Topic: NOAA WEATHER RADIO

[tim273]

'Bout to fade away... no interest?

One more thing, if we can somehow get the word to Tunein Radio, there's a much of followers for NOAA Weather Radio, but they all point to Weather Undergound:

http://tunein.com/search/?query=weather%20radio
http://tunein.com/radio/NOAA-Weather-Radio-16255-s88255/

[satcop]

update:  Ok streaming to the world, for Manassas, now to start Hagerstown as well as have Mike update the link to the Manassas feed.  Also need to fix that boot bug.

............................
Okay, I have it streaming internally.  Haven't been able to get the start on boot script to work, but starting the stream from the command line starts it up.  Need to figure out what I did wrong there.

Now I originally wanted to try and get it to pick up Hagerstown, which I can receive when the dongal is connected directly to one of my other computers, btw the scanner can't receive it, too much noise).  When I brought the Hagerstown signal up on the pi the stream was clearly being overloaded by the much stronger Manassas signal.  I switched the frequency to the Manassas channel and the audio quality is much better than what I get off of my old receiver which is currently the one supplying the data stream. 

Two ideas, I am tempted to try the Hagerstown feed using MikeVs method on my computer using SDR and changing my feed for Manassas to the Pi.  The other possibility, as I am not quite sure what the parameters are on the command string, is there a command to narrow the IF or lower the gain to get that overload from Manassas out of the feed so that I could still use it for Hagerstown?

Next step is opening the stream beyond the internal access.

Bob

[Cutty Sark Sailor]

Got Bob's Pi into the player...
One note: the 'stream link' really should end with ".mp3" if it's going on the web player(s) we've installed
Bob's worked without it (!?), but I had to work around a couple using "?.mp3" as ending source link...

Loaded a second version a few minutes ago, with linking back to you streaming weather site, a pop-up version, and search feature....  http://ourspecial.net/NOAANET3


Mike

[Andy G]

Hi Mike

Really looking good looking forward to the final product. I noticed the link to my site http://www.sunprairieweather.com/ is mispelled and takes me to http://sunrrairieweather.com/ the first r should be a p. Thanks for all the hard work.

Andy

[tim273]

Got Bob's Pi into the player...
One note: the 'stream link' really should end with ".mp3" if it's going on the web player(s) we've installed
Bob's worked without it (!?), but I had to work around a couple using "?.mp3" as ending source link...

Loaded a second version a few minutes ago, with linking back to you streaming weather site, a pop-up version, and search feature....  http://ourspecial.net/NOAANET3


Mike

Looks awesome, great job!

[Cutty Sark Sailor]

Hi Mike

Really looking good looking forward to the final product. I noticed the link to my site http://www.sunprairieweather.com/ is mispelled and takes me to http://sunrrairieweather.com/ the first r should be a p. Thanks for all the hard work.

Andy

Duh... I blame it on 7 decades of tired fingers... sorry about that, Andy! Fixed...

[Andy G]

Hi Mike

Really looking good looking forward to the final product. I noticed the link to my site http://www.sunprairieweather.com/ is mispelled and takes me to http://sunrrairieweather.com/ the first r should be a p. Thanks for all the hard work.

Andy

Duh... I blame it on 7 decades of tired fingers... sorry about that, Andy! Fixed...

Thanks. No troubles.

[Otis]

Mike et al., this is developing nicely - good job Mike.
Now I need to work on my radio reception, not the best a lot of the time  .

[Cutty Sark Sailor]

Hey Otis... yea I noticed we seemed to be connecting, but no audio most of today...

Been a busier day than I thought it would be.. I think we're up to 14 feeds... not counting Ray Stevens and the flyin' pigs in test position 1

Gotta decide which player to use... PITA trying to keep two updated this afternoon with the few newbies, correcting dumb finger errors, and changing  a few URLs...

[Cutty Sark Sailor]

14 streams, now...

Ok... I just had 1 thing confirmed... it's a waste of time, for numerous reasons, to try to have any simple 'name' for most transmitters... NOAA doesn't know how to refer to 'em half the time... so

1.  You name it.  as in "state" "area you think is appropriate" "Frequency"...  If some of you first 14 want to rename your 'area', PM or Email me, and we'll do that.

