Author Topic: NOAA WEATHER RADIO  (Read 149817 times)

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Offline hunter362

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Re: NOAA WEATHER RADIO
« Reply #650 on: July 05, 2017, 09:37:42 AM »
Success!  Tremendous job you all have done since January, came upon this thread last night looking for info on the dropdown stream list I saw on another site, started reading and followed the whole thread, 20 streams who's going to be 21... 30 40 50 and so on. It has turned out awsome!! everyone involved should feel proud of what has been accoplished and continues to get better!!

Bill

Offline Cutty Sark Sailor

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Re: NOAA WEATHER RADIO
« Reply #651 on: July 05, 2017, 10:19:51 AM »
Success!  Tremendous job you all have done since January, came upon this thread last night looking for info on the dropdown stream list I saw on another site, started reading and followed the whole thread, 20 streams who's going to be 21... 30 40 50 and so on. It has turned out awsome!! everyone involved should feel proud of what has been accoplished and continues to get better!!

Bill
Outstanding, BILL !  We'll get your fixed up as soon as we get our heads above water today!   Running a bit behind....Thanks for the kind words....
 


Offline saratogaWX

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Re: NOAA WEATHER RADIO
« Reply #652 on: July 05, 2017, 06:49:44 PM »
So, there's now a V1.04 available for the PWS standalone and template scripts (5-Jul-2017)

The primary changes are:
1) correcting the attribution for the original script to Doug of Chappellweather.com with the rest of us just modding it :)
2) adding a setting for $backgroundcolor for those who wish to control the background of the overall player page
3) in the template version, adding Settings.php entries so you can customize there and not have to modify the wxradio.php script itself.

Files changed:
NWR-radios.js  (in both versions)
radios.php  (in standalone)
wxradio.php (in template version)
include-wxradio.php (in template version)

Settings.php entries (for Saratoga template)
Code: [Select]
$SITE['WXRstartup'] = 'KEC49';   // override $startup in wxradio.php
$SITE['WXRprovider'] = true;     // override $streamprovider in wxradio.php
$SITE['WXRmaptype'] = 'terrain'; // override $mapType in wxradio.php
$SITE['WXRautoplay'] = true;     // override $autoplaystartup in wxradio.php
$SITE['WXRbackground'] = 'lavenderblush'; // override $backgroundColor in wxradio.php
// see https://www.w3schools.com/cssref/css_colors.asp for color names

See https://saratoga-weather.org/scripts-wxradio.php#wxradio for details and download.
Ken True/Saratoga, CA, USA main site: saratoga-weather.org
Davis VP1+ FARS, Blitzortung RED, GRLevel3, WD, WL, VWS, Cumulus, Meteobridge
Free weather PHP scripts/website templates - update notifications on Twitter saratogaWXPHP

Offline satcop

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Re: NOAA WEATHER RADIO
« Reply #653 on: July 06, 2017, 09:21:20 AM »
Thanks Ken! :grin:

With the introduction of Ken's player and the fact that it self updates from the master file, =D> I will be discontinuing support for the deluxe version of my player over the next month.  I have already switched my site over to Ken's player but I am maintaining for a short time the wxnoaaradio.php and its associated files because I know that many of you utilize those players for your sites.  Please consider Ken's version to be a MAJOR upgrade over wxnoaaradio.  \:D/

Bob

I am going to make an assumption that most of you have converted over to Ken's software by now.  I plan on discontinuing station updates and software support for wxnoaaradio.php and its associated include file as of July 22.  If there is anyone who needs me to maintain the files beyond that date please PM me.

Bob
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Offline Cutty Sark Sailor

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Re: NOAA WEATHER RADIO
« Reply #654 on: July 06, 2017, 11:05:15 AM »

Trying out multi-purpose
Stream Submission / Status Change /Update / Contact Form
http://noaaweatherradio.org/addstream/addstream.html
 


Offline Andy G

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Re: NOAA WEATHER RADIO
« Reply #655 on: July 06, 2017, 12:03:33 PM »

Trying out multi-purpose
Stream Submission / Status Change /Update / Contact Form
http://noaaweatherradio.org/addstream/addstream.html

Do you want people to give it a test run?
Once you can accept the universe as being something expanding into an infinite nothing which is something, wearing stripes with plaid is easy.
~Einstein


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Offline Cutty Sark Sailor

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Re: NOAA WEATHER RADIO
« Reply #656 on: July 06, 2017, 12:16:30 PM »

Trying out multi-purpose
Stream Submission / Status Change /Update / Contact Form
http://noaaweatherradio.org/addstream/addstream.html

Do you want people to give it a test run?
Sure.. try it... if anyone does, though, remember a few things...
1. If you're just 'testing' it, make sure you indicate that in the 'comment' so we won't
be trying to track a change or something!!!!
2. Your input goes to me and three other trusted folk who are admin on site... and saved in an archive file also.
3. You'll get at least one email reply from site, and possibly follow up from one or more of us...

any feedback will be appreciated! 
 


