How to get weather station info onto a TV?!

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › How to get weather station info onto a TV?!

stuffed

288 posts

Ultimate Geek

#35679 14-Jun-2009 14:37

Have had a good search round the forum but cannot find too much on this off the wall idea!

Would like to view my weather station on my home TV’s – with a live web cam as well – similar to my web - http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~jim.ryan/weather/

Not sure the best way to do it but guess through AVI to a modulator to the home RF aerial network. The file is produced with Flash Player.

Is there a PC program to mix the data from the weather station onto an overlay of the web cam and then get this to Video Out?!!

Many thanks

Why work on Wednesday and stuff up 2 good long weekends

gardenman

13 posts

Geek

#225013 14-Jun-2009 19:56

How are you getting the data to the TV? I'm assuming its through the PC. You can view websites through Media Centre reasonably easy, and lots of people have created plugin's for VMC to display weather info that pull info from various websites, some can be customised to pull info from various websites. If you go to www.thegreenbutton.com and search weather plugin and you might find some anwsers :)

Just out of interest what are you using to get the info thats on your website? I'm assuming its a weather station on your roof or somewhere and is connected to your pc through ethernet or something? if so I'd love some details

Cheers

gabba

85 posts

Master Geek

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#225015 14-Jun-2009 20:11

Yeah - I'd go the PC route too if you could. Anything that sits by the telly and can do the job as long as it has a web browser on it. Maybe a PS3? - at least that's how I do mine - or walk up the other end of the house and check it ;-)

Any reason why you want to try and put the signal through the RF? Does your telly have a pc input on it?

@gardenman - stuffed is using Weather Display Live / Weather Display. More details here:

http://www.weather-display.com

stuffed

288 posts

Ultimate Geek

#225126 15-Jun-2009 08:46

Thanks guys.

I don’t want a web browser – already “ftping” to these two sites:

http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~jim.ryan/weather2/

http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~jim.ryan/weather/

Incidentally to see NZ weather live (including my site) - http://www.nzweather.net/nzwn.php

Gardenman – it is a La Crosse – from http://www.scientificsales.co.nz – had it 3 years and get 1200+ hits a week!

Anyway back to the original question and what I would like to do.

Grab at least the temperature from the weather station and superimpose it onto the live camera image from our front entrance and transmit onto all the house TV’s. I don’t want to have it via PC in.

There must be some simple method to do this without purchasing a TV studio!!

Thanks

Why work on Wednesday and stuff up 2 good long weekends

gabba

85 posts

Master Geek

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#225373 15-Jun-2009 20:42

Hi
Have you tried posting over at nzweather.net (I haven't seen one but may have missed it).

No harm in casting the net a wee but wider.

Cheers

stuffed

288 posts

Ultimate Geek

#225490 16-Jun-2009 09:06

Gabba ? hi and thanks ? yep have posed in some of those forums ? and no joy so am starting to drill down to more specialized sites ? if anyone has any suggestions????.

Why work on Wednesday and stuff up 2 good long weekends

richms

28189 posts

Uber Geek

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#225724 16-Jun-2009 23:16

There are several low cost designs for video overlay using generic microcontrollers if you look online - model rockery is a big user of it to get telemetry from rockets overlayed on the camera.

Otherwise look at the ybox on adafruit.com - may be possible to hack it to do overlay with external syncs - ask on the adafruit forums if it is possible - you will lose colour overlay tho since that needs you to lock your colour generator to the one in the signal thats already there and thats a bit beyond a generic microcontroller.

There is some support for http in the ybox, not sure about ftping stuff down, but if its available on ftp then you should be able to set something up on a server somewhere to get it and then serve it thru http just in php which is available everywhere.

Richard rich.ms

stuffed

288 posts

Ultimate Geek

#225751 17-Jun-2009 08:49

Thanks for that ? looks interesting but would need a real tech savy person to get that operational ? on the right track though.
BTW ? does anyone know where there could be any second hand, out of date broadcast equipment?!

Why work on Wednesday and stuff up 2 good long weekends

Sharesies

Trade NZ and US shares and funds with Sharesies (affiliate link).

richms

28189 posts

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#225947 17-Jun-2009 20:00

Yeah, out of date broadcasting equipment it operational in NZ ;)

If you ask on the adafruit forums you will get some useful advice.

Richard rich.ms

steve2222

499 posts

Ultimate Geek

#227169 21-Jun-2009 17:38

For what it is worth, I took our video intercom that runs over about 40m of cable and 'taped' into the camera feed where it enters the inside unit and connected that to the RCA inputs ( yes including audio) of a Jaycar RF modulator and can see the picture (and hear the visitor talk) on any of our TV's around the house tuned into an analouge UHF frequency.

In fact the signal, post modulator, goes into a Hills Distribution amplifier which means any of the TV's around the house can view all analouge free to air plus an RF version of SKY, our DVD player and the video intercom.

richms

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#227755 23-Jun-2009 18:23

Problem I had with doing that was the total lack of free channels in the UHF band - there are 6 with digital noise on them, and the rest is littered with 3 versions of most of the channels. Since there is nothing usable under ch41 I am planning to just get a low pass filter on the UHF so I can use 27-41 for my stuff.

Digital doesnt need to come from the antenna since a paperclip will get it. I am still a bit worried about ingress to the antenna cable since I have only used dual shielded cable around the place...

If only there was a cheap way to get a signal on the unused cable channels - I have only found expensive modulators that can hit those channels.

Richard rich.ms

steve2222

499 posts

Ultimate Geek

#227841 24-Jun-2009 06:52

I agree richms I have maxed out the free UHF channels.

Forgot to mention that in addition to the above, we are getting perfect DVB-T reception through the above set up, so any point in the house can get analouge VHF/UHF and DVB-T. But to your point richms on the 'DVD' UHF channel we are getting some cross interference (sounds like a radio station very faintly in background) but only on the TV that also happens to have an in-built Freeview receiver.

stuffed

288 posts

Ultimate Geek

#227863 24-Jun-2009 09:02

As a matter of interest – for 10 years have piped the front door camera round via an old VCR – AV in and RF out to the house aerial system to all the TV’s – worked fine except when the power went off and had to reset the VCR. Now have a modulator.

A friend has 3 cameras and 3 modulators – works very well.

Ya still haven’t solved my original problem though – anyone know who runs the scrap yard at one of the main TV stations?!

Why work on Wednesday and stuff up 2 good long weekends

wallross

42 posts

Geek

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#228858 27-Jun-2009 23:00

Just cruising the interweb, and came across the following link.... Not sure if it might help:
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/01/ybox_2_networked_settop_b.html
"YBOX - turns a TV into a simple, web configurable Dashboard"

Could be an interesting project to try and see if it could help you solve your problem!

I'd be interested in something that I could "overlay" key data onto a RF feed from the Sky box to a second telly. I have a weather station at home, and on stormy nights, it would be great to have live data overlaid in the corner of the telly screen.

Wellington weather live from my place - http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=I90580064

R

stuffed

288 posts

Ultimate Geek

#228904 28-Jun-2009 10:31

Thanks ? yes interesting but does not look to be able to overlay data onto a picture. You know thought that there may be a few more people out there that would be looking for some thing like this!
Good wether station you have there.

Why work on Wednesday and stuff up 2 good long weekends