Xasteria & Xasteria Plus 3.0 iOS Astro Weather

[ecuador]

Users of the Xasteria Astro Weather app will have received an upgrade to 3.0 yesterday, which adds several new features, including Clear Sky Charts (for North America) and access to light pollution maps:

Enjoy!

In order for the app to always remain free, but be able to upgrade the main service it uses (7Timer) with more servers, you might have noticed there was the paid version Xasteria Plus released (previously only included as part of Polar Scope Align Pro), which has some extra things like night mode, lunar calendar, location manager, but most importantly not being free allows me to use paid weather services as well. So I have added Dark Sky for now, which updates hourly combining real time radar to get a (hopefully) more precise short-term forecast. As always both forecasts (7Timer and Dark Sky) can switch between 3 visualisations (icons/stripes/text), and additionally to night mode:

Edited October 2, 2020 by ecuador

[ecuador]

By the way, if anyone is interested in joining the Xasteria / Xasteria Plus beta test list to try out new features before they are released publicly, just send me a PM with your email address. Thanks!

[ecuador]

Xasteria Plus 3.1 is in beta testing an I don't have many people trying it out, if anyone with an iPhone/iPad/iPod is interested, PM me your email address to add you.

Currently in test we have Green/White night mode options, Satellite passes and various other tweaks and fixes.

[ecuador]

And 3.2 is out. You now get a light pollution button that gives you a Bortle estimate and a proper World Atlas 2015 artificial brightness based color coding. Pressing the button opens up the details:

Access to some new forecast sources under "Other" sources is added as well. Both the free and the plus versions got the updates, so no reason to not try it out  

And PM me with your email if you want to try new features before they are released!

[ecuador]

Version 4.0 of Xasteria and Xasteria+ is out, with an improved design, featuring a lot more customization of the weather views (including the display size), new & extended data, especially for 7Timer (cloud layers, 7 days forecast etc). 

Example screenshot of a full height weather view and the source-specific config options:

Some more additions, like quick access to Sat24.com and fixes. As always, the base version is completely free with no ads and includes almost everything already, no reason not to try if you own an iPhone/iPad  

[ecuador]

Landscape mode for iPhones (iPads already had it):

 

[PeterW]

All works fine, maybe make accessing the moon info Easier…. Was clicking like a mad thing until I found it… only after seeing your post. Maybe you could add the dust forecast or the copernicus aerosol depth? Your app continues to get more useful and a one-stop-shop.

Peter

[ecuador]

On 29/04/2021 at 21:30, PeterW said:

All works fine, maybe make accessing the moon info Easier…. Was clicking like a mad thing until I found it… only after seeing your post. Maybe you could add the dust forecast or the copernicus aerosol depth? Your app continues to get more useful and a one-stop-shop.

Peter

I have been puzzling how to make the moon calendar access more obvious too. It opens if you click anywhere in the Day/Moon Alt/Sun rows (I want to use clicking lower for an upcoming feature), which makes some sense, but it is not obvious enough. I did add a little popup when you first open the app to show where it works, but on the first launch users will be too overwhelmed anyway to notice. So not sure what to do about it, any ideas welcome. I can look into dust/aerosol etc.