Offline ed2kayak

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Re: NOAA WEATHER RADIO
« Reply #657 on: July 07, 2017, 10:46:30 AM »
Kudos to everyone involved with this project. =D>

http://cvweather.org/wxradio.php
Ed
CoCoRaHS PA-CD-6,  Weather Underground KPAMECHA7, CWOP DW5425

Offline Cutty Sark Sailor

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Re: Quality
« Reply #658 on: July 11, 2017, 07:46:58 PM »
A new page: 
http://noaaweatherradio.org/quality/

"Save a Life, ...but Look Out For Flying Pigs"

... other stuff happenin' 'hind tha seens, 2
 


Offline Cutty Sark Sailor

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Re: NOAA WEATHER RADIO
« Reply #659 on: July 13, 2017, 06:43:14 AM »
 :roll:
heh... another weather freak and I were discussing the home-built ugly shown at
http://noaaweatherradio.org/howto.html#ant
and he commented:
"... The trick is where to put it without the wife saying it does not look nice."

I responded with this solution (originally phrased slightly differently)
"Whatcha do is tie a raccoon tail to the vertical,
glue some pigeon feathers on the plane elements, let 'em flutter,
...add couple tatters of cat fur,
and tell her it's a MeteoNuts Dream Catcher,
 inspired by Native American culture,
and is of significant historical interest."


Another issue solved.
 


Offline Cutty Sark Sailor

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Re: NOAA WEATHER RADIO
« Reply #660 on: July 14, 2017, 08:14:13 AM »
:roll:
heh... another weather freak and I were discussing the home-built ugly shown at
http://noaaweatherradio.org/howto.html#ant
and he commented:
"... The trick is where to put it without the wife saying it does not look nice."

I responded with this solution (originally phrased slightly differently)
"Whatcha do is tie a raccoon tail to the vertical,
glue some pigeon feathers on the plane elements, let 'em flutter,
...add couple tatters of cat fur,
and tell her it's a MeteoNuts Dream Catcher,
 inspired by Native American culture,
and is of significant historical interest."


Another issue solved.

...and speaking of issues:

"Quality Page" http://noaaweatherradio.org/quality/
....added 'Fix It' links in 'grid'..

 


Offline Jumpin Joe

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Re: NOAA WEATHER RADIO
« Reply #661 on: July 14, 2017, 09:00:40 AM »
:roll:
heh... another weather freak and I were discussing the home-built ugly shown at
http://noaaweatherradio.org/howto.html#ant
and he commented:
"... The trick is where to put it without the wife saying it does not look nice."

I responded with this solution (originally phrased slightly differently)
"Whatcha do is tie a raccoon tail to the vertical,
glue some pigeon feathers on the plane elements, let 'em flutter,
...add couple tatters of cat fur,
and tell her it's a MeteoNuts Dream Catcher,
 inspired by Native American culture,
and is of significant historical interest."


Another issue solved.

Gee Mike... I really appreciate all of your help. I told her what you said and got thrown out of the house!! ... just kidding. Going to find a good hiding place for it. Hope to have it built by tomorrow.

Joe
https://joesweather.info
Davis Vantage Pro 2 Plus 24-FARS Wireless
WeatherLink Live

Offline phillipdampier

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Re: NOAA WEATHER RADIO
« Reply #662 on: July 14, 2017, 09:27:36 PM »
It might be useful to put some ratings on the /quality/ page for each stream to give us an idea of how we are doing. A lot of times, feed providers may simply not be aware of the issues on their streams, and by putting it on a different page, you can subtly rate the streams without embarrassing anyone on the main page. I really believe a lot of the audio variability has to do with the weather radios themselves. I can usually pick out who is using a Reecom or Midland radio just based on the audio fidelity of those two units. Some of the tinny audio comes from those handheld or cheap Chinese units that are worse than landline quality. It's almost too bad the weather service doesn't supply free radios to those with a long record of streaming.  :-)  My Midland WR300 has been streaming audio 24/7 for more than a decade with no problems.

We might want to develop some ratings pages for different weather radio as a public service for consumers (and feed providers). I have found Reecom and certain Midland models to be excellent, as well as Sangean.

La Crosse, Sharper Image, Oregon Scientific, Sharper Image and Spectra... not so much.

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr/info/nwrrcvr.html is NOAA's page of "approved" radios, although the criteria isn't as good as it should be.


