spin0 portfolio

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App features

• Unified forecast grid combining multiple weather providers.
• Clear views with consistent formatting.
• Normalized weather descriptions and icons across providers.
• Responsive layout that adapts cleanly across screen sizes.
• User guide is available inside the app via the menu.

Motivation

• Different apps kept giving different forecasts — not knowing which one to trust, sometimes I got soaked, sometimes I over‑prepared.
• I wanted to understand why forecasts differ so much.

Early exploration

• I installed several different apps, but switching apps was inconvenient and comparing them was impossible.
• Found that the apps rely on different APIs, each built on its own data sources, models, and processing techniques.

Prototyping

• Started with a Python script printing raw forecast values.
• It helped me understand how each provider structures data.

Development process

• Chose Next.js for routing and fast SSR, React for the UI foundation, and Iconify for consistent weather icons.
• Designed a compact grid to show forecasts from multiple providers all at once.
• Created a unified set of weather descriptions and normalized forecast information across providers with very different response formats.

Challenges

• Providers used different timezones and started their daily forecasts at different timestamps, so it was necessary to create a set of canonical dates and map everything into common days and hours.
• Handling events passed through redirects with mixed server and client components required careful debugging.
• Precipitation data varies widely — some providers return probability percentages, others return amounts in mm or inches with unclear labels, so some cases still need closer investigation.

What I learned

• Developing strategies for interpreting inconsistent API structures and aligning data from multiple sources.
• Designing UI patterns that remain clear and stable across very different screen sizes.
• Gaining a better understanding of how server and client components interact in real workflows.

Future enhancements

• Looking for more providers that offer full‑week forecasts on free‑tier APIs.
• Exploring the possibility of adding hourly forecasts, if free APIs allow.
• Considering a feature that sorts providers by reliability determined by each user.