Wanting to keep your customers, employees, or visitors up-to-date with weather forecasts? OptiSigns has a Weather App, offering numerous options to customize your screens with current weather updates. In the sections below, we'll walk you through each of these weather apps and how to set them up in your OptiSigns portal.
| Use Case |
| An outdoor adventure company could display up-to-date weather forecasts on digital signs in their lobby, allowing customers to quickly check conditions before booking hiking, camping, or other outdoor excursions. The Weather Wall app's regularly updated forecasts ensure the company always has the latest information to share, improving the customer experience. |
In this article:
What are our Weather Apps?
We offer a variety of weather apps to utilize for your digital signage, keeping your screens up-to-date with regularly updated weather information customized to your location. We offer:
- Weather Wall: Provides current weather forecasts tailored to your location.
- Weather Alert: Set up weather alerts provided by the National Weather Service.
- Weather Radar: A detailed and customizable weather radar
In this article, we will teach you how to set up each app.
Weather Wall App
The Weather Wall app blends essential weather data with a sleek, user-friendly design - ideal for digital signage in commercial spaces or personal use. This weather app provides accurate weather information and visually appealing content tailored to your location. It is easy to use and customizable with themes and presets!
| Note: You can see a live example here, and the wall view screenshots below: |
Let’s set up your Weather Wall App
Navigate to the Files/Assets section and choose Apps, select the Weather app.
Fill in all the required information for your Weather Wall on the left side:
- Preset: Predefined configurations and settings that help you quickly apply customized theme settings to your Weather Wall.
- Name: This label is used to organize your assets and will not be displayed on the screen.
- Scale: Fahrenheit (F) or Celsius (C).
- Use Device Setting’s Location: Detect the weather based on the device’s location setting. Read more here.
- Location: You can enter a city name or zip code and select from the dropdown helper. This location will appear on the wall and be used for City Themes images.
- Language: The language in which the weather information is displayed.
- Date & Time: This setting is currently set to Default. You can customize the date and time format for both Normal and Scrolling Strip modes, or select “Do not show”.
- Font Size: Use the default font size or customize it for text on your Weather Wall.
- Theme: You can select from a list of pre-designed themes.
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Theme Settings: You can customize the theme with any color you want, which is useful if your company or organization has specific color branding requirements.
- Apply to All Weather Conditions: When you enable this option, any changes you make below, such as background color, text color, or selected photo, will be applied to all weather conditions. Disable it to customize each weather condition individually.
- Weather Condition: You can view our default settings or customize each weather condition for three themes: City Themes, Pacific Blue, and Pearl Flaxen. Additionally, you can upload a custom photo for the chosen weather condition.
- Click Reset to return to default settings.
- Advanced options: More custom options
- Scrolling Strip Font Size: If you put the Weather Wall app to a SplitScreen zone that is a scrolling strip, you can set how big you want the scrolling text to be.
- Lock Location: Position and lock the weather location to the bottom left or right on the Scrolling Strip.
- Visibility: With City-theme, select the visibility unit - miles, meters, or kilometers.
- Wind Speed: Select the wind speed unit - mph, m/sec, or km/h.
To enhance the user experience with the Weather Wall app, we have added the City Themes feature, which you can view at the following article:
Weather Radar App
Staying informed about incoming weather conditions is crucial for planning activities, travel, and being prepared for any potential storms or severe weather events. Weather radar apps are invaluable tools for providing real-time updates and visualizations of precipitation, cloud cover, and storm systems in your local area.
With the weather app radar feature, you can quickly see if rain, snow, or thunderstorms are headed your way and roughly how soon to expect the changeable conditions.
| The below is an example of what to expect using this app: |
Let's create your Weather Radar App
| Note: This weather app may not display 100% correctly on FireStick 2nd Gen (2019) or older. |
First, you will need to have your screens set up and paired. For more information on how to do that, click here.
Then, log on to our portal: http://app.optisigns.com/
Go to Files/Assets, Click on "App" and add Weather Radar to your Account.
Then fill out the information in the Weather Radar app:
- Name: name of your Scrolling Website App, this is only for use in File/Asset list, it will not be displayed on your screen.
- Location: Center of the map where you want to display weather radar around it.
- Layer: Display the weather layer. There are four type of weather layers: Wind, Wind Gusts, Weather Radar, and Satellite.
- Zoom: select zoom level for the map view.
- Show forecast details: display an overlay layer to show forecast day by day, hour by hour details.
- Play forecast: play the forecast radar movement like you would see on TVs.
- Update interval: The default is 600 seconds, or 10 minutes. This means the app will refresh the link every 10 mins for any changes in your presentation. You can adjust this interval by typing in a different value.
- Advanced Settings: In this section, you can adjust the metric system for Wind, Temperature, Rain, Waves, Snow, and Pressure.
After setting up your information, click Save to add your Weather Radar app to your account. If you'd like to tailor it to your specific location, see our article on how to use weather apps based on device location.
Push to Screens
Weather Apps can ideally be used within a Split Screen, allowing you to display weather content alongside other assets and content on a screen. If you don't know how to push content to your screens, read our article.
That's it!
You're now ready to keep your screens and viewers up-to-date with multiple weather assets.
OptiSigns is a leader in digital signage software. If you have any additional questions, concerns or any feedback about OptiSigns, feel free to reach out to our support team at support@optisigns.com.