2. My feeling is to go with the newer player (http://ourspecial.net/NOAANET3). I want to check with the original developer and see if he can simplify it for our purposes... the scripts are much larger than necessary, for our purpose.. and see if he can resolve one little irritation I have, that you may not have discovered yet...

3. I may make a minor change in the URL when it's said and done.. partly to hold the folders (2) and (3) for other purposes:

4. This may be a good place to collect some streaming scripts, web-page streaming scripts, etc / how to's / also... if nothing else, at least a starting place to collect things .folks can get their hands on quickly.... maybe...if would prove useful?

5. SATCOP has volunteered to help with this when possible, so if I don't respond, maybe send Bob a PM and we'll get things going...

[Mark / Ohio]

I like the look of the player!     I put a link back to you on my website below my own link.

[Maumelle Weather]

Hi Folks,

Like the new player, Mike. As an FYI to everyone else. I am working with Mike on a map that has all of the stations on it, based on their location, like the old WU map had.  You can click on a square, but it will open a player up in your browser. It is not currently associated with Mike's player.

John

[Andy G]

Hi Folks,

Like the new player, Mike. As an FYI to everyone else. I am working with Mike on a map that has all of the stations on it, based on their location, like the old WU map had.  You can click on a square, but it will open a player up in your browser. It is not currently associated with Mike's player.

John

Like the map John. Looks good.

[cospringswx]

Hi Folks,

Like the new player, Mike. As an FYI to everyone else. I am working with Mike on a map that has all of the stations on it, based on their location, like the old WU map had.  You can click on a square, but it will open a player up in your browser. It is not currently associated with Mike's player.

John

That is fantastic. I've got to get my yellow dot on there.

[mikev]

'Bout to fade away... no interest?

One more thing, if we can somehow get the word to Tunein Radio, there's a much of followers for NOAA Weather Radio, but they all point to Weather Undergound:

http://tunein.com/search/?query=weather%20radio
http://tunein.com/radio/NOAA-Weather-Radio-16255-s88255/

I submitted a bunch of update info to TuneIn for the Manassas VA station, since I was the one streaming it through WU before... they updated it to link to my server, but they changed none of the other information that I had submitted (and the WU link even shows up as a secondary source still). But that's better than the last time I tried to lay claim to the station record on TuneIn... they wouldn't even add my own server to it before. Regardless, the 8000+ people that have saved KHB36 as a favorite still have something to listen to when they want to. And many other cities have several thousand "favorites" as well.

Maybe after WU's formal announcement on 3/1 about no longer providing NWR streaming, the other information will be able to be adjusted.

[mikev]

Two ideas, I am tempted to try the Hagerstown feed using MikeVs method on my computer using SDR and changing my feed for Manassas to the Pi.  The other possibility, as I am not quite sure what the parameters are on the command string, is there a command to narrow the IF or lower the gain to get that overload from Manassas out of the feed so that I could still use it for Hagerstown?

Next step is opening the stream beyond the internal access.

Can't really help on command line parameters for rtl_fm... I would be surprised if there weren't a way to narrow the IF and/or adjust the RF gain... any kind of audio filtering probably isn't available without adding yet another package to the mix though. I don't have a Pi (though this is piquing my interest in getting one), so I'm not going to be much help there though.

As to opening your stream for internet access... you'll need to create a port forward on your router to allow access to icecast wherever you might have it running. BTW, you only need one instance of Icecast on your network. If you're going to have two streams, host them both on the same icecast server, rather than setting up two servers and needing two port forwards (btw, if you do set up two servers, they can't run on the same port number).

If you hope to handle a larger number of users, though, it might be better to have Icecast running on something more powerful than a Pi. Yeah, that sorta blows the "all-in-one" functionality, but if you find 50+ users wanting to connect when there are severe storms rolling through the area, that might just overload a Pi.

When my stream was running on WU, I would easily see 40-50+ people listening during severe weather. When the derecho passed through in 2012, there were over 150 people listening, IIRC. I'm hoping that having the TuneIn listing pointing to my server will help retain those kinds of numbers going forward... only time will tell.

[satcop]

As to opening your stream for internet access... you'll need to create a port forward on your router to allow access to icecast wherever you might have it running. BTW, you only need one instance of Icecast on your network. If you're going to have two streams, host them both on the same icecast server, rather than setting up two servers and needing two port forwards (btw, if you do set up two servers, they can't run on the same port number).