Offline Cutty Sark Sailor

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Re: NOAA WEATHER RADIO
« Reply #663 on: July 15, 2017, 11:08:01 AM »
An excellent thought, for our purposes it may be a bit of 'overkill'...
But this is a community project, and if you'd like to create and maintain such an addition, we can see how the rest feel about it...  the current admin team has about all it can handle.
For one, even in our present configuration, Ken spent many hours developing back-end scripts to help the team in auditing streams... it's a lot simpler and faster now, but still very much an 'admin' chore! And very much 'subjective'... even with the 'broad' criteria we're using now for 'quality', each of us has a slightly different 'ear' on it at times!  Also we've noted that the 'quality' of a given stream can vary during the course of the day, for many reasons!

Incidentally, the new PWS scripts the team produced will sync back to the master files on NOAA Weather Radio ORG when it updates... I'm not sure, but I think they look for changes hourly, and self update with active streams only... I'm a bit behind in that area...  ](*,)

Generally, although the 'team' hasn't really discussed it in depth, I think the basic 'paradigm' is "a degraded stream is better than NO stream" in most locations, even though we may 'flag' it as 'marginal quality'.. we're reluctant to 'disable'.. and are more prone to 'disable' a 'worse' stream if there is an 'alternate' available. They're 'flagged' on the main list for the 'user' as well as the provider.

To see "how we're doing" simply compare your stream to either the 'reference track' or one of the 'disabled' mp3 tracks. Set your encoder within the published guidelines, and except for reception, you should be good to go.

The major quality factors and possible solutions are listed in the grid on "quality" page... and generally the biggest offenders are simply due to the provider failing to check and / or compare his own stream with others or the reference!

Reception is the biggest woe, followed very closely by, volume levels, single channel, and aliasing... hum is a prevalent artifact, and there's many a reason for that...
Personally, from a 'user" perspective, the 'volume' difference is my biggest pet peeve.. for an extreme example hear the "Bad Experience" audio track... lots of 'users' will move from feed to feed as much out of curiousity as for 'need"...

I too use the midland WR-300 ... two of 'em... one for Frankfort KY, which feeds directly from Broadwave, and the other for Owenton KY which feeds from BUTT to WxRadio Dyndns... The Frankfort Rcvr uses the built in rod, and Owenton has the homebuilt 'ugly' attached, since I'm 'fringe' for that transmitter... also have a Kaito portable with excellent speaker quality, but streams virtually the same as the Midlands, and cost more. Also have an old Radio Shack hand-held with lousy speaker, but streams about the same as the Midlands and Kaito...
BTW, the Owenton transmitter reception is used for the "poor signal - solved" audio example.

Personally, I'd hate to see us get involved with consumer / provider 'suggestions'... for several reasons:
First, it's difficult enough to entice someone to begin streaming, it seems. Look at all the "which station should I buy" threads and discussions...?
Heck, start cheap if that's what you own, get it online, ... a radio can always be upgraded if that's really the source of a quality issue!

Makes us look too commercial.
...and  how would you rate the Raspberry Pi RTL SDR, whose streams also vary in quality, and which we've numerous providers?
 
The device itself is immaterial for our puposes if the providers get too far out of whack with our established 'experiential' guidelines for streams... and don't check themselves online frequently. There's some fancy radios out there providing crappy streams.





« Last Edit: July 15, 2017, 11:17:06 AM by Cutty Sark Sailor »
 


Offline ValentineWeather

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Re: NOAA WEATHER RADIO
« Reply #664 on: July 15, 2017, 12:21:21 PM »
We can't all balance stereo stream.  I've tried the broadcast.m3v and it has no control, even going into sound card itself channels won't balance as you can see I'm 100% on #2 and can only raise level to -20.
Randy

Offline Cutty Sark Sailor

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Re: NOAA WEATHER RADIO
« Reply #665 on: July 15, 2017, 01:41:59 PM »
We can't all balance stereo stream.  I've tried the broadcast.m3v and it has no control, even going into sound card itself channels won't balance as you can see I'm 100% on #2 and can only raise level to -20.
That's strange. I use a mono out to 2 channel splitter into L & R line inputs, and only time I had that issue was with a bad 'splitter' one channel was erratic... they should split the mono equally.

I've run M32 BUTT Broadwave MIXXX and some others with no issues on various machines splitting the audio out as two channels....
 


Offline ValentineWeather

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Re: NOAA WEATHER RADIO
« Reply #666 on: July 15, 2017, 02:23:09 PM »
I'm not running any 2 channel splitter its single line all the way from radio into soundcard. I also have a ground loop Noise Isolator inline which was needed to remove hum.
Randy

Offline Cutty Sark Sailor

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Re: NOAA WEATHER RADIO
« Reply #667 on: July 15, 2017, 05:20:35 PM »
I'm not running any 2 channel splitter its single line all the way from radio into soundcard.
...
...which is why I hinted at the splitter...  :roll: ...should give you balanced channels.
 


