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WeatherStar 4000+: Weather Channel Simulator
- phkahler 1y agoOh, man I thought I was going to see an AI generated Heather Tesch.
- gdubs 1y agoWell, this wins the internet for today — pack it up everybody. Seriously though beyond just being awesome, this site is such a good experience on mobile. Really well crafted nostalgia vibes.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jader201 1y agoIt will only be the true 90s Weather Channel when I hear some Rippingtons playing in the background. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndaMC-Ug4Jg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndaMC-Ug4Jg
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y agoI remember instrumental covers of Pink Floyd.
- huslage 1y agoI bought all of the Rippingtons albums because I heard them on the Weather Channel...I was inexplicably into smooth jazz at the time.
- polygot 1y agoNot sure how they're going to go around that corner with that vehicle
- gosub100 1y agoIf you like the music more than the data, search YouTube for "weather channel vaporwave". I find it relaxing
- ndiddy 1y agoIf you're interested in this, someone on YouTube got a WeatherStar 4000 (device that sat at cable headends and generated the local weather report graphics) and wrote all new firmware to make 90's style weather reports on the real hardware. This was necessary because the original firmware was downloaded over satellite so it's now lost. It looks basically identical to the real Weather Channel from the 90s, except it doesn't have their logo in the corner (I guess for trademark reasons). Here's a stream of his WeatherStar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66mSjXpfD2c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66mSjXpfD2c
- jjk7 1y agoIf you read his devlog, he started this project not knowing assembly or C... teaching himself as he went. Incredible.
- jimmydddd 1y agoImportantly, it also plays Weather Channel-esque background music.
- jazzyjackson 1y agoThanks for mentioning that, had me digging around for where I can find the music. The youtube link lead me to the project's hackaday log, which is extremely detailed but lacks any mention of music [0] The submission link's github page [1] links to a website listing all the tracks that ever played [2], explaining they dropped the music from the project so as not to deal with copyright claims. too bad fair use isn't clear enough to apply here, I think its a relatively transformative use and doesn't compete with the original. [0] https://hackaday.io/project/178144-reverse-engineering-the-weather-star-4000#j-discussions-title https://hackaday.io/project/178144-reverse-engineering-the-w... [1] https://github.com/netbymatt/ws4kp https://github.com/netbymatt/ws4kp [2] https://twcclassics.com/audio/artists.html https://twcclassics.com/audio/artists.html
- dylan604 1y agowhy would fair use be at play here? TWC would have paid a license fee through ASCAP or whomever for the rights to broadcast that music. They didn't just download a bunch of mp3 files from Napster and try to disrupt broadcasting.
- jb1991 1y agoWhen I visit this site, it just keeps automatically refreshing the homepage over and over every second.
- dbg31415 1y agoLove it! Music is a bit too fast, I miss the sleepy jazz feel from the 90s. (=
- jasonpeacock 1y agoNice! It'd be helpful to have the options stored in the URL, especially the kiosk mode, so it can be bookmarked. And allow <esc> to exit kiosk mode.
- trvr 1y agoIt seems if you left click "Copy Permalink" that the site will generate a massive URL with all of your options. One of them is "settings-kiosk-checkbox". Change it to "true" in your copied URL and that should work.
- jasonpeacock 1y agoThanks! I didn't even notice the obvious share link below the options :p
- crims0n 1y agoVery neat! I put it in kiosk mode and could almost hear the hum of a CRT.
- dylan604 1y agohum? you mean a very high pitched squeal?
- ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 1y agoLooks like this was the original version? https://github.com/vbguyny/ws4kp https://github.com/vbguyny/ws4kp
- xp84 1y agoIndeed, though significant work has been done on this one, detailed in the readme. On the other hand, the one you’ve linked has since the fork added a “custom RSS feed in the scroller” feature.
- Chihuahua0633 1y agoMan, I want to be able to have this as an actual stream on my TV!
- joezydeco 1y agoFollow what this person did: https://blog.scottlabs.io/2024/02/weather-like-its-1999/ https://blog.scottlabs.io/2024/02/weather-like-its-1999/
- lordfrito 1y agoGreat stuff! Reminds me of when the web used to be fun...
