I went down to get my city permit to burn weeds on my little “farm”. It’s a little more than 2 acres with a pair of cows and a big garden, so “farm” might be a stretch, but you get the idea. Anyway, I got the permit and they let me know I’d have to call in each time I want to burn just to ensure weather conditions and air quality are acceptable.
Bing! There’s that lightbulb again.
So I checked out a couple of the weather APIs looking for air quality. The other data point needed when wanting to start a fire is wind speed, and that one is pretty easy to come by via API as well. So I started up a NextJS app and made myself an app. It checks my GPS location, and then gives me a simple Go or No-Go for my burn operation based on air quality and wind speed.
It works like a charm and I use it for myself plenty. There are some bugs to be fixed and I can see plenty of future feature opportunities.
Tech and services used:
- NextJs
- TailwindCSS
- Netlify
- Sentry.io
- AirNow API
- OpenWeatherMap API
What do you think?