[d-star] Interesting note about WX reader app for DSTAR repeaters

[Doug Reed]

This was on the Wisconsin DSTAR remailer. If you have a WX station at
the repeater site, this might be something you want to look into. It
sounds like a combination of several programs and scripts that can
read your local WX info from the Internet too. It could read back
system status, SWR, battery voltage, or anything else you could build
an interface for.

73, Doug Reed, N0NAS.

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WX announcements
    Posted by: "Josh Housey" kg9bo at yahoo.com kg9bo
    Date: Mon Oct 28, 2013 9:48 pm ((PDT))

All,

This was brought up on the Sunday night net and thought I mention this
and explain more about it to the rest of the group. It came from when
AA9VI, Mike from Northbrook IL (near Chicago) who checked into the
net.

He was interested in pursuing a project for his G4KLX repeater which
was to "speak" WX information over a repeater other then the
announcing capabilities that already exist. I have been dabbling with
various scripts to send WX information over the radio using D-RATS. It
was decided to explore this out and help Mike out with doing this.

I found a web page which established the basis for doing this with
basis announcements and it is:

http://kb9mwr.blogspot.com/2011/11/library-of-ambe-files.html


I have molded the script here and optimized it along with using the
previous scripts to gather information WX. At the present moment, it
gets data from a METAR (aviation) station and can also use Weather
Underground station. Using both of these scripts, and ON1ARF's voice
announcement tools, it is generated and transmitted out from a G4KLX's
device.  What has resulted was a periodic voice identification of
time, temperature and wind characteristics over my hotspot initially
as a test. It has worked  well and forwarded this to Mike. He has
responded that it has been working well using his own repeater using
G4KLX's software on a Raspberry PI.

More work is being done on this to add more WX characteristics, more
stations and other capabilities. I should note that this can be also
done with Icom G2 repeaters as well. It just requires a modification
of the scripts I have.

If anyone would be interested in doing this, you can contact me using
ab9ft at arrl.net. It is not something being released out because its
very specific to set up and not "entirely" completed. Also, it is a
little complicated to set up without any further guidance from me and
may require to be specialized as well.

73
Josh, AB9FT