MacSMS puts local weather in the palm of your hand
Weather wizards. Third-year engineering students Shubham Gupta, Gurbir Dhulla and Taranveer Virk recently debuted a new campus weather service, MacSMS, that delivers text message updates using data from the McMaster Weather Station.
Want to know the exact temperature in Faculty Hollow before you even set foot on campus? Just send a text.
A trio of McMaster engineering students have created a brand new messaging service, MacSMS, that offers real-time weather updates generated by the McMaster Weather Station.
Users can text commands such as Temperature, Wind, Weather and C or F (Celsius or Fahrenheit) to the MacSMS phone number, and the requested data are relayed a few seconds later. MacSMS users can also set reminders to receive automatic daily updates — first thing in the morning or immediately following night class, for example.
The advantage over high-tech smartphone applications is speed, accuracy and a hyper-local approach to monitoring the weather.
“Many students and staff have weather widgets or similar programs on their phones, but we wanted to create a service that offered instant alerts in SMS form,” said Shubham Gupta, a third-year student in Software Engineering (Embedded Systems), and one of the co-founders of MacSMS alongside Gurbir Dhulla and Taranveer Virk.
“Readings from the McMaster Weather Station are much more precise, in terms of monitoring changes in our area. In some cases, it can be an eight-degree difference in temperature compared to readings at other weather stations in Hamilton.”
Established in 2007, the McMaster Weather Station is operated and maintained by the McMaster Centre for Climate Change. The equipment is typically used to monitor wind speed, precipitation, air temperature, atmospheric pressure and other local weather variables observed from the roof of the General Sciences Building.
Once the MacSMS prototype was completed in February, the team approached Altaf Arain, director of the McMaster Centre for Climate Change, about tapping into the vast network of weather and climate data generated by the on-campus weather station.
He was instantly sold on the idea.
“Because we’re so close to the Dundas Valley, the weather and wind patterns are quite different here compared to other parts of the city, such as the airport,” explained Arain. The weather station at the latter is often used for general readings in Hamilton.
“This new service is great, because I can type one word into my phone and instantly have an accurate reading on campus.”
Monitoring the weather is only the tip of the iceberg for MacSMS, added Gupta. In the weeks ahead, the team is planning to offer other services such as tracking bus arrival times and the operational hours of campus buildings.
To use the free service, members of the campus community can register online. MacSMS may also be used by people over the age of 13 who reside within a five-kilometer radius of McMaster.
Try it out! For a demonstration of MacSMS, text one of the applicable keywords to 289-724-1622. Keywords include: Weather or W; Temperature or Temp; Windspeed or Wind; C or F. All keywords are case insensitive.