- lobsterthief 1y agoSame here. I’ve been doing web design and development for 24 years now so I’ve witnessed the full pivot towards homogenization of interfaces; it’s necessary for commerce and usability at this point. But once in a while I’ll throw together a microsite like this to return to my roots a bit. This is my latest (a basic Trump presidency countdown clock): https://timeleft.now/ https://timeleft.now/
- Vitamin_Sushi 1y agoLove the WS4000. I've been meaning to make a WS4000 like application I can throw on my firestick and just have it play all day on my TV as a side project. As someone without any GUI or graphics programming knowledge, it's definitely been a nice learning experience.
- dustinsterk 1y agoPlease share if you go down this road!
- absurdo 1y agoI miss this late 80s early 90s jazz fusion.
- laweijfmvo 1y agoI yearn for Local on the 8's
- parpfish 1y agohalf expecting this to veer into some analog horror
- throwanem 1y agoThe horror lies in seeing 2025 with eyes from 1990.
- post_break 1y agoI run one of these on my desk 24x7 with a raspberry pi and a 3D printed monitor that simulates a CRT. I tried with a real CRT TV but the frequency and having it at the side of my main monitor started to make me sick. https://imgur.com/a/wD2EINO https://imgur.com/a/wD2EINO https://github.com/vbguyny/ws4kp https://github.com/vbguyny/ws4kp
- agscala 1y agoNice! Which screen is that? All of the screens I've found are widescreen and I'd like to do a similar project
- post_break 1y agohttps://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5564208 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5564208
- shortstuffsushi 1y agoIt seems like this could make a good addition for the folks working on EmuVR @ https://www.emuvr.net/ https://www.emuvr.net/
- wiether 1y agoI love the contrast between using a book to raise your main screen... and having a whole computer dedicated to showing weather 24/7!
- post_break 1y agoYou missed the irony of the monitor sitting on a NUC that is probably 1000x more powerful than the Pi running the weather lol.
- exikyut 1y agoWhat do you mean by "sick"? Headaches from coil/flyback transformer whine? Perceptible flicker due to the CRT being in the corner of your peripheral vision? I'm a bit susceptible to noises myself.
- halyconWays 1y agoI love this
- noduerme 1y agoThis page on an Android phone displays briefly and then crashes the tab in Chrome, and crashes the entire app in Firefox. Neat trick.
- duxup 1y agoVery cool. Music is a bit too high fidelity ;)
- languagehacker 1y agoThank you for the vaporwave vibes!
- barbazoo 1y agoWow, that's horrible, I love it!
- doawoo 1y agoI have a version (probably not exactly the same software for the head unit) of this on an SGI O2 sitting around including all the environment scripts and the HTML manuals. I have a tar.gz of it that I should upload to an archive location.
- CursedSilicon 1y agoPlease do! The software has been undumped and is highly desired by retro enthusiasts (including myself)
- kylehotchkiss 1y agoWhere’s the sponsored content?
- socalgal2 1y agoNot knowing what WeatherStar 4000+ was, I was expecting "Weather Channel Simulator" to use AI to generate live video of a weather reporter describing the weather. Can't be too far off.
- samtp 1y agoThis is a lot more interesting and impressive than AI generated goop
- pncnmnp 1y agoI was thinking the same thing! I've been working with some TTS applications, such as real-time commentary for Pong and personalized radio stations. I might give this a try, it sounds fun.
- KurSix 1y agoHonestly, give it a year or two and someone will have a fine-tuned LLM generating endless 90s-style weather banter with a deepfaked Jim Cantore pointing at AI-generated radar maps.
- beowulfey 1y agoYeah! There's nothing quite like watching fake people on fake weather broadcasts presenting weather just for me. One day we'll wonder why we ever used humans for anything.
- volleygman180 1y agoI was impressed as soon as it loaded and immediately said, "Yea but what about the music?". Then I noticed the sound toggle button. Absolute perfection!
- sharksauce 1y agoAnyone see an easy way to add the sound-on setting to the URL options generated by "Copy Permalink"?
- 9Ljdg6p8ZSzejt 1y agoYes! Add &mediaPlaying=true to the url. You might also need to allow audio autoplaying for the website first in the non-kiosk version or launch the browser allowing it.
