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Show HN: I created Units Converter that contains 5000 units across 78 categories
I have been working on my project for the last one year and developed around 600+ tools. The units converter covers almost every possible unit and I am planning to add more to it.
- prabhatsharma 3y agoI think this is a great tool. Not discounting the value of work (which you started long ago) that you have done already, but I am thinking that an LLM could do it much more easily today.
- bradknowles 3y agoSo, the thing about fuel economy is that it is calculated very differently in Europe versus in the US. In Europe, they do liters per 100km, whereas in the US we measure in terms of miles per gallon. So, mi/g => l/km requires a different kind of conversion than most of the others shown. You have to first convert mi/g to g/mi, then you can convert to l/km and then multiply by 100. Frankly, I think the European method makes a lot more sense to me, especially as you get to higher and higher levels of efficiency. With mpg, the numbers get stupidly big when you're saving relatively small amounts of fuel. With l/km, the numbers get smaller and smaller as you increase your efficiency, and it shows you how relatively little you're actually increasing the amount of fuel saved.
- accrual 3y agoI have used your site before for conversion and appreciated having everything in one place. Thanks!
- KodyBerns99 3y agoThanks for appreciation.
- akisej 3y agoAppreciate the effort you put into this. In terms of user flow, I typically need one or two of these use cases at a time. In that case, I just type my conversion into a search engine like Google, and often use their default box. Can you share what types of use cases you've seen people use KodyTools for?
- KodyBerns99 3y agoThanks for appreciation. Actually, user does not cover all units. It only shows most common one in terms of length. There are various units in terms of weight, area, and length that are used on regional level. If you just look at the area and length category dropdown, you will be suprised.
- criddell 3y agoI agree with you. There's clearly been a lot of work put into this but it's sooooo busy that I find it unpleasant to use. For me, a different UI could fix the problem. Give me a field where I can ask directly "how many cups are in 4.37 cubic meters?" As it stands now, I can get the answer from any search engine or voice assistant more quickly than from this site.
- rjh29 3y agoThink it's designed more for SEO than usability.
- Someone 3y agoI cannot find a button to switch the “from” and “to” units. IMO, any converter needs one, so add it or make it easier to find.
- rosebay 3y ago[dead]
- KodyBerns99 3y agoYou will see the link just before the share buttons to switch conversion.
- Someone 3y agoStill don’t see it (iOS, both iPhone and iPad). I see 5 circular buttons: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and a “Copy url to clipboard” one.
- KodyBerns99 3y agoJust select any two units... the yellow color text will popup as shown in the image. https://i.imgur.com/YAdd0HA.png https://i.imgur.com/YAdd0HA.png
- jedberg 3y agoThe first thing I looked for was football fields, but couldn't find it. :)
- KodyBerns99 3y agoI will add it by today. It will be available in Area category by tomorrow. Thanks for letting me know. I just add units as soon as somebody let me know by twitter or email.
- jedberg 3y agoFunny, I would have looked in the length area, as that's how it's usually used. Part of the problem is that first you have to decide if it's 100 yards or 120 yards.
- KodyBerns99 3y agoI chose 120 yards and added that to length category.
- KodyBerns99 3y agoI just googled it after your comment and the conversion of football field came in terms of acre or hectare so I think Area is suitable. I will see what most people are using and based on that I will set its value.
- cridenour 3y agoI've never heard of anyone comparing to a football field in the Area domain. Of course this is cultural, but at least in the US - the length is what is commonly compared.
- KodyBerns99 3y agoNo problem. I will add in both to make Area and Length users happy!
- askiiart 3y agoGood to see the completely realistic terabytes/nanosecond is included! I'm sure messing around with that will never get old.
- bombela 3y agoI am going to argue that bytes/second is the unit. SI prefixes are for convenience. You could use mebibyte/kilosecond for what is worth.
