y&headers=1

Andy

PS: The owners of the weather stations are already familiar with the weather summary pages, so it's probably much more obvious for them how to get there.

Nice work Andy. Only thing I noticed was that the locations (green dots) were not located where shown on the background grid map.

Like Hayward was South of Palo Alto.

I tried both google chrome and my normal msn browser and it's pretty fast considering I'm stuck with a los broadband provider that usually only gives about 1000 kbps download speeds. I did check the closest station and it's about 50 miles away and it's raining lightly and it said 97% humidity, you would think it is 100% over most of central tx right now. I guess it isn't actually falling at the exact spot the same as at home. This would be great to have at a remote location to see if you want to go there or not.

It's up to each station owner to provide accurate Latitude and Longitude for their stations.
If they screw up, the station marker will be in the wrong spot.

There are a few of those ...
Andy

Looks like the name of the station is supplied by the owner, so the name may not be indicative of the location. I'd guess that the owner also supplies the location... so that may be inaccurate as well.

Zoomed in on Duluth, MN to the Alex Sahlberg Memorial Weather station. Alex was my son's very good friend. Alex was well known by the local weather forcasters. His friends, family and teachers set up the weather station in his memory. He was a good kid. He died before high school graduation at home. The true cause of his death is unknown. His mom has never been able to come to terms with it. I just read something she posted on craigs list. very saddening.

Oh, I just realized this probably wasn't the kind of input you were looking for....

This would be great for the 914 map. Frapper was horrible. If you were an early car on it, your chances of ever being seen were zero. So frusterating.

I like this approach much better.
Zach

I'm a little ways west of Worcester but Cutchogue NY is not

Like it! They need a station Bonny Doon.

If you double click the map, it doesn't automatically zoom in?

By design ...


EDIT: Spoke too soon!

I just got word from them that they want the double-click zoom on the map, so i added it ...

Andy

sorry...I am just lazy and don't want to move the mouse to the slider...