how to get a forecast a little closer to home – xda developers hack hacked
I’ve been long term testing the HTC touch ready for an imminent review and one of the interesting applications is a weather forecasting plugin that sits on your home screen and displays a localish weather forecast.
The weather plugin is great but for the UK the default list is pretty sparse, I can only find Manchester, London or Edinburgh and living in Nottingham that’s useless.
XDA developers to the rescue, it’s through a registry hack (so usual caveats apply) the suggestion is
just navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\HTC\HTCHome\Weather\Settings
And change the Location key to the name you want displaying and LocationCode to the new city’s accuweather location code .
You’ll find the codes here and all the Nottinghams here
Nottingham in Nottinghamshire is EUR|UK|UK189|NOTTINGHAM however when i altered the code to this … it doesn’t work, you get an unable to download data error
there’s a long and complicated fix here with clever use of a generous soul’s server to interpret the data.
However with a little reg rummaging I discovered that in the registry both London and Manchester have nearly identical codes EUR|UK|UK001|cityname despite the fact that the accuweather codes are EUR|UK|UK124|LONDON and EUR|UK|UK189|NOTTINGHAM.
So I changed my Touch code to EUR|UK|UK001|NOTTINGHAM and it seems to work I certainly get different weather from London Village and God’s own City. anyone else tried it?
July 28, 2007 at 1:07 am |
Seems to work ok for me too – the weather for Oxford looks like it matches that on the accuweather site. Either way – I’m just delighted that I can change the text to match my location – I’m not expecting the forecast to be correct even if the codes are linking correctly!! Many thanks.
July 28, 2007 at 9:21 am |
fantastic osker – pleased to be of assistance – the palaver on the xda developers site just seemed far too complex and I’m wary of using somebody elses server – remembering how much I liked celltrack until it became a ‘pay for’ service
July 30, 2007 at 9:25 pm |
OK it seems this does work with UK cities, it’s a good idea to check out Rick’s (N2A) post at http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=319187 there’s instructions on how to add the cities into the list by editing the xml file – saves lots of fiddly reg hacks
August 1, 2007 at 9:32 pm |
This is a brilliant hack and it worked a treat for me in Sheffield. The data shown on my touch seems to match that shown on accuweathers site. I used the Mobile Registry Editor (downloaded for free from http://www.smartphone-freeware.com/download-mobile-registry-editor-v1-1.html) to make the required changes to the registry in a matter of seconds. This was the final thing I needed to personalise my new HTC Touch.
August 1, 2007 at 10:04 pm |
cheers Marcus, it looks like we might be on to a winner – however it doesn’t seem to work for Matlock where my office is but major conurbations seem to be OK – not sure why it works with the 001 code and certainly other countries (france for instance) seem not to have a similar code that works so I suppose it’s a partial success. works for me and it’s a relatively easy thing to do so I’d always try it first.
I’m liking my Touch too – a bit slow at times but I canlive with that for the fantastic form factor and the biotouch screen
August 15, 2007 at 11:31 am |
Very useful! You could be the next early morning Ulrika-ka-ka-ka
September 6, 2007 at 3:40 pm |
it wont work for Norwegian city’s, other than the once already listed on the phone
September 6, 2007 at 3:52 pm |
yeah it’s strange UK cities seem to be the exception, you can try the full xda-dev hack though and I think there are a few other workarounds on there
October 22, 2007 at 5:17 pm |
Can anyone confirm if you are charged for updating the weather forecast?
October 22, 2007 at 7:42 pm |
hi Paul not sure I follow what you mean, but GPRS charges are incurred according to your data plan when you update. not sure how much data is transferred but I assume it’s not a massive amount
November 7, 2007 at 6:00 am |
Actually the xda forum hack isnt technically a hack as if you do a google search on “htc touch weather” there will be a link to HTC’s website which teaches (and has the download location) for the programs needed for this “hack” and it gives you step by step instructions with pics on how to change the location.
November 28, 2007 at 11:20 am |
I’ve been testing this 001 theory, but I’m not convinced. Sure the actual codes don’t work, but the 001 code doesn’t seem to pull up proper data for the city as listed on accu weather site, there is a 2deg descrepancy in temperature for a start.
I live in Leeds, Yorkshire EUR|UK|UK167|LEEDS, there is also a Leeds, Kent EUR|UK|UK160|LEEDS. If I use EUR|UK|UK001|LEEDS the data seems to match the Kent data on the web rather than the Yorkshire Leeds. If I change to EUR|UK|UK001|BRADFORD (which is close to Leeds but there is only one of and as the same weather currently) then I still don’t get the correct data for Bradford. I think the 001 code is just pulling a generic data set for a non matching city, but I don’t know where abouts.
November 28, 2007 at 6:28 pm |
Use this link http://htc.accuweather.com/widget/htc/forecast-data_v3.asp?ac=TR2cra9U&locCode=EUR|UK|UK001|LEEDS
change the end. If it parses the info for your city then it exists, but i’m 99% sure that LEEDS is displaying info for Leeds, Kent, and BRADFORD is displaying info for Bradford, Somerset and not the larger, more well known Yorkshire cities!
The nearest to me that displays info is Harrogate, so i’ve set the registry to display weather for Harrogate, but still naming it Leeds. It’s the best I could do!
December 16, 2007 at 1:50 am |
Does not work for Canada EH. Bummer thanks anyways. Closest city is Kelowna…..
February 2, 2008 at 3:48 am |
However, the city is not saved at the device’s memory. If you go to the forecast options you realize the city is not in the list. So, if you touch the screen acidentaly you will lost the data and you have to go for this procedure once again. Do you have another alternative?
March 1, 2008 at 8:33 pm |
Or you could just look out the window ;) the weather is free on wireless or connect to pc, but unless you have a data plan then you will be charged on your bill for using gprs, cheers mike.
July 24, 2008 at 11:05 pm |
does it not work for US? No code comes up on the url…
March 22, 2009 at 8:59 am |
How do i switch off the weather forecast to avoid being charged GPRS charges? Thanks
April 5, 2009 at 11:47 am |
hi…the weather function on my HTC touch not work. Even though i am connected to the internet..it say Attempting to download…and after few seconds…says unable to download. This issue is for all the cities in the list….can someone please advice…regards.