Brew-tiful weather! Coder maps real-time sun and shade for cafés and pubs
22 April 2025, 19:46
Summer has finally arrived, and Brits are more than ready to soak up some much-needed Vitamin D.
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Lucky for them, this coder has blended meteorology with hospitality, showing where the sun shines in real time.
Mohamed Dawod, 33, works as a computational designer for an architect firm in London. But in his spare time, he codes useful interactive tech.
Mohamed’s latest project maps the sun’s real-time trajectory over London. Using open-source data from ShadowMap, his guide has a slidable scale for where the sun will be later in the day.
Blending that with more open-source data from OpenStreetMap, the guide uses sun and moon emojis to show which venues have outdoor seating in the sunshine.
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“I woke up on a weekend, and all I wanted was to go to find a nice new cafe in central London,” he said.
“It was a nice sunny day, and I wanted to find a nice sunny cafe to do some work and make some friends - but I realised, there’s nothing out there to help me with that goal!”
Using his evenings after work to build the site, it only took around four weeks for Mohamed to get the site up and running.
He then posted the site in various Reddit threads. In the London thread alone, the post has been viewed 200,000 times.
“The feedback has been amazing, I really didn’t expect it. I’ve got so many new ideas from people’s comments” he said.
“My next step is to build a business model around the idea, probably involving adverts. As well as building a phone app for people to use, I’m also going to try and integrate other features, like weather forecasts.”
You can use Mohamed's sun guide here.