If you hope to handle a larger number of users, though, it might be better to have Icecast running on something more powerful than a Pi. Yeah, that sorta blows the "all-in-one" functionality, but if you find 50+ users wanting to connect when there are severe storms rolling through the area, that might just overload a Pi.

Hi Mike, brought the Hagerstown link up yesterday and "Cutty" added it to the group last night with no problem, just added the virtual cable to the pc.  Reoriented things today with the antenna in a much better location,  and moved the Hagerstown link off of the main computer, all in all, should be better audio on that link now. 

Will watch the load on the Pi server, haven't seen that heavy of a load yet, if so I can move things around a bit on the Manassas link, the pi is dedicated to the feed, might want to try a load test to see what happens.  Hagerstown is on a cheap laptop doing the work with sdr# etc.  Most users I saw on the feed last summer was 7 at any one time, things may change with the loss of WU will see.

Bob

[tim273]

I submitted a bunch of update info to TuneIn for the Manassas VA station, since I was the one streaming it through WU before... they updated it to link to my server, but they changed none of the other information that I had submitted (and the WU link even shows up as a secondary source still). But that's better than the last time I tried to lay claim to the station record on TuneIn... they wouldn't even add my own server to it before. Regardless, the 8000+ people that have saved KHB36 as a favorite still have something to listen to when they want to. And many other cities have several thousand "favorites" as well.

Maybe after WU's formal announcement on 3/1 about no longer providing NWR streaming, the other information will be able to be adjusted.

How did you do that, submit update info to Tunein that is?

[tim273]

I submitted a bunch of update info to TuneIn for the Manassas VA station, since I was the one streaming it through WU before... they updated it to link to my server, but they changed none of the other information that I had submitted (and the WU link even shows up as a secondary source still). But that's better than the last time I tried to lay claim to the station record on TuneIn... they wouldn't even add my own server to it before. Regardless, the 8000+ people that have saved KHB36 as a favorite still have something to listen to when they want to. And many other cities have several thousand "favorites" as well.

Maybe after WU's formal announcement on 3/1 about no longer providing NWR streaming, the other information will be able to be adjusted.

How did you do that, submit update info to Tunein that is?

Never mind, I found it I think, I sent an update for mine too.  The most peak listeners I've ever seen on my stream was 215 and that happened once when there was a tornado near downtown Minneapolis back in 2011 (the year of the tornado).  So hopefully the Pi can handle that, we'll see I set my limit to 250 based on that.

Speaking of limits, here's a test they did with Icecast, but that was on some pretty high end hardware: http://icecast.org/loadtest

[phillipdampier]

I am not very technically adept but am prepared to point my feed of Kha53 Rochester NY --- still running Edcast --- wherever will get it back online. If we are supposed to run something else, it would be VERY helpful to create a simple package to download with a plain text configuration file with step by step directions for those of us who are just not able to write our own scripts.

A feed max of 5 listeners is probably too small. When my feed went down, I had 20 messages from listeners on my voice mail within 24 hours. My feed was used by boaters and rural listeners plus the visually impaired community and was running for over 8 years. I will invest in hardware if we need to go in a different direction. Right now it is a Windows 10 dedicated machine.

[Mark / Ohio]

I am working with Mike on a map that has all of the stations on it, based on their location, like the old WU map had.  ...

Thanks John!  I like the map!   

Question though as I'm still trying to figure how many listeners I can handle from home.  I have ScannerCast streaming 16 Kbps running on Acer Aspire One netbook along with my other software averages around 30-60% CPU.  So it stays busy already but more concerned about my internet connection which upload is only 0.4 Mbps.  So am I correct when I calculate 400/16= Maximum # of simultaneous connections at 25?   

Given this connection also is uploading and downloading other data for the weather station along with anything else I might be doing on the net in the house at the time, I'm wondering if I really have the throughput for more then a dozen connections to remain stable without buffering or disconnects?  Most I've recorded so far is 6 concurrent connections per the ScannerCast logging.   

Also AT&T has usage caps.  (150 Gb / month for DSL, I usually run 1-2 Gb per day.)  I've never been close to max out the cap but never the less something to consider.

[mikev]

How did you do that, submit update info to Tunein that is?

Never mind, I found it I think, I sent an update for mine too.  The most peak listeners I've ever seen on my stream was 215 and that happened once when there was a tornado near downtown Minneapolis back in 2011 (the year of the tornado).  So hopefully the Pi can handle that, we'll see I set my limit to 250 based on that.