- mojomark 3y agoI'm not sure I understand the sarcasm (i.e. why TB/ns is an unrealistic A.) ...one gram of DNA can store up to 215 Petabytes or [215,000 Terabytes], knowing that the human being has about 600 grams of DNA [129,000,000 TB]. (1) B.) Now assume a human is traveling at the speed of sound in air on earth (~343m/s): 343 m/s * 129,000,000 TB * 1/1,000,000,000 s/ns, The result is that for every kilometer the human travels at the speed of sound, the information stored in that human’s DNA yields a data transfer rate of approximately 44.3 TB/ns. Seems reasonable. 1.) https://www.bibalex.org/SCIplanet/en/Article/Details.aspx?id=13621#:~:text=A%20great%20advantage%20for%20such%20a%20transformation%20is,human%20being%20has%20about%20600%20grams%20of%20DNA https://www.bibalex.org/SCIplanet/en/Article/Details.aspx?id....
- lostlogin 3y agoThe only problem is getting useful data into and out of the human.
- mojomark 3y agoMeh, it was just an example. The point is that extremely dense data storage is now concievable, though perhaps not yet practical (e.g. using a "DNA drive") so this magnitude of units has it's place in the real world.
- HWR_14 3y agoMost of the DNA is redundant copies. We need the amount of DNA in a single cell.
- irrational 3y agoTIL that there are Tablespoons [Metric]. Also, I thought "Library of Congress" was a standard unit of measurement? Not to mention the "standard reference pear".
- Symbiote 3y ago15mL. Probably listed in the front of most recipe books sold in Europe, including Britain.
- lostlogin 3y agoIf recipes listed ingredients in weight I’d be a happier person. I bake a lot of bread and weights just work so much better for flour and water.
- Symbiote 3y agoTry adding site:uk on a recipe search. Although note different countries can have slightly different grades of flour. https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/collection/bread-recipes https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/collection/bread-recipes for example.
- tobinfricke 3y agoIn Germany I encountered the "metric pound" - you can order a Pfund (500g) of beef at the butcher for example.
- jzellis 3y agoIt's super cool, but I'm not sure the explanation of how to calculate Fahrenheit to Kelvin is, uh, accurate. ;-) <3 "By using our Fahrenheit to Kelvin conversion tool, you know that one Fahrenheit is equivalent to 255.93 Kelvin. Hence, to convert Fahrenheit to Kelvin, we just need to multiply the number by 255.93. We are going to use very simple Fahrenheit to Kelvin conversion formula for that. Pleas see the calculation example given below."
- KodyBerns99 3y agoMost of units contain very generic description because my goal was to work on the tool rather than the content part. But I will optimize it in the upcoming future since I am one guy managing everything.
- axelsvensson 3y ago> We have so many online tools available to convert Volume units, but not every online tool gives an accurate result and that is why we have created this online Volume converter tool. Then it converts 231 in^3 to 0.99999994293884 U.S. gal, while 1 U.S. gal converts to 231 in^3.
- KodyBerns99 3y agoThanks for the feedback. This is why I shared it here so that I can improve it based on the feedback. I have fixed it.
- t0mek 3y agoThe results are correct, but the explanation is wrong, e.g.: By using our Celsius to Fahrenheit conversion tool, you know that one Celsius is equivalent to 33.8 1000 C = 1000 x 33.8 = 1832 F Probably the explanation engine doesn't support the offset in the underlying linear formula.
- quaintdev 3y agoI wonder if OP used ChatGPT for development as well as content of this site
- 6510 3y agoGood work. Perhaps you can steal this idea: Metric intervention https://userscripts-mirror.org/scripts/show/130277 https://userscripts-mirror.org/scripts/show/130277 > Converting that old French system the Brits are still using to the metric standard of science. ~ foot, inch (00',00",00'00,00'00"), yard, mile, stone, Pound-mass/Lbs., Gallon ~ It will totally convert something heretical like: 1'23 1/4" x 2'12 5/8" into something elegant and civilized like 89.535 cm x 93.0275 cm This (uhm) didn't take a year to make but it was rather useful when I needed it.
- darrylb42 3y agoIt should handle fractions I was trying to get the size of a quarter section. It rounds .25 to 1.
- ocrow 3y agoYou could add GeV/c2 (giga-electronvolts per speed of light squared) as a unit of weight that is used by physicists for sub-atomic particle mass.
- KodyBerns99 3y agoThank you, I will definitely add it.
