Q. Can I send a forecast request from a mobile phone or regular email?
A. No. Your request has to be sent from a DeLorme InReach device. Messages from InReach devices include a link to a DeLorme web page with details about the device and its location. Your request won’t be processed without that link.
Q. Does this work with non-US locations?
A. US National Weather Service forecasts are only available for US locations, but you can get a forecast from Forecast.io for any point on the globe. And forecasts from mountain-forecast.com are available for over 11,000 peaks world-wide.
Q. Are latitudes and longitudes only accepted in decimal degrees? Would UTM be possible?
A. It’s only decimal degrees. I implemented it that way because that’s how DeLorme reports InReach locations, and that’s the format used by the NWS API and the Forecast.io API. Otherwise I’d have to write my own conversion routine, which wouldn’t be trivial.
Q. Is this costing you anything?
A. Not much except for my own time. The service is set up as a Google Apps Script, and for low volumes their hosting is free.
Q. Does this work with the original InReach, or just the InReach SE? What about the InReach Explorer?
A. I’ve only tested it with the InReach SE, but I haven’t heard of any problems with other models.
Q. Could you include the NWS forecast discussion summary?
A. Unfortunately not. Forecasts are limited to information that's available from the NWS National Digital Forecast Database. This has lots of numerical data, but hardly any verbal commentary.
Q. Does this provide marine forecasts?
A. Yes, for US coastal waters. If your request includes the keyword “nws6” you’ll get a detailed NWS 6-hourly forecast that includes wind speed, direction, and wave heights. Outside US coastal waters you can get a forecast from Forecast.io that includes wind speed and direction, but not wave heights.
Q. I got the response “Error: No data for forecast point”. What does that mean?
A. It means that the server didn’t recognize the latitude and longitude in your forecast request. There could be several reasons for this.
A. No. Your request has to be sent from a DeLorme InReach device. Messages from InReach devices include a link to a DeLorme web page with details about the device and its location. Your request won’t be processed without that link.
Q. Does this work with non-US locations?
A. US National Weather Service forecasts are only available for US locations, but you can get a forecast from Forecast.io for any point on the globe. And forecasts from mountain-forecast.com are available for over 11,000 peaks world-wide.
Q. Are latitudes and longitudes only accepted in decimal degrees? Would UTM be possible?
A. It’s only decimal degrees. I implemented it that way because that’s how DeLorme reports InReach locations, and that’s the format used by the NWS API and the Forecast.io API. Otherwise I’d have to write my own conversion routine, which wouldn’t be trivial.
Q. Is this costing you anything?
A. Not much except for my own time. The service is set up as a Google Apps Script, and for low volumes their hosting is free.
Q. Does this work with the original InReach, or just the InReach SE? What about the InReach Explorer?
A. I’ve only tested it with the InReach SE, but I haven’t heard of any problems with other models.
Q. Could you include the NWS forecast discussion summary?
A. Unfortunately not. Forecasts are limited to information that's available from the NWS National Digital Forecast Database. This has lots of numerical data, but hardly any verbal commentary.
Q. Does this provide marine forecasts?
A. Yes, for US coastal waters. If your request includes the keyword “nws6” you’ll get a detailed NWS 6-hourly forecast that includes wind speed, direction, and wave heights. Outside US coastal waters you can get a forecast from Forecast.io that includes wind speed and direction, but not wave heights.
Q. I got the response “Error: No data for forecast point”. What does that mean?
A. It means that the server didn’t recognize the latitude and longitude in your forecast request. There could be several reasons for this.
- Your InReach hadn’t acquired a GPS location at the time you sent your request.
- You tried to use loc {lat} {lon} or loc {peak} {elevation} to override the InReach’s current location, but there was a typo.
- You provided a valid location, but there was no response from the NWS, Forecast.io or mountain-forecast.com. Unfortunately this sometimes happens. Sorry but there’s not much I can do about this. You’ll just have to try again later.