Speaking of limits, here's a test they did with Icecast, but that was on some pretty high end hardware: http://icecast.org/loadtest

If you're streaming at 16 Kbps, 250 users would equal 4 Mbps of outgoing data your server would be pushing. As long as your internet connection has that capacity for upload, you'll be doing good. Of course, I know some folks are streaming at much higher bit rates, which will either significantly increase your speed requirement or significantly reduce your listener capacity (250 users at 64 Kbps would require 16 Mbps of upload speed).

If you have an internet connection with an upload speed of 2 Mbps or less, I would highly recommend both a low bit rate stream (so as to leave more internet speed available for you to use) and to use an outside server... you're not going to be able to handle a surge of users from a server running at your home.

Unfortunately, I don't know of any free streaming audio server providers (at least that will currently accept NWR streams; I've tried pushing RadioReference/Broadcastify, but they seem unwilling to accept NOAA Weather Radio streams on their service). The hosting service I'm paying for costs me $5/mo for a full Linux virtual private server... I can provide more numbers/info if desired.

[tim273]

If you're streaming at 16 Kbps, 250 users would equal 4 Mbps of outgoing data your server would be pushing. As long as your internet connection has that capacity for upload, you'll be doing good. Of course, I know some folks are streaming at much higher bit rates, which will either significantly increase your speed requirement or significantly reduce your listener capacity (250 users at 64 Kbps would require 16 Mbps of upload speed).

If you have an internet connection with an upload speed of 2 Mbps or less, I would highly recommend both a low bit rate stream (so as to leave more internet speed available for you to use) and to use an outside server... you're not going to be able to handle a surge of users from a server running at your home.

Unfortunately, I don't know of any free streaming audio server providers (at least that will currently accept NWR streams; I've tried pushing RadioReference/Broadcastify, but they seem unwilling to accept NOAA Weather Radio streams on their service). The hosting service I'm paying for costs me $5/mo for a full Linux virtual private server... I can provide more numbers/info if desired.

For mine, 250 is probably a number I'll never reach, probably more like 100 to 150 max on a severe weather day.  I've thought about setting up Icecast on a outside server, but I want to see how it goes with what I have first.  If I get to the point where it's too much, I might do that.  I already have an outside server for other purposes at Linode (https://www.linode.com/pricing), which is a fairly inexpensive option for what you get (as low as $5 a month).

[Cutty Sark Sailor]

MikeV has it correct...
the page uses your bandwidth... no way can I presently afford a VPS or Dedicated server with a media server included..
Down the road who knows?  But if we get everyone together at one point, if nothing else, we have a starting point.

As MikeV said, a bitrate much higher than 16 is pretty much wasted... although I do currently use 24 or 56 ...
Theoretically,  8 kHz should carry the stream without aliasing, but 16 would be a good compromise if you experience degradion ot 8 kHz... a lot of the 'junk' is caused by initial reception or transmission, not the digital part.. good, clean original should give a pretty good 'output' at 8 in many cases, most of the time, ... but 16 is much better in some respects, over time.
first sign of overload on your bw would be the stream would lose it's short buffering, and drop in and out...
or stop completely...and folks would just break the connection

Also, the "New" platform (NOAANET3} cannot access, or isn't allowed to access, any source with "https". the platform does Run through Cloudflare for security, compression, etc. perhaps one reason the newer FireFox gets a bit confused as the script 'checks' a few things before initializing the player... reload the page if doesn't show loading timer in few seconds.

[phillipdampier]

Unfortunately, I don't know of any free streaming audio server providers (at least that will currently accept NWR streams; I've tried pushing RadioReference/Broadcastify, but they seem unwilling to accept NOAA Weather Radio streams on their service). The hosting service I'm paying for costs me $5/mo for a full Linux virtual private server... I can provide more numbers/info if desired.

I would be interested to know who you are using. I added my two cents over on Radioreference. It does seem odd they will host obscure or rural streams like amateur or stormspotter weathernets but won't host NWS streams that do attract many more listeners than those. Maybe if enough people ask that will change.

I do know hosting audio streaming can get expensive because the hosting company worries about sudden traffic spikes. Most ISPs also technically ban residential customers running servers on their internet connections as well, but as long as they don't create a noticeable problem, this is rarely enforced.