- chrismorgan 3y agoAs an example of a completely different approach, this works out of the box in GNU units (showing both noninteractive and interactive usage): $ units GeV/c^2 Definition: 1.7826619e-27 kg $ units Currency exchange rates from FloatRates (AUD base) on 2023-06-21 3761 units, 113 prefixes, 120 nonlinear units You have: GeV/c^2 You want: [leave it blank] Definition: 1.7826619e-27 kg You have: Because of these various definitions (a selection of lines pulled from /usr/share/units/definitions.units, I think I have included all the relevant ones recursively): G- giga giga- 1e9 # Greek gigas, "giant" e 1.602176634e-19 C # electron charge (exact) C coulomb coulomb A s # charge A ! # The ampere, symbol A, is the SI unit of electric current. […] s ! # The second, symbol s, is the SI unit of time. It is defined […] V volt volt W/A # potential difference W watt watt J/s # power J joule joule N m # energy N newton newton kg m / s^2 # force kg ! # The kilogram, symbol kg, is the SI unit of mass. It is […] m ! # The metre, symbol m, is the SI unit of length. It is […] c 299792458 m/s # speed of light in vacuum (exact) (Fun thing, kg being the SI unit. Because of this, gram is defined as millikg!) I really like the approach of specifying what you have, in absolutely whatever unit you like, and what you want (though I omitted that argument in this case, to just have it show the definition), and having it resolve it. An excerpt from my ~/.units (which does have some serious stuff in it too, honest): # Why not? (Question: is the slightly-Welsh-sounding ygazillion, yocto-gazillion, 10⁻²⁴ gazillion, greater or less than one?) gazillion ! elephant 6.35 tonne elephant_african 6.35 tonne elephant_asian 5 tonne # I want to have ranged values: elephant_baby 90–135 kg. This get complicated because of non-linear transformations, e.g. 2^(1–10) = 2–1024, but log₂-biased. # baby_grand is also a baby
- DylanDmitri 3y agoWhat's a reason to use this over Wolfram Alpha?
- j2kun 3y agoPeople interested in this should check out Frink. It has been around for a while and has thousands of unit conversions with explanations, as well as a web interface for the unit conversions part https://frinklang.org/ https://frinklang.org/ https://frinklang.org/frinkdata/units.txt https://frinklang.org/frinkdata/units.txt https://frinklang.org/fsp/frink.fsp https://frinklang.org/fsp/frink.fsp
- j2kun 3y agoThe units list is hilarious and amazingly detailed, a sample: crocodile := megavolt // used informally in UK physics labs ... footcandle := lumen/ft^2 // Illuminance from a 1 candela source // at a distance of one foot ... // In Britain, the deal is apparently any piece of wood over 6 feet long, over // 7 wide and 2.5 inches thick. The OED doesn't give a standard size. A piece // of wood less than 7 inches wide is called a "batten". This unit is now used // exclusively for fir and pine. deal := 12 ft 11 in 2.5 in // The standard North American deal [OED] wholedeal := 1/2 deal // If it's half as thick as the standard // deal it's called a "whole deal"! splitdeal := 1/2 wholedeal // And half again as thick is a split deal. ... parasang := 3.5 mile // Persian unit of length usually thought // to be between 3 and 3.5 miles
- alok99 3y agoThe editorial on Hz is particularly funny and insightful. // Beware the SI's broken definition // of Hz. You should treat the radian as being correct, as a fundamental // dimensionless property of the universe that falls out of pure math like // the Taylor series for sin[x], and you should treat the Hz as being a // fundamental property of incompetence by committee. ... // You are perfectly right. You are perfectly wrong. You look dumb and // unreasonable. The person arguing the opposite looks dumb and unreasonable. // // Hz == YOU CANNOT WIN // // (Insert "IT'S A TRAP" image here.)
- 3y ago
- PKop 3y agoNot a big fan of having social share buttons scattered across middle of workspace, a cleaner less cluttered look is better. Good work though, looks pretty thorough as far as conversions.
- KodyBerns99 3y agoThanks for the feedback. I will work on the UI part to improve user experience.
- amichal 3y agoI didnt look but http://unitsofmeasure.org http://unitsofmeasure.org which is part of the HL7 standard for electronic medical records might be an interesting source/reference It has zillions of base units and a algebra syntax for definitions of many more Edit: "common" units https://github.com/ucum-org/ucum/tree/main/common-units https://github.com/ucum-org/ucum/tree/main/common-units
- jandrese 3y agoOoh, this should be very useful when reading article written by American journalists.
