SunTide ☀️ 🌊

^v4.0.1

A program to generate .csv files with data containing day-by-day tide predictions and daylight information for a given year.

Usage Guide

Setup

1. Install SunTide, see Installation for details.
2. If installing from a release (recommended), unzip the release download onto your desktop.
3. If you have a pre-existing config file, put that into the unzipped folder on the desktop.

Adjusting Settings

There are four settings that can be adjusted in the program that determine what data is compiled for the spreadsheets.

1. The year
   • Effect: Determines what time window the program pulls data for.
   • Range: Either the current year or next year.
2. Coordinates for sunrise/set predictions
   • Effect: Determines what point on Earth to use to find sun times.
   • Range: Latitude range is -90 through 90, longitude is -180 through 180. Find your location.
3. Convert time to timezone
   • Effect: Puts all times in the timezone specified.
   • Range: Any timezone
4. NOAA station ID's for tide predictions
   • Effect: Determines what stations will be asked for tide data.
   • Range: Any number of NOAA tide prediction stations, listed by their ID number. Full list of stations.

Warning

Setting the coordinates will not automatically put the times in the proper timezone for that location.

Compiling the data

1. Once the settings are to your liking, click the 'Generate Spreadsheets' button.
2. The program will take 2-5 minutes to compile the data, and will save the spreadsheets in the same folder that the program is located in.

The Output

Caution

While the program compiles the most accurate data available, there is no guarantee that any of the information provided by this program will be 100% accurate. For reference use only. Use at your own risk.

The Suntimes CSV

Contains information such as sunrise and sunset times for every day in the year. One row per day. The column headers are as follows:

DAY, MONTH, DATE, SUNRISE, SUNSET, DUR, DIFF, MORE/LESS

• Day - The abbreviated name of the weekday
• Month - The name of the month
• Date - The day of the month
• Sunrise - The time of sunrise (HH:MM)
• Sunset - The time of sunset (HH:MM)
• Dur - The amount of daylight (hrs:mins)
• Diff - The change in daylight from yesterday (hrs:mins:secs)
• More/Less - If the change was positive or negative

Note

Daylight related times are calculated using the U.S. Naval Observeratory's algorithm and are a port of https://github.com/Triggertrap/sun-js

The Tides CSV

Contains information such as tide height for every day in the year. One row per tide (every day is assigned four rows, but because not every day of the year has four tide changes, some rows will be empty).
The column headers are as follows:

DATE, DAY, TYPE, HEIGHT, TIME

• Date - The date (mm-dd)
• Day - The abbreviated name of the weekday
• Type - If the tide is low or high
• Height - The height of the tide in feet
• Time - The time of the tide (HH:MM)

If the program is told to get tides for multiple locations, the headers will be arranged horizonally, and a number added as a suffix to each column. For example, if two locations are specified, the headers will be:
DATE1, DAY1, TYPE1, HEIGHT1, TIME1, DATE2, DAY2, TYPE2, HEIGHT2, TIME2
Headers with suffix 1 in this example would corrospond to the first location given, and headers with suffix 2 to the second location.

Note

Tide predictions are generated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and retrieved from thier API

Installation

Quick Install (From release)

1. Go to the releases page.
2. Download the appropriate .zip file for your system.
3. Unpack the zip file to your desktop (or wherever you want the program located).
4. Run the program by opening the SunTide executable, in the unpacked folder.

Manual Install (From source)

Recommended for developers only.

1. Ensure Python is installed.
2. Install dependancies:
   • pip install pandas requests pytz PyQt6
3. Clone this repository.
4. Either compile into an executable, or run main.py directly with a Python interperator (3.11+)