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anyone own this radio shack weather radio with USB interface?

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    anyone own this radio shack weather radio with USB interface?

    anyone own this radio shack weather radio with USB interface?

    http://www.radioshack.com/product.as...%5Fid=12%2D258

    Perhaps a PC could read/react to weather alert notices.

    The user manual doesn't say what info is passed to the PC via USB. Implies that quite a bit is passed.

    No doubt one can get the same info via the Internet.

    Makes me wish I lived where the weather needs monitoring.

    NOT!

    #2
    Thanks Steve... you always rub that San Diego Weather in..... LOL

    Hey, I just saw your post, this is an interesting product... It does have crude X10 integration...

    http://www.radioshack.com/images/Pro.../OME12-258.pdf

    Look at page 12, it says it can trigger an X10 device. I am assuming this would work for a virtual device, event with a script, somethign like that. You take the raw "bad weather alert" via X10 and let HomeSeer do something more useful than flash a lamp..

    Good suggestion, with Tornado season just around the corner. I think I want my event to say "I don't think we're in Kansas any more, Toto.."

    Paul
    Paul

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      #3
      I WISH I didnt have to monitor the weather!!!!! With Hurricane season, again approaching, I don't have that luxury. All I can do is hope that we dont get 3 in a row again!!!!! Sure the first skirted us, but the next 2 knocked out the power for a week each!

      5 GOOD reasons to want to get out of South Florida!

      1- Hurricane Charlie
      2- Hurricane Francis
      3- Hurricane Jeanne
      4- The Florida Election system
      5- Elian!
      Visit My Home Seer Site at:
      www.JohnWPB.com
      Created with LCARS

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        #4
        looks like you can interface it and that it does pass the weather data on through the USB interface, since it can email you with weather alerts. But that's a pretty expensive unit for just these few basic functions. I retrieve the up to date weather alert from the AWS weather site, and announce them like I announce CNN breaking news.
        HSPRO 2.4 (ESXi 4.1) | my.Alert NEW | my.Trigger | HSTouch | ACRF2 | UltraM1G | BLWeather | BLLan | Rover
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          #5
          The radio spits out a low current/low voltage signal when an alert arrives. That's what's used for the "x10" interface. You could run this into any digital input board (or game port interface, etc.) connected to the PC. You may need a relay/transistor/optoisolator in there depending on the specific hardware.

          However, this will only tell you an event is happening. Without looking at the data over the USB connection, you won't know what it is. I have not found anything on the net describing this information or connecting to the box with anything other than the standard software.

          This is one of my projects that's sitting on the back burner right now.

          Why would I want to use something like this? It's not for temperature, etc. It doesn't provide this information. It's for weather alerts/warnings. We get these little things called tornadoes here. The NWS likes to let us know about them. I don't want to count on CNN (or anyone else) having immediate notification of these events. The NWS will let me know right away.

          We also have "air raid" sirens that go off when there are events. But I've slept through those before.

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            #6
            <rant>
            I bought one of these SAME radios to interface to as well but it's unplugged currently. You see we live in paranoia valley and so the radio is a few weeks old and it's almost burned up. We can't even have a good old fashion thunderstorm with out the sirens going off. Ever heard of crying wolf. It simply amazes me that a town the size of Huntsville could have three TV stations all competing to see who can get the highest weather ratings. We couldn't even watch the NCAA BB tournament for all of the on screen graphics. Two of our local weather men have been reprimanded by the Nation Weather Service for announcing on their own Doppler indicated tornado's. We did have a really bad tornado come through a few years back and ever since then it's been a bit overkill. Don't get me wrong I think it's a good service but every time it rains come on! It wouldn't be so bad but one of the tornado sirens is within a half of mile at the school. When this thing goes off my 11 year old daughter comes a running. I've heard that #$!# siren at least 300 times and funny thing is I've never seen a funnel cloud. I'm glad about that though. It just seems to be a bit of overkill in my opinion.
            </rant>

            Now if one of you guys figure out how to interface with this thang let me know.
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              #7
              Our announcements aren't nearly that bad here. I haven't even gotten around to setting up the SAME on my radio - we'll see what happens as we move into this season. I have gotten flood warnings that I don't need to worry about where I live.

              I've had a few small tornadoes go by near where I live, but not too close. We had one tear up a lot of stuff near where I work. I had to go in the back door at work that morning because there was a tree in front of the other one.

              For a while I was working a lot in another city. I was in an office that was essentially underground (very large building). After exiting the building one day, we turned around and saw a funnel cloud moving past. It hadn't formed into a tornado yet.

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                #8
                Smee,
                Ours went off 4 times last night. That's when I pulled the plug. I need to interface it with a powerflash and have it turn on a light or something and turn off that loud warning.
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                  #9
                  Hey Johnwpb!,why ELIAN?

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                    #10
                    I'm somewhat like Rupp. I also have a weather radio with SMART. I'm right on the line between two counties, each served by a different NWS office. When there is any weather in the area, it's going off every few minutes. Severe thunderstorm watch, severe thunderstorm warning, flash flood watch, tornado watch, etc.

                    At one point in time I planned on hooking it into the house audio system, but that idea went out the window the first time we had a good front come through. I finally mounted it in the kitchen. Parsing out the internet wx warnings in HS in on the long list of HS "todos".
                    My system is described in my profile.

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