- progbits 3y agoDoubtful since those usually use vague analogies to stadiums, pickup trucks and guns.
- teddyh 3y agoAnd washing machines¹. And small boulders². 1. <https://imgur.com/gallery/VI0B0nl https://imgur.com/gallery/VI0B0nl> 2. <https://twitter.com/SheriffAlert/status/1221881862244749315 https://twitter.com/SheriffAlert/status/1221881862244749315>
- jandrese 3y agoIf you already have 5,800 units what's the harm of adding "typical refrigerator (volume)", "typical washing machine (volume)", "American football field (area)", etc...?
- KodyBerns99 3y agoThanks for the feedback. I never said I am not going to add. This is the only reason I shared it here so that I can get some help in adding more units. I have already added football field in length category. Will add more soon.
- bashinator 3y agoWhat's the reason to use this over GNU Units? https://www.gnu.org/software/units/ https://www.gnu.org/software/units/
- KodyBerns99 3y agoMay be number of units and categories it supports. Plus I am adding more units.
- Faaak 3y agounits(1) is way more simpler to use though. Just type the input/output formulas and it will do the rest
- bashinator 3y agoI couldn't find a way of converting from US teaspoons to cubic light-seconds, which is my favorite demo of the GNU utility. Also, do you have a way of adding a time dimension to the conversions? E.g from kibibytes per day to megabits per second?
- BenjiWiebe 3y agoYou could maybe use the 'units' command line program's database of conversions.
- ivoras 3y agoHeh, doesn't fully support the furlong-firking-forthinght system :( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFF_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFF_system
- classified 3y ago*fortnight*
- huhtenberg 3y agoNo love for elbows either.
- myself248 3y agoHaving the units listed alphabetically rather than by size is weird. "Megabits/Minute" then "Megabits/Nanosecond" then "Megabits/Second"... ugh.
- generalizations 3y agoWell, it only makes sense to sort by size if the units are comparable. I guess we'd need a converter for that. Oh, wait...
- whartung 3y agoHas anyone found a more elegant treatment of calculating with units than the HP calculators? I'd love to have an HP48 CLI to do unit calcs with. .5 * 10_m/s^2 * (15_s)^2 = 1125_m Admittedly, the HPs interim results are a bit of a mess: sqrt(6.673E-11_N*m^2/kg^2 * 5.98E24_kg / 6780_km) = 242603.08_N^.5*m/(kg^.5*km^.5) But, this converts cleanly to m/s: 7671.8m/s Everything else I've found have been just super fiddly.
- amenghra 3y agoGive https://numpad.io/ https://numpad.io/ a try. It's not a CLI though.
- whartung 3y agoThis is very nice, thanks!
- sigstoat 3y agognu units can do that You have: .5 * (10 m/s^2) * (15 s)^2 You want: Definition: 1125 m You have: sqrt((6.673E-11 N*m^2/kg^2) * (5.98E24 kg) / (6780 km)) You want: Definition: 7671.783 m / s
- SAI_Peregrinus 3y agoTI's graphing calculators work essentially the same way. As does GNU Units.
- huhtenberg 3y agoWhat kind of a toy converter is this? Doesn't have even the most basic units, like Delisle temp scale. Bah, shame.
- tzs 3y agoIt looks quite extensive, and should cover almost all practical cases. The main limitation I see is that it seems you are limited to picking the units to convert between from predefined lists. If someone gave you say a volume specified in nmi ft^2 for instance and you wanted to convert it m^3 you'd have to do nmi to m and ft^2 to m^2 and then multiply the results to get nmi ft^2 to m^3 because nmi ft^2 is not on the volume unit list. Those cases are probably pretty rare. It is not often that you run in to people who give you say a gasoline consumption rate of 23 picoacres or give you a cookie recipe that calls for 1.6 barn megaparsecs of vanilla. (BTW, those are 0.04 gal/mile and 1 tsp, respectively).
- BenjiWiebe 3y agoI suppose you are aware of this, but GNU units perfectly handles both of your examples.
