Riverdipstick

I’ve been working on a side project, It’s called riverdipstick.uk.

And it does exactly what it says on the tin – its a dipstick for rivers. Instead of standing in the kitchen or the car park staring at five different Environment Agency gauge pages, rainfall sites and random spreadsheets, I wanted one place that told me, reasonably quickly, whether the river was in a state worth the drive. I’m an hour away from decent wild trout water so these things are important.

Why I built it

I was fed up with faffing about with multiple apps and websites.

You know the drill: open three tabs for levels, one for rainfall, try to remember what “normal” looks like on that particular beat, wondering whether the level will be right by the time you get there and still ending up with a wrong place, wrong time feeling.

I wanted history. I wanted trends. I wanted something that would sit there quietly collecting data every fifteen minutes so that when I decide to go fishing, at least the numbers are on my side.

And no adverts, I hate adverts. I hate people trying to sell me crap. 

riverdipstick.uk is self-hosted, deliberately simple, and built to be a bit more reliable than my previous “check random websites on my phone in the bog at work” method. 

The project is entirely open-source, if you are crazy enough to try and replicate it you can find all the files at https://github.com/TimLanigan/river-dipstick/

The site is still very much a work in progress. 

After real-world testing I retired the complex Machine Learning predictions in favour of the “Mark 1 Eyeball”. Fly fishers spend a long time looking at graphs and we’re still (mostly) better than computers for predicting when the river will be spot on for fishing. So I replaced all the ML features with a simple toggle to extend graphs 2 days into the future so you can “eyeball” a good level and make up your own mind.

The site was original setup with a high level of jank so while its boring, I’ve been working hard on site reliability upto and including cable management so I don’t get any grief off my mate Steve. Go on the lads!

What’s next

Short term: keep the site running.

Medium term: I’ve taken an interest in Sea Trout fishing so there might be riverdipstick features related to that as I learn more about it. Same goes for salmon because I’m learning each species has its own associated conditions.

Longer term: The site is only tracking NW rivers. I have no appetite or budget to expand to more rivers at the moment. The project is entirely self funded and therefore it is made to satisfy my own needs (with a side benefit for local anglers) I have daydreamed about making a UK wide site. Probably more hassle than its worth but you never know 😉