Offline Bunty

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Re: Quality
« Reply #668 on: July 17, 2017, 02:34:57 AM »
A new page: 
http://noaaweatherradio.org/quality/

"Save a Life, ...but Look Out For Flying Pigs"

... other stuff happenin' 'hind tha seens, 2

I think the  "marginal quality" indicator can be removed from my stream now.  I fixed the problem and now quality is surely better than the average stream.  I had set the microphone input level far too high and microphone boost set to max on the HP laptop.  So boost is off and mic level set at 50%.  Receiver used is a Sangean.

Stillwater NOAA Weather Radio:  http://stillwaterweather.com/wx/wxradio.php
« Last Edit: July 17, 2017, 02:38:25 AM by Bunty »

Also the 2nd home page using modified AltDashboard 6.95 at http://stillwaterweather.com/2ndhome.php

Offline Cutty Sark Sailor

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Re: NOAA WEATHER RADIO
« Reply #669 on: July 17, 2017, 05:35:19 AM »
A new page: 
http://noaaweatherradio.org/quality/

"Save a Life, ...but Look Out For Flying Pigs"

... other stuff happenin' 'hind tha seens, 2

I think the  "marginal quality" indicator can be removed from my stream now.  I fixed the problem and now quality is surely better than the average stream.  I had set the microphone input level far too high and microphone boost set to max on the HP laptop.  So boost is off and mic level set at 50%.  Receiver used is a Sangean.

Stillwater NOAA Weather Radio:  http://stillwaterweather.com/wx/wxradio.php
Good Show, Bunty!

...MIC input could be a bit awkward, since it's already expecting a 'lower' level input signal than a 'line in' in most configurations... easy to 'overdrive'... especially when using an 'earphone' or 'external speaker' output from a receiver...
Glad you mentioned that, we might should add that as a "gotcha" to the text somewhere...
Mike

Did add it:  http://noaaweatherradio.org/howto.html#levels  Thanks Bunty!
« Last Edit: July 17, 2017, 06:30:07 AM by Cutty Sark Sailor »
 


Offline Cutty Sark Sailor

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Re: NOAA WEATHER RADIO
« Reply #670 on: July 20, 2017, 10:53:17 AM »
Folks, please check http://noaaweatherradio.org/about/
.. P.M. me if there any obvious errors, mistakes, etc...
We've tried our best to acknowledge ALL you fine folks who've offered help, support, good vibes... from the tiniest 'kudo' to the 'major players'...  Some of you, we only have an "alias" for, if you'd like your first name used, P.M. details... a few don't have site listed, if that needs updating, tell me PM...
It's a Community Deal,
and we hope we've omitted no one...
If that's happened, P.M. me and we'll try to get it fixed...

While there's still work to do and features to feature and fix,
a big thank you from the cross-eyed, brain frazzled development team! 
 


Offline tim273

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Re: NOAA WEATHER RADIO
« Reply #671 on: July 20, 2017, 11:14:55 AM »
=D>  UU

Offline gwwilk

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Re: NOAA WEATHER RADIO
« Reply #672 on: July 20, 2017, 11:19:03 AM »
Agreed!
=D>  UU
Wow!  You're also a historian extraordinaire!

Above all, you were the 'Spark' behind this project, Mike.  (Sorry, couldn't resist...)
Regards, Jerry Wilkins
gwwilk@gmail.com

Offline Cutty Sark Sailor

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Re: NOAA WEATHER RADIO
« Reply #673 on: July 20, 2017, 11:46:02 AM »
Agreed!
=D>  UU
Wow!  You're also a historian extraordinaire!
John Sacrey did the initial hard work on that history... rest of us just pulled it together and polished.... Can't say enough about John, Bob, especially KEN... , rest of you.  What a great bunch... you know, on that page we've 44 direct acknowledgements of support, from 22 states and provinces, and at least 3 countries....  #-o
 


Offline Cutty Sark Sailor

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NO Stream. or Stream active but NO Audio
« Reply #674 on: July 21, 2017, 10:08:11 AM »
Some of this may be related to Windows 10 updates, on the automatic thing...
I've noticed on one of my machines, and also discussing with some others, that
sometimes the Encoder doesn't restart, or it restarts, but has 'forgotten' setting
for the audio source... maybe because setting wasn't saved...
That encoder 'setting' not saved may explain a few 'noise problems' or 'aliasing' after a
power outage, for e.g., or a system update and or restart.

Stream connects but no audio may simply be the radio has turned itself off, or didn't turn back on
after power outage, or an alert, -- or because the source wasn't 'saved' in encoder, but auto start and connect / mount-point were.
Even the 'line-in' audio in WIN not set as 'default' and saved.
« Last Edit: July 21, 2017, 10:13:29 AM by Cutty Sark Sailor »
 


 

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