4.0 KiB
Nuvolari
Precipitation radar for Piedmont, Italy. Android first, iOS later, one Flutter codebase.
Radar imagery comes from the public Radar-DPC platform, forecasts from MET Norway, weather alerts from the ARPA Piemonte XML-CAP bulletin. The app is free and ad-supported, with GDPR consent through Google's UMP.
Nuvolari is an independent app. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by ARPA Piemonte or the Dipartimento della Protezione Civile. For civil-protection purposes the official channels always prevail.
Layout
app/ Flutter application (Dart package "nuvolari")
backend/ Python worker: fetches DPC rasters, crops, reprojects, renders PNG frames
docs/ architecture, data sources, licenses, stack decisions, roadmap, privacy
tool/ verification scripts
Start with docs/architecture.md, then docs/roadmap.md for what is built and what is next.
Toolchain
| Tool | Version |
|---|---|
| Flutter | 3.47.3 stable (Dart 3.13.3) |
| Android SDK | platform 36, build-tools 36.0.0, platform-tools |
| JDK | 21 |
| Python | 3.12+ (3.14 works; rasterio ships wheels for it) |
| Android NDK | 28.2.13676358 — pinned by maplibre_gl, not by this project |
A full toolchain plus a warm Gradle cache needs roughly 14 GB of disk: Flutter
3 GB, Android SDK 2.5 GB (2 GB of which is the NDK the map plugin pins), the Gradle
cache 5 GB, and build output around 2 GB. flutter clean reclaims the last of those.
Configuration
Secrets never enter the repository. Copy the template and fill it in:
cp env.example.json env.json # env.json is git-ignored
| Key | Purpose |
|---|---|
MAP_STYLE_URL |
MapLibre style URL. Empty falls back to a local offline style. |
RADAR_MANIFEST_URL |
Base URL of the published manifest.json. |
RADAR_SOURCE |
mock (offline demo), dpc (live), arpa (disabled stub). |
METNO_USER_AGENT_CONTACT |
Contact address for the MET Norway User-Agent — mandatory for forecasts. |
ADMOB_APP_ID, ADMOB_BANNER_UNIT_ID |
Empty means Google's test ad units are used. |
Running
cd app
flutter run --dart-define-from-file=../env.json
With no env.json the app starts in demo mode: mock radar frames from assets, offline
base map style, test ad units. No network and no credentials required.
Debugging in VS Code
Open the Nuvolari folder as the workspace root — the configurations in
.vscode/ are relative to it. Then pick one in Run and Debug and press F5:
| Configuration | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Nuvolari — debug (emulatore) | Everyday work. Demo mode, no env.json needed, hot reload on save. |
| Nuvolari — profile | Judging animation smoothness. Debug builds run the Dart VM unoptimised, so the radar timeline always looks worse than it is — never assess it in debug. |
| Nuvolari — debug con env.json | Real endpoints and keys. |
| Nuvolari — debug su Windows | Fast UI iteration with no emulator. The native map does not render here. |
| Test — tutti / Test — file corrente | Debugging tests with breakpoints. |
Every emulator configuration runs tool/start_emulator.ps1 first, so F5 works from a
cold machine. The script exits immediately when a device is already attached, so
pressing F5 twice does not start two emulators.
Ctrl+Shift+B runs the full verification. Other tasks live under
Terminal → Run Task: quick verification, regenerating the demo radar frames, and
shutting the emulator down.
Verifying
.\tool\verify.ps1 # format, analyze, test, build, lint, pytest
.\tool\verify.ps1 -SkipBuild # fast inner loop
Stages whose target does not exist yet are skipped, so this runs from day one.
Attribution
Radar-DPC (CC BY-SA) · MET Norway (CC BY 4.0) · Arpa Piemonte · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL). See docs/licenses.md for the obligations these carry — in particular, the rendered radar frames are a derived product of CC BY-SA data and inherit share-alike.