Topic: Audio Alerts For severe weather

[jwyman]

Ok  you smart wennies, I have a challenge for you...

I am thinking about providing audio alerts to my NWS alerts when the weather gets bad (i.e. thunderstorm warnings and tornado realted alerts). I had a user come to me the other day and ask if that could be done.
If we get a new warning issued, i'd like to play a related audio alert with it. Has anyone else done this or is this something new? Also, I only want to change this when there is a new alert, not everytime the page is reloaded. I don't want the alert to play over and over and over again....

Jim

[WeatherHost]

Look into this:

http://www.wxforum.net/index.php?topic=710.msg11778

It works great for a local LAN, but I don't know if there is anyway for it to work for a distant web viewer.

[capeweather]

You could try using Kens 'Top Warning Script' which shows the latest advisories. You would have to modify the code for each output but I bet it would work if you had it include a custom audio file.

http://saratoga-weather.org/scripts-rss.php#topwarn

[jwyman]

Thanks Cape

I already built my own alert script based on Ken's older NWS warnings/advisories feed. I guess I could put it in there, but I don't want it to play everytime it refreshes...

Jim

[tbweather]

Jim-
I had a similar situation on a non-weather related website I have (www.buoy2.com). I wanted to have a short sound play only when the visitor first came to the site and didn't play if they returned to the home page.

My solution was not very elegant, but it seems to accomplish what I wanted. I set up a page identical to the index page but without the sound. The "Home" links on the site refer to this second page. You could set up a page like that on your site and have the refresh refer to the page without the audio alert.

I'm sure there are better ways to accomplish this, but that is what worked with my somewhat limited html knowledge level.