Originally Posted By: JohnE
What's wrong with using a radio that receives the NOAA weather channels?


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.