Ok, another thread - the one about my storm experience - led to some thoughts about buying a weather radio again.
The Midland WR-300 was touted as a good radio, so I downloaded the user manual. It might be a good radio, but it's a usability disaster area. Which made me think a bit - WHY are the user interfaces for pretty much ALL weather radios so bad? WHY aren't we using the big fat happy GUI we have in front of our face to program these devices rather than struggling with the horrendous multi-modal and dog-butt ugly lcd displays of these devices.

Here's how I'd love to see these things work.

1. The device has a USB mini-connector and, oh, 4MB or 8MB of local storage. Something cheap.

2. To program your radio you go to the manufacturer's web site and you get a lovely GUI that lets you find and set your S.A.M.E codes, your preferred alerting levels and methods, maybe set a few other device variables - and then you hit "submit" and they email you a special text file.

3. Using the USB connection, you connect the device to your machine, it shows up as another disk, and you copy your config file to your device.

4. The text file "config.txt" is a simple, human-readable set of configuration options that the radio reads and uses to set itself up.

They are selling MP3 players with direct USB connections for $9 - it's not like it's a huge expense for the hardware side:

http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q...&sa=title#p

And an embedded linux is free - there's no licensing costs at all.

Any Radio engineers out there? This is a product that could be made for like $40 a unit and I bet could sell for $90 to $100.

I don't know if they offer this in your area Martin, but until someone makes a better weather radio -

A local TV station has a service whereby you sign up, leave a contact phone number and address and if severe weather is spotted in your area, you get a call. Not forecast, not watches, warnings only.

Worked like a charm the time funnel clouds were spotted in the area. As recently as yesterday I got a call about a severe TStorm in the area. Best of all, it's free.

Between that and weatherbug I usually am warned about weather in a timely manner.

And I know I would buy a radio like the one you describe. It's too simple is what it is.

Boy, I would have liked it if this idea was in production when I was gifting weather radios. I could have generated the text file for each household and had them up and running in no time.

If you are OK with a weather radio that does NOT have SAME technology (where you identify the specific county/region SAME code(S) that you want the radio to alert for), then ...

The Midland HH50/51 Pocket Weather Alert Radio is about the smallest and simplest weather radio available right now.

It has four buttons/switches:

On the right side it has a sliding switch with three settings: OFF, ON (radio plays), and ALERT (radio off, but alarm sounds and radio comes on if an alert is sent).

When you slide the switch to ON (or ALERT) the radio scans and selects the strongest weather alert signal. If channel reception is poor, make sure antenna is fully deployed.

On the left side it has three buttons:
Top - Test/Channel Rescan button
Middle - Volume Up
Bottom - Volume Down

Test/Channel Rescan button details:
---With radio in ALERT mode, press & hold for 3 seconds to start the alarm siren. Press again to stop the the siren.

---With the radio in ON mode, press & hold for 1 second to have the radio rescan for the strongest weather alert signal.

BTW, the HH51 is the camo version, so if you drop it while in the woods Midland gets to sell you a new one. Nice feature! (just kidding ... I guess hunters like their camo ... I wish there were a yellow or orange version to make it that much easier to find).

On a completely different slant, have you seen the Logitech Harmony universal remote controls? I have a Harmony 880 (they've hopefully improved the charger base contacts and now sell the 890 model) and it is set up EXACTLY as you describe.

You log into the Logitech Harmony web site, tell it what kind of gear you have (it must have an AMAZING list of potential gear, because it had everything I have - even my old dusty Kenwood receiver from the early 90's.

It asks if it needs some extra information it just asks - like which TV video port the DVD player is plugged into

It offers a standard suggested setup, then you can go to town customizing it as you wish using fairly well-written guides (I use the default but did play a bit one time), and then when done you connect the remote to the PC using a USB cord and press Download to download the settings.

It is really very well done. Since you log in, it remembers your gear and settings so you don't have to redo it all if you want to make a change - like when you buy a new TV.

They're not cheap, but they are VERY well thought out. I couldn't recommend them more.

From the web page for the 890: "From laser disc to Blu-Ray® disc, find your components in our 175,000-device database."


Definitely not cheap. Sounds pretty nifty though.

I totally agree with you. I hate mine, even with the owner's manual, half the time I can't figure the stupid thing out - so it sits in the basement. Real useful, huh?

On the other hand, I've been a Unix/Linux programmer for more than a few years. I might have to play around with this...

As far as I can tell, it's nothing more or less complex in terms of file structure than a text config file like we use for, oh, a bazillion things in Linux land.

The embedded controller would simply read the config file from the USB mass storage, stuff the EEPROM with the variables, and that's it.

I have a Midland WR-300, and while I believe it is a great radio among its peers it is quite a Charlie Foxtrot when it comes to configuration/use. It seems like it was enginered to an alarm clock/weather radio which turned out to be mediocre at both, and then got rushed to market.

I'll be monitoring this thread for progress on the Doug Ritter WR1* until it is available for purchase.

On a serious note; is there a WR out there that will output alert events to a computer via USB? If such a thing exists, it would be no effort at all to filter/customize the information delivery through a PC.


*I'm totally making up the name, please don't shoot me.

If your going to run the output of a WR through a pc then you might as well just eliminate the WR, just go to the noaa site and subscribe to the e-mail or use a tool like wget to scrape the page.

