Project idea that is a bit outside my scope

[Michael Chisena]

All,
The guys on a weather list I get have an interesting problem.


You know those little weather radio (162mhz) receivers that display data transmitted by the weather service?
Sell for about 40 bucks at radio shack.


Yeah they work for Joe home owner.
The non existent front end will not work well enough near other transmitters.

The first idea was to hack a store bought weather receiver for it's modem and  display section. The more I looked into the matter, the more I suspect they are not so adaptable. Seems there is a single chip answer for this application, and before I blow $40 to find out, wanted to ask the team here.


Some of the weather guys want a 'real' radio for that job.
Plenty of surplus VHF radios around for the task.


Got me thinking it is not too far from the TNC / radio hook up we do for packet and APRS.


Adding to the problem is an on going confusion with many of the posts.


Guys are mixing up weather sat decoding and SAME decoding.


The OCONUS guys think we are talking about WX sat copy on 137mhz.


The system we are talking out is the SAME system on 162 mhz.
Specific Area Message Encoding - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Decoding NOAA weather radio with an Arduino

 
   Specific Area Message Encoding - Wikipedia, the free enc...
Specific Area Message Encoding (SAME) is the protocol used to encode the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and NOAAs Weather Radio (NWR) in the U.S. an...  
View on en.wikipedia.org Preview by Yahoo  
  



This is typical of what gets found.


The article says there is software to get an Arduino chip to break out the SAME message, but when you click on it, you get linked to a single chip receiver kit.


 
   Decoding NOAA weather radio with an Arduino
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is responsible for broadcasting the signals used in weather radios. They use a protocol called Specif...  
View on hackaday.com Preview by Yahoo  
  

The Spark Fun team has a similar product using the single receiver/decoder chip.

Guess what I am driving at is a weather warning receiver adapter for an existing LMR radio. Something that monitors for the 1050hz alert tone, then will open a path for messages in it's specific area.

I was able to do something similar for APRS using a "Real Radio", TT4 and a four line display module.
August 31 2010 003

 
   August 31 2010 003  
View on www.flickr.com Preview by Yahoo  
  

Why can't something similar be made to display wx warning data from any normal audio source? 

Like a land mobile radio?
Or a television receiver?



Such a project is beyond my skill set in terms of development.
If there is interest in this, it might be a cool AMRAD project/product.



Open to ideas.


Thanks 

Mike in VA



Michael F. Chisena
KA2ZEV at Yahoo.com
703 863 4574





"You are, what you do, when it counts" 
The Masso
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