kylehotchkiss/fnstraj

fnstraj is a Trajectory Predictor built on Node.js that uses NOAA RAP (amongst other weather models) to predict the flight path of a weather balloon. Aiming for speed, modularity, and the ability to run on Heroku behind a very nice interface for the world to enjoy. This is the hardest thing I've ever done.

fnstraj

This repository represents the backend for fnstraj, which is now a webapp for all to use!. Feel free to browse around, but if you're looking for a quick trajectory report, the web interface is 1,000x easier than the (now broken) terminal interface.

The frontend is available in another repo: /kylehotchkiss/fnstraj-frontend

Description (simple/tl;dr)

Predicts the landing location of a weather balloon's payload. This is the code that makes it run as a daemon.

Description (technical)

This is written to run as a worker process (or daemon) on Heroku as the processing part of http://fnstraj.org/. It is written in Node.js; uses CouchDB for data services; and works with other neat APIs like Mailgun, The Google Geocoding API,

Special Thanks

• UKHAS, for your absolutely brilliant web resources on ballooning.
• Wolfram Alpha, for always knowing the answer to "Air Pressure at 80,000ft".
• Austin Jones, for helping me with these insanely complicated math questions every time I ask.
• Nathan Hotchkiss, for saying "cool" when I showed you this. And for listening to me talk about it for years.
• The friends who supported me in this, taking some time to at least see what it does!
• My old boss at work for encouraging me to try new technologies to make this project happen!