- loufe 3y agoI got into Qalculate! last year and I haven't found any units in my day to day work as an engineer that weren't built in. Unit conversion is good but the bundling of it with more of the math equation is the ultimate usability win for me. https://qalculate.github.io/ https://qalculate.github.io/
- mrob 3y agoI also use this. Units are type checking for equations. Qalculate lets you enter the unit for all your known quantities, and tells you the unit for your result. If you don't get the expected unit you know you did something wrong.
- annoyingnoob 3y agoLooks like the site is currently blocked by Quad9 DNS. > www.kodytools.com Server: dns9.quad9.net Address: 9.9.9.9 ** dns9.quad9.net can't find www.kodytools.com: Non-existent domain
- wombatpm 3y agoAs a chemical engineer, we would joke about using the worst units in problems. Had a professor specify a volumetric rate in hogsheads per fortnight for a problem once and density in stone per cubic rods
- somat 3y agoI just saw a fun video on the subject. So if you have not seen it here it is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkfIXUjkYqE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkfIXUjkYqE
- moralestapia 3y agoSmall typo! Molar Concenration -> Molar Concen(t)ration
- KodyBerns99 3y agoThanks... Corrected!
- chillbill 3y agoUsing chat gpt to build software is not good, this is not programming.
- jonathanberger 3y agoCool site! You might consider deleting the cookie notice? I run a similar site (dateful.com) and I promise the EU regulators don't come after sites like ours. :)
- tobinfricke 3y agoI wanted to put in a plug for my employer's open-sourced C++ units framework, called Au: https://github.com/aurora-opensource/au https://github.com/aurora-opensource/au The library incorporates dimensional units into the C++ type system with an emphasis on correctness (including considerations for overflow, rounding, loss of precision, etc) and minimal runtime overhead. As a very simple example of what using this library could look like, here is a tiny code snippet taken from one of the tutorials: constexpr double speed_mph = 65.0; constexpr double speed_mps = (miles / hour)(speed_mph).in(meters / second); In a larger program, of course, the whole point is to avoid using naked "doubles" (or floats or ints, etc) at all, and instead use the library's "Quantity" types, which encode information about their units. Conversions are done automatically, and incompatible operations become compile-time errors. const auto time = hours(1.0) const auto distance = miles(65.0) const auto average_speed = distance/time; The tutorials are a nice way to be introduced to the library: https://aurora-opensource.github.io/au/tutorial/ https://aurora-opensource.github.io/au/tutorial/ From a user's point of view (I am a physicist by training), I find the library wonderfully unobtrusive and "natural" to use.
- V1ndaar 3y agoNice, that looks very interesting. I'll remember it in case I need to do some C++ work in the future again! I developed a similar library for Nim, `unchained` [0]. Thanks to Nim's extensive macro system it's a pleasure to use (from a short look at the `au`'s docs my biased opinion is it beats `au` on usability :) ). [0]: https://github.com/SciNim/Unchained https://github.com/SciNim/Unchained
- imdsm 3y agoSomeone tell Randall Munroe
- dark-star 3y agoI randomly picked "Inductance" as category, and the "units" it provides are basically a dozen or so variants of the "Henry": Attohenry, Gigahenry, Centihenry, Exahenry, Kilohenry, Nanohenry, .... If this is how you get to "5000 units" then that feels a bit cheaty
- ac2023 3y agoKilogram is a unit of mass, not weight. Just an FYI.
- nebula8804 3y agoTwo notes: When I search for oz and ml nothing comes up. Also there should be a button to swap units like you have on xe.com (ability to swap currencies). Many cooking utensils I have at home are either in ml or oz but not both.
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- dTal 3y agoPeople always mention Frink and GNU Units, but the workhorse of desktop unit-aware calculation is, in my opinion, Qalculate. In addition to being a capable scientific calculator in its own right, its killer feature is the ability to throw 'x' anywhere into an equality, and it will solve for 'x'. AS well as making to/from unit conversion even easier this also often saves you having to rewrite physics equations to isolate the quantity of interest (and thus potentially screwing up factors when eg converting mm^2 to m^2). The composition of units + symbolic calculator is greater than the sum of its parts.
- nandalism 3y agoThere is also the [units] command from UNIX. I think the original was by Ken Thompson (AFAICR). https://www.unix.com/man-page/v7/1/units/ https://www.unix.com/man-page/v7/1/units/ $ units You have: 1 foot candle You want: lumens meter * 0.310896 / 3.2165097