OK - that is the first real response to my question #1 - VOX the fob w/NWS I guess you get to hear all the warning tones etc... I have had my weather radio since the end of last year and it has not triggered once yet (while I was home anyway) I am waiting to see if the radio stops talking after the message is read one time. = = = "Parapin.c" uses the printer port? (I don’t have one) Is there some way to access the fob's spare GPIO line? Does one have to hack into the usbradio C-code, or is there a function? Ken PS - by installing the Asterisk v1.4 add-in that plays MP3's directly, I do not need to use Cepstral (and tricky scripts) to play advisories. Of course I am fortunate to live where these are available for my area.

-----Original Message----- From: Don Russell [mailto:w9drr.ham@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2010 5:05 PM To: Ken Subject: Re: [App_rpt-users] weather radio / public service

I went super simple. USB fob in vox mode hooked to the audio output of the SAME-NWS radio. I have it set for code 9999 (any alert). Any time there is a duck fart (FIPS code sent) it opens the squelch of the NWS radio and the audio is heard on the repeater. As soon as the closing stanza is sent the audio stops and the vox drops. Works like a charm every time.

Now if you want to get fancy you could take two opto isolaters and take the output signals through an OR gate to a parallel port pin. Then use a little C code using the parapin.c to watch that pin, and call a program that will change asterisk config files and reload the rpt.conf changing the Courtesy tone to a Morse W... but that's a bit much..... LOL (I am seriously considering doing just that)

I also have some scripts I modified from what Randy KC6HUR and W0ANM hacked up for IRLP. They are really nice and use cepstrals TTS engine for linux. I have it announce new alerts for my county immediately, then every 10,10,15,30 minutes then hourly there after if for a watch/flood /winter advisory...

-- Don Russell, CBRE Director of IT/Chief Operator - Maverick Media W9DRR - ARRL OES, Technical Specialist Winnebago County AEC http://www.socialengineer.us --

On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 09:41, Ken <ke2n@