While it's nice to have multiple sources, I don't think that I'd be comfortable if the internet was my only source of warnings since service could easily be interrupted due to power outages, downed/broken lines, etc. Even if the event hasn't reached the local area, outages in nearby areas might hamper availability. With that said, I do like having the internet available during emergencies/severe weather.

Just to clarify ...

Martin wasn't proposing using the weather radio to generate alerts. He was only proposing using a PC, a USB connection, and an internet-based application to SETUP the radio (enter SAME codes, select options,...).

Once it was setup then it would operate independently of the internet as would any weather radio.

These work great for me in DC and in Shenandoah National Park at 3700 feet. I keep one in my car, one with camp gear and one in my purse (on summer days like this when severe weather is in the forecast).

In conjunction with the DC e-mail and text alerts I receive, t-storms and tornado watches don't sneak up on me.

As Ken says: they are simple and petite.

I understood the same; but I like the idea of a WR providing the communication and the PC providing the presentation. You would get data completely independently of internet systems that can be damaged by disasters, but the nearly-infinite customizing abilities presented by the PC.
Since NOAA is already sending signals over the air to tell SAME devices what is going on and where (to avoid extraneous alerts) it would in theory be easy to pass this data from the radio to a PC, which would be much easier to program as desired with a simple GUI.

OK. here's where I am with this.

I saw that www.emergencyalertradio.com has something close to what I want, but it appears that the device software is stuck in 2002 on a windows-only platform. EarWatch is a software product - close - but not quite right.

I think that we're getting to a device that is:

- a standalone WX radio with SAME alerting
- has a USB interface that shows up as a Mass Storage Device to pretty much any computer.
- Works in conjunction with a web site that allows you to build a configuration file for the device that allows you to set SAME alert codes and to manage the types of alerts (or suppression of alerts)
- has two audio outputs - one for an external speaker, one is a line-level audio, unsquelched, for audio decode on a PC as needed.

Anyway, the www.emergencyalertradio.com thing is very, very close to what we want.

Interesting. If it had a USB interface that provided access to a non-proprietary config file, I'd be tempted to pick one up and try to come up with something that could generate config files with Mac computers. It probably wouldn't be all that difficult to do with AppleScript.

I'm checking mine out tonight, will see what it has. It's a pretty bare-bones Midland that I got from attending CERT class, I don't remember a USB interface, but I also don't remember looking that closely either. We'll see.

If it does, I'll play around with it and let you know.

What's wrong with using a radio that receives the NOAA weather channels?

I use them with my Ham radio(s) frequently.

And the website is a refugee from 1996.
Still, it does seem that someone has put some effort into this idea before. Would be nice if the tech were more up-to-date though.

Here's what's wrong.

The NOAA weather channels provide TOO MUCH information that is IRRELEVANT. In many areas they are too quick to issue a "Watch" for BS conditions like a "high heat advisory" or a "Snow Event Potential". Even with S.A.M.E. these alerts tripped my S.A.M.E. equipped weather radio at all hours of the day and night and eventually became "the radio that cried wolf".

Now, there are newer radios that let me fine-tune the kinds of alerts I actually WANT to get down to a level of detail that is almost adequate, but the user interfaces and controls for these radios are so poor that it requires a not insubstantial level of time and effort to be able to program the radio to provide useful warnings by suppressing the garbage alerts fully.

What's more, the radios themselves lack even the most rudimentary control over how and when alerting should be done. At 3:30 AM, I don't need a screaming siren, a strobe light will suffice to wake me. Or maybe I DO want a screaming siren at 3:30 AM but a strobe light while I'm at my desk in my office.
The point is that a radio that accepts a standard text file - like an XML file - for the complex - but typically one-time - programing is miles better than a plain ht tuned to 162.xxxx


So what I'd like to see is a radio that lets me use a web site and ANY computer to build my config file, plug in the radio, copy the config file and have it work the way I want it.

Ok, thanks.

Here we get thunderstorm alerts, and we have thunderstorms all the time. Or the Amber alerts, though I hate to say it because someone will say what if its your kids, but they always alert them when I'm at home so I'm not out driving anywhere that I could see the car that the kid is beleived to be in, let me filter those on the home radio and just get them on the mobile.

Hmmmm... How about a dongle that plugs into the earphone jack of a weather radio?

You could get all the functions into one microcontroller chip, I bet. Too bad I'm not an analog guy. I know how to decode the SAME signals in theory but it would take me a lot of fiddling to get it right.

Instead of dumping text config file, I'd make the device a tiny web server. Perhaps bluetooth instead of USB - program it from your iphone...

Too many ideas, too little time.

WR is quite a useful system for you guys but I am surprised technology hasn't moved on (maybe it has).

I would have thought that the main organisations that issue the alerts don't have a subscription sms service that text messages to subscribers phones. Alerts could be sent to the phone mast within the alert area only.

It could be set up to the cost of a normal text plus a small annual fee to subscribers. Most people have mobile phones and have them with them most of the time.

I suppose the only drawback is network coverage.

SMS and subscription services won't work when your away from cell signals, thats where I use the WR, state forests or my farm where I can't get cell signals. Also WR is in three other radios/scanners I have so no need for a dedicated device.

Old school tag.

I've got an Oregon Scientific weather radio with SAME that works OK but I honestly only use it at night. "The radio that cried wolf" is right. During a significant thunderstorm outbreak that radio will wear you OUT with flash flood warnings, flood warnings, severe thunderstorm warnings, high wind warnings, and on and on and on. Honestly if it isn't a tornado warning for my immediate area I don't care.