- gasgiant 1y agoI listen to a lot of Pat Metheny Group, which my wife refers to as "Weather Channel Music". I used to argue that Pat was waaay better than the stuff on the Weather Channel, until one day we had it on in a hotel room and "Last Train Home" came on, and I had to shut the heck up.
- alexjplant 1y agoGiven how much fusion they played on "Local on the 8s" I wonder if they ever spun some Weather Report...
- xorbax 1y agoWasn't there also a text-to-speech voiceover of the local forecast text? I would have sworn they would replace the music with a guy "reading" the forecast.
- dcrazy 1y agoThere was a time when it was only prerecorded “The forecast for your area”
- dylan604 1y agoFor a time, you could call a phone number for the forecast. A lot of banks would tell you the time with one of their numbers.
- reaperducer 1y agoThis still exists in some cities. Albuquerque is one.
- xd1936 1y ago"Your Local 'On the 8s'"
- dylan604 1y agoIn large markets, some of the local broadcast stations have a dedicated digital channel that plays a local version of this. In my market, they have the digital voice reading the forecast.
- hospadam 1y agoIs there anyone who could point me to an easy-ish way to get this running on a PI + Screen? I have a special-needs son who would LOVE to have this running. I'll take any advice! Thank you!
- macintux 1y agoLooks like this comment might help: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44128109 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44128109
- ivraatiems 1y agoI love this. Why is the music so good? How do I get more music like this?
- vanadium 1y agoSo many people loved it, The Weather Channel actually put out CDs. One such example: https://www.ebay.com/itm/127083056970 https://www.ebay.com/itm/127083056970
- alexjplant 1y agoThere's an archival effort here [1]. It seems to have primarily been instrumental jazz fusion and adjacent artists like The Flecktones, The Rippingtons, Pat Metheny, Spyro Gyra, Phish, etc. I'm personally a bit more into the guitar shred-oriented type of fusion as practiced by Frank Gambale, Alan Holdsworth (RIP), Shawn Lane (RIP #2), Guthrie Govan, and Scott Henderson. The insane guitar acrobatics more than make up for any dated ROMpler synthesizers or cheesy drum samples :-). [1] https://twcclassics.com/audio/ https://twcclassics.com/audio/
- vanadium 1y agoThis is impressive.
- ivraatiems 1y agoThank you, I love this!
- theturtle 1y agoFar out! From the old days before they had shitty non-weather shows all the time and before they started "naming" winter storms. And before they started saying "impactful" nine times a minute. And before they hired that fuckface Justin Michaels. Before that 1970s "comedian" bought the channel and fucked it up.
- harwoodr 1y agoI take it this only works for USA locations?
- raverbashing 1y agoLooks like it. Which is definitely a shame but I can understand they might not have all the APIs for all the locations
- jimmydddd 1y agoGreat job!
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- fitsumbelay 1y agonothing but love for this. excellent stuff
- burnte 1y agoThis is fantastic.
- can16358p 1y agoIt literally couldn't find my city nor the most popular city of my country.
- chorfusmcnally 1y agoThe version linked is just using NOAA info, here's the international version: https://mwood77.github.io/ws4kp-international/ https://mwood77.github.io/ws4kp-international/
- eth_hack77 1y agoThis sounds interesting but here's what I experience: I put London and pressed continue - nothing happened. I gave the location permission and pressed continue - nothing happened again. Console printed these logs: Uncaught (in promise) TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'relativeLocation') at ws.min.js?_=5.21.3:1:133923 at ws.min.js?_=5.21.3:1:89730
- gosub100 1y agoSomeone posted the international version elsewhere in this page.
- zomg 1y agoInternational version: https://github.com/mwood77/ws4kp-international https://github.com/mwood77/ws4kp-international https://mwood77.github.io/ws4kp-international/ https://mwood77.github.io/ws4kp-international/
- b8 1y agoI wish the watermark was smaller, because it blocks so much info.
- disposition2 1y agoIs there anyone who could point me to a way to get this running and served up via a stream that is consumable via VLC? I have an hdhomreun and watch my antenna via IPTV apps and would love to have a personal “weather channel” on my TV. I’ve looked in to this in the past, using a node program to take screenshots of the page and try to splice things together with ffmpeg but it was quite awful and didn't work well. I also wasn’t sure how to have this all ‘spin up’ when the stream is accessed, vs running all the time…but I suppose that is less important. I'll take any advice! Thank you!
