Improving mountain safety: A widget for real-time weather data

As software developers, we get real enjoyment from solving unique problems with our specific skill sets. It's even more rewarding when we know it's having a positive impact on the community.

We recently jumped at the chance to help The Aspiring Biodiversity Trust (ABT) do good for the community by making their Celium network data available to the public. Doing so would provide real-time weather data accessible for the public to improve safety in the remote mountain ranges in which they operate. 

A brief background story

ABT has been doing some amazing work protecting our native diversity, with a focus on the threatened species and associated habitats of the Makarora region, part of northern Mount Aspiring National Park. 

ABT use Encounter Solution’s Celium Network and wireless monitoring technology to provide real-time monitoring of their pest-trapping network. A part of the solution is its ability to transmit real-time environmental data (temperature, rainfall, snow depth etc) from the base stations which is used by their team so they can more effectively resource and plan trap servicing expeditions. The technology is able to operate at very low power levels for long periods, is lower cost and is much more effective for transmitting data, making it the perfect solution for the area’s challenging and remote terrain. 

ABT knew that this information was a valuable tool for anyone venturing into the mountain ranges where the weather is often varied and unpredictable. So they had the idea of making it available to the public so that individuals or groups could use the information to improve health and safety.

ABT uses Encounter nodes that send real-time environmental data via satellite to Encounter's cloud platform but they needed a way to make that easily accessible to anyone who needed it. An online widget was the logical choice.

The widget was designed so that it could display the real-time data on the website in an interactive map and chart (see image below), allowing users to identify weather patterns from historical data, see specific location data and ultimately mitigate potential safety risks. 

Our team used Sandfield’s console app to call the Encounter API and then provide data back to the widget via API to ensure the data was presented in real-time.

The Biodiversity Trust does amazing work protecting our native diversity, and the Celium network we connected with is to monitor their trap network, so we are proud to offer our services pro-bono to help improve the community.

The new widget has been delivered through collaboration between Aspiring Biodiversity Trust, Sandfield and its technology partners to deliver real-time environmental information to the public.

If you'd like to learn more about Aspiring Biodiversity Trust's work and how they help the Makarore-Otanenui regions, check out the video they put together.