Tailwinds
Planning a long bicycle ride? Use Tailwinds to
- draw your route
- instantly see where (and how big) the climbs are
- get turn-by-turn directions
- check weather and wind conditions for your ride
Data Sources & Dependencies
Tailwinds consumes data from the following services. If the listed limitations prove untenable, I've also listed alternative data sources. Eventually, it'd be nice to make these data sources interchangeable.
- Google Maps v3 API for slippy map, markers, and polyline.
- limited to 25000 map loads per day.
- Google Maps v3 API Documentation
- Alternatives: OpenLayers, OpenStreetMap, MapQuest API, Leaflet.js
- Google Directions API for turn-by-turn bicycling directions.
- Limited to routes with 8 or fewer waypoints + origin & destination.
- Refuses to give bicycle directions across international boundaries.
- Google Directions API Documentation
- Alternative: http://developer.mapquest.com/web/products/open/directions-service
- Interesting reading on routing engines: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijkstra%27s_algorithm, http://algo2.iti.kit.edu/schultes/hwy/schultes_diss.pdf, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0ErpE8tQbw
- Google Elevation API for elevation data along polyline.
- Limited to 2500 requests per day.
- Google Elevation API Documentation
- Alternatives: USA National Elevation Dataset (NED), GeoNames Bulk Address Geocoder
- Weather Underground API for current and forecasted weather conditions along route.
- 500 requests per day, capped at 10 requests per minute
- Weather Underground API Documentation
- Alternative: OpenWeatherMap API
Tailwinds uses the following JavaScript libraries:
- D3.js for drawing the elevation profile.
- Alternative: Google Chart API
- Zepto.js for DOM manipulation.
- Alternative: jQuery, or native code, or using D3's DOM manipulation helper functions.
- Underscore.js
- Alternative: create a smaller build with only the functions I'm using in it.
Developer Notes
The following are useful reading for now, and will be removed prior to beta release.