- jpdb 1y agoYou should be able to get this done with OBS. Set OBS up so your streaming a window of this application. Go into OBS settings and go to "Stream" and set it to custom. For server use "srt://127.0.0.1:7777?mode=listener&timeout=50000&transtype=live" Then in VLC, open a network stream for srt://127.0.0.1:7777.
- numpad0 1y agoXvfb :1 -screen 0 640x480x16 & export DISPLAY=:1.0 firefox -kiosk [URL] & gst-launch-1.0 ! (ask llm tbf) ! udpsrc
- burnt-resistor 1y agoYep. That's pretty much what it used to look like on cable and satellite TV in the late 90's/early 00's. Just missing the scan lines. Pretty awesome that you can skip sections. It needs terrible elevator music (mellow jazz) and occasional announcers to voice over and unenthusiastically explain what's already obvious in front of a green screen.
- duskwuff 1y ago> It needs terrible elevator music (mellow jazz) Did you click the unmute button? :)
- burnt-resistor 1y agoDidn't see it. It's not obvious. There are too many controls.
- xp84 1y agolook again, there is a scanlines option! I didn’t notice it there this afternoon, so he may have added it for you :D
- nipperkinfeet 1y agoThats cool. Can it autoplay when sharing from permalink? It always wants me to click to play.
- deweywsu 1y agoI got curious as to what ever happened to Jeanetta Jones. Found this (tear): https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/231278045/jeanetta-daniel https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/231278045/jeanetta-danie...
- bdbenton5255 1y agoLove it, made me smile. The "warmth" of all this old tech is nostalgic, all the little human touches lost to history. The little bits of heart and soul that shaped the details of our lives, some nameless engineer on some forgotten afternoon implementing the little blue waves in the rain clouds. Something strangely bittersweet about it.
- KurSix 1y agoThere's something really touching about how even the most utilitarian things (like a weather report) had this quiet artistry to them.
- jxf 1y agoThis has unlocked a deep part of my brain that I didn't know I had memories about. Bravo, OP.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- DigiEggz 1y agoThank you for sharing this and to everyone else in this thread posting other resources. I've followed W* projects for a long time and I always am invigorated when they pop up anywhere, in any form. I hope the experience is remembered for as long as possible!
- ramumb 1y agoThis is amazing! It takes me down memory lane.
- jakebasile 1y agoI can't believe how nostalgic this made me for the Weather Channel. Thanks for showing me this. Made me smile.
- bamboozled 1y ago*Only works for Americans
- catgirlinspace 1y agoCompletely forgot about Local on the 8s! I remember when I was much younger (probably around 12 or 13) I was obsessed for a while with how it worked on DirecTV- there was a national feed that was being played as normal, but when that started there was also some signal sent that (if you were lucky enough for it to actually work) would cause the receiver to generate a few static images for the saved zip code that were styled to look like Local on the 8s, and those would just be shown on top of the national feed. Best video I could find of it was https://youtu.be/WX2KQHJ8vHA https://youtu.be/WX2KQHJ8vHA (usually it was not synced that well to start and finish with the actual national feed, from what I saw it was pretty often you'd see the first few seconds or last few seconds of the national feed).
- KurSix 1y agoHow much effort went into creating the illusion of locality with national infrastructure
- know-how 1y ago[dead]
- crmd 1y agoThis is so fucking cool. I expected it to be an SGI Indy or Octane running weather channel software outputting via its SDI card, which in itself is cool, but it turns out to be a much more interesting hardware and software architecture!
- jader201 1y agoThe only thing missing is the voiceover. “A look at your local radar.” “Currently the temperature is 81 degrees under clear skies.” I feel like that’s the natural next step, and we’re probably not too far away from being able to do that.
- joeevans1000 1y agoI came for the weather, stayed for the music.
- KurSix 1y agoWow, instant nostalgia hit
- hacker_homie 1y agoNot to be confused with WeatherHammer 40000
- mickey475778 1y ago[dead]
- dustinsterk 1y agoThis is incredible, thanks for sharing!