Hello,

I've been living and surfing in IHB for about 5 years now. One of the issues that I had was seeing swell that was coming in over the next few days but winds that were expected to be 20+ mph. But then rain or some other condition would kill the wind and it would get perfect for 1-2 hours. Since I work in an office on the mainland all day, I was often missing these opportunities because I couldn't refresh the cams all day.

I decided to do something about it last year, so I started work on a new Android app that would constantly show me the surf conditions in my notifications and would alert me when the waves were great.

In order to do this, the app gets data from the NOAA buoys (updated hourly). In the app, you are able to select a single buoy that your notifications will be based on. Unfortunately, not all NOAA buoys provide the full set of surf data all of the time (some are occasionally missing wind or wave data).

In April, the app won Second Prize in the Google Fit Developer Challenge due to its ability to log a surf session in the app and have it synchronized with your fitness profile in Google Fit. Recently they added automatic calories burned calculations to this data in the Google Fit app.

It's still fairly early on and I'm looking for feedback from local surfers on whether or not the app is useful and how I should prioritize future feature development. Currently I'm planning to add tide information, allow selecting a set of favorite buoys, and try to find more sources of buoy wave data.

Please note that the app requires Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) or newer. Android Wear support requires Android 4.3+. The app is currently listed for the lowest possible price ($0.99), but the plan is to raise this as more features are added.

Please provide feedback to MichaelPrentice@DevIntent.com. Hopefully some of you find it useful!

Latest update - v1.9.4
- Easily switch between remote buoys now that we load the map at your currently selected buoy location instead of your current location.
- Added a new high resolution background image while also reducing the total app size by 3 MB!
- Improved layouts on a number of devices.

You can find the app here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.devintent.surfsapp.app

can you incorporate wind data from KSC, PAFB, MLB, and VRB?
(weather stations close to our section of beach)
higher point rating for calm / offshore winds
I'll give it a try.

cool, always looking for something good to spend google opinion rewards credit on

middle out

-------------------------

The Dude Abides.

http://www.rollerphotography.com/

Yes, I am looking to incorporate more accurate wind data into the app as the buoys don't always provide the data or they are too far out at sea. Thanks for the feedback! 

Has anyone used a Misfit Shine waterproof wearable fitness tracker while surfing? How did it go? I am considering integration with Surf Monitor. 

interesting and for 99 cents trying it out

it says -
The app will notify you when the conditions for surfing are ideal.

* When the conditions are good, you will be notified on your phone and Android Wear
smartwatch.


question? how do you set it up?
do you set the conditions you want to be notified for?
or what determines 'good conditions' that you are notified about?

thanks and good luck

The app has a custom algorithm to determine three levels of conditions (flat, waves but issues with wind or period, good surfing conditions). The focus is on simplicity, so there is no need to configure a lot of options.

The only setup needed is to select a local buoy which provides useful information. Note that some rarely provide either wind or wave data. Hopefully this NOAA issue can be minimized when I add support for another wind data source in the future. 

Of course I welcome feedback on tuning the algorithm. So if you are being notified of good conditions but the surf actually stinks, please let me know along with details about the conditions. Same goes for quality conditions if the app is telling you that it's flat. 

Edited: 06/20/2015 at 07:44 AM by mprentice

any plans for iOS app?  I'll give you feedback on the daily to get that thing dialed in

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"Don't count the days, make the days count." -Ali
#rydyrstrong

good app


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hey, i don't know if you read this yet ----------> I <3 16streets.com

thank you Sean O'hare

Delicious beer comes from here

I gave it run bud but... I understand you going for simplicity if you just added a few features, even the complete basic settings are not there, like being able to tell the app when YOU want it to sync, also being to disable that damn persistent notification within the app. that alone made me hit uninstall.

There is no need for the app to have settings to disable notifications, if you go into Settings->Sound & Notifications->App Notifications->Surf Monitor and toggle the Block setting this will stop notifications from the app.

That said, the notification is customized to stay out of your notification bar and only show when you open notifications. This is done so that it stays out of your way. The only time that it stays in the notification bar is when the conditions are good. You are able to dismiss the notification, but it will come back the next hour. Also the persistant notification is how you are able to see the surf conditions on your Android Wear smartwatch.

The notification behavior does depend a bit on which version of Android you are running. If you could let me know that information, then I could better understand how the app is behaving on your device.

When would you like it to sync? The data is only updated by NOAA every hour, on the hour. So the app syncs 5 minutes after the hour. If you sync later in the hour, you'll get more stale data.

I've been thinking about ways to make this happen, but work on it has not started yet. I'd like to make sure that the features within the Android app line up with what people are looking for first.

preface: I haven't been able to read the replies prior to this post
I'll come back and get back into it
don't have the time right now.... just replying

so i had to opportunity to use the application yesterday before going to St Augustine
since the st augustine buoy was missing, i tried to load another one but it wouldn't load

i figured that you have something that'll only allow the use of buoys that are only in the water
being that it all factors into the algorithms of 'flat/ good but issues/ good'

i would like to see more options with this and have found that this will be useful further
down the line when i'm really dialing it in over in Brevard or anywhere that might happen
to have a near shore or relatively close off shore buoy.

i am still curious as to what activity band would work best in this situation
i was considering getting fitbit but i would like to see if there is another android wear
that would be waterproof and still communicate with the application (pardon my ignorance
on this as i've yet to use the watches/ wearable technology)

anyway, i do enjoy the application for what it is and would gladly pay for more if need be

and i would love to skin the application UI further down the line if you wanna talk

-------------------------
hey, i don't know if you read this yet ----------> I <3 16streets.com

thank you Sean O'hare

Delicious beer comes from here

If you are not including coastal wind obs in your algorithm you need to...the buoys quite often do not tell the story at the beach. Only Android? I am an apple guy but would like to try it out.

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"If I say it's safe to surf this beach, captain, then it's safe to surf this beach!"

I've been trying it out for a few days now.

It's .... ok, and more convenient than checking the 20 mile buoy.
But yes, it would be nice to incorporate some wind data but that
can also be iffy depending on the location.
(for wind data I use the WindAlert app on my phone and it seems good)

What I might like to see incorporated, is a graph or chart showing
the buoy trend for the previous 6 hours or so ... whether it is rising or falling.

If not, I still check to buoy for what is trending.

But it is convenient, and (not your fault) but it seems a little redundant
without any swell going on right now. (again, not your fault)

I also have a quick link bookmark on my phone for Tom Neilson tide and buoy report
( I think it was lawless that set it up long ago)

Of course, I also get custom text "surf alerts" from Surfline for conditions that
meet the values I have set up for specific locations and conditions.

It's another tool to be used.
Cheap enough.
Thanks






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Puerto Rico 11 - 24 - 2013

Edited: 06/22/2015 at 03:28 PM by SunriseSurfer

Can you provide a little more detail here about how it wouldn't load? After changing the buoy did the data just stay the same or did it say 'No data' for some of the fields?

I hope to add a different data source for wind (other than buoys) and some tide data soon. Hopefully that will allow refining the algorithm a bit more.

Thanks a ton for the feedback! I want to keep the app consistent with Material Design, but I'm certainly open to improving some of the icons and refining the layout.

Yes, I absolutely agree! Adding an additional source of wind data is a top priority.

For the time being the application is only available for Android, but thank you for letting me know about interest in iOS.

Yes, unfortunately there hasn't been any good swell lately. During times like this the app should hopefully be mostly forgotten and have very limited use. It's when the swells come in that it should start giving you more visible hourly notifications/vibrations to say that it's good. In that case, I'm waiting for people to start requesting some kind of 'snooze for 24 hours' feature. But we'll see

I'll get back to ya this week

-------------------------
hey, i don't know if you read this yet ----------> I <3 16streets.com

thank you Sean O'hare

Delicious beer comes from here

Michael,
so when i loaded up the application, it reported for the 41009 buoy
when i tried to select a buoy that was close to the shore, it did nothing
but say, 'buoy data saved' then it continued to report the info from
the other buoy.
interestingly enough, when i opened the application a few days ago, it
showed the data from another buoy that i had selected last time i was
out and about.

so for some reason, the buoy data appeared instantly when i changed it
back to 41009

so that's a thing

and when i was trying to access the 41113 buoy, once again, didn't load
the data... same goes for the 120 mi buoy

as for the UI design, i'll pass you an email and we can talk
i really want to start diving into more UI design a lil more than i have
(designed a few mock applications and a mobile site or two)



-------------------------
hey, i don't know if you read this yet ----------> I <3 16streets.com

thank you Sean O'hare

Delicious beer comes from here