WeatherStar 4000+: Weather Channel Simulator

If you're interested in this, someone on YouTube got a WeatherStar 4000 (device that sat at cable headends and generated the local weather report graphics) and wrote all new firmware to make 90's style weather reports on the real hardware. This was necessary because the original firmware was downloaded over satellite so it's now lost. It looks basically identical to the real Weather Channel from the 90s, except it doesn't have their logo in the corner (I guess for trademark reasons). Here's a stream of his WeatherStar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66mSjXpfD2c

I run one of these on my desk 24x7 with a raspberry pi and a 3D printed monitor that simulates a CRT. I tried with a real CRT TV but the frequency and having it at the side of my main monitor started to make me sick.

https://imgur.com/a/wD2EINO

https://github.com/vbguyny/ws4kp

I listen to a lot of Pat Metheny Group, which my wife refers to as "Weather Channel Music". I used to argue that Pat was waaay better than the stuff on the Weather Channel, until one day we had it on in a hotel room and "Last Train Home" came on, and I had to shut the heck up.

It will only be the true 90s Weather Channel when I hear some Rippingtons playing in the background.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndaMC-Ug4Jg

Love it, made me smile. The "warmth" of all this old tech is nostalgic, all the little human touches lost to history. The little bits of heart and soul that shaped the details of our lives, some nameless engineer on some forgotten afternoon implementing the little blue waves in the rain clouds. Something strangely bittersweet about it.

I have a version (probably not exactly the same software for the head unit) of this on an SGI O2 sitting around including all the environment scripts and the HTML manuals. I have a tar.gz of it that I should upload to an archive location.

Looks like this was the original version? https://github.com/vbguyny/ws4kp

Not knowing what WeatherStar 4000+ was, I was expecting "Weather Channel Simulator" to use AI to generate live video of a weather reporter describing the weather.

Can't be too far off.

Completely forgot about Local on the 8s! I remember when I was much younger (probably around 12 or 13) I was obsessed for a while with how it worked on DirecTV- there was a national feed that was being played as normal, but when that started there was also some signal sent that (if you were lucky enough for it to actually work) would cause the receiver to generate a few static images for the saved zip code that were styled to look like Local on the 8s, and those would just be shown on top of the national feed. Best video I could find of it was https://youtu.be/WX2KQHJ8vHA (usually it was not synced that well to start and finish with the actual national feed, from what I saw it was pretty often you'd see the first few seconds or last few seconds of the national feed).

Yep. That's pretty much what it used to look like on cable and satellite TV in the late 90's/early 00's. Just missing the scan lines. Pretty awesome that you can skip sections. It needs terrible elevator music (mellow jazz) and occasional announcers to voice over and unenthusiastically explain what's already obvious in front of a green screen.

Nice!

It'd be helpful to have the options stored in the URL, especially the kiosk mode, so it can be bookmarked.

And allow <esc> to exit kiosk mode.

Well, this wins the internet for today — pack it up everybody.

Seriously though beyond just being awesome, this site is such a good experience on mobile. Really well crafted nostalgia vibes.

The only thing missing is the voiceover.

“A look at your local radar.”

“Currently the temperature is 81 degrees under clear skies.”

I feel like that’s the natural next step, and we’re probably not too far away from being able to do that.

Is there anyone who could point me to a way to get this running and served up via a stream that is consumable via VLC?

I have an hdhomreun and watch my antenna via IPTV apps and would love to have a personal “weather channel” on my TV.

I’ve looked in to this in the past, using a node program to take screenshots of the page and try to splice things together with ffmpeg but it was quite awful and didn't work well.

I also wasn’t sure how to have this all ‘spin up’ when the stream is accessed, vs running all the time…but I suppose that is less important.

I'll take any advice! Thank you!

  Xvfb :1 -screen 0 640x480x16 &
  export DISPLAY=:1.0
  firefox -kiosk [URL] &
  gst-launch-1.0 ! (ask llm tbf) ! udpsrc

Thank you for sharing this and to everyone else in this thread posting other resources. I've followed W* projects for a long time and I always am invigorated when they pop up anywhere, in any form. I hope the experience is remembered for as long as possible!

I take it this only works for USA locations?

Far out! From the old days before they had shitty non-weather shows all the time and before they started "naming" winter storms.

And before they started saying "impactful" nine times a minute.

And before they hired that fuckface Justin Michaels.

Before that 1970s "comedian" bought the channel and fucked it up.

I yearn for Local on the 8's

This is so fucking cool. I expected it to be an SGI Indy or Octane running weather channel software outputting via its SDI card, which in itself is cool, but it turns out to be a much more interesting hardware and software architecture!

I got curious as to what ever happened to Jeanetta Jones. Found this (tear):

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/231278045/jeanetta-danie...

Wow, that's horrible, I love it!

I was impressed as soon as it loaded and immediately said, "Yea but what about the music?". Then I noticed the sound toggle button.

Absolute perfection!

I came for the weather, stayed for the music.

I can't believe how nostalgic this made me for the Weather Channel.

Thanks for showing me this. Made me smile.

Love the WS4000. I've been meaning to make a WS4000 like application I can throw on my firestick and just have it play all day on my TV as a side project. As someone without any GUI or graphics programming knowledge, it's definitely been a nice learning experience.

Where’s the sponsored content?

I love this. Why is the music so good? How do I get more music like this?

Is there anyone who could point me to an easy-ish way to get this running on a PI + Screen? I have a special-needs son who would LOVE to have this running. I'll take any advice! Thank you!

Wow, instant nostalgia hit

This sounds interesting but here's what I experience: I put London and pressed continue - nothing happened. I gave the location permission and pressed continue - nothing happened again.

Console printed these logs: Uncaught (in promise) TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'relativeLocation') at ws.min.js?_=5.21.3:1:133923 at ws.min.js?_=5.21.3:1:89730

This has unlocked a deep part of my brain that I didn't know I had memories about. Bravo, OP.

Very neat! I put it in kiosk mode and could almost hear the hum of a CRT.

Thats cool. Can it autoplay when sharing from permalink? It always wants me to click to play.

Great stuff! Reminds me of when the web used to be fun...

This page on an Android phone displays briefly and then crashes the tab in Chrome, and crashes the entire app in Firefox. Neat trick.

This is amazing! It takes me down memory lane.

It literally couldn't find my city nor the most popular city of my country.

When I visit this site, it just keeps automatically refreshing the homepage over and over every second.

I wish the watermark was smaller, because it blocks so much info.

*Only works for Americans

This is fantastic.

Man, I want to be able to have this as an actual stream on my TV!

Not to be confused with WeatherHammer 40000

I miss this late 80s early 90s jazz fusion.

Thank you for the vaporwave vibes!

Very cool.

Music is a bit too high fidelity ;)

nothing but love for this. excellent stuff

half expecting this to veer into some analog horror

Great job!

I love this

Love it!

Music is a bit too fast, I miss the sleepy jazz feel from the 90s. (=

Oh, man I thought I was going to see an AI generated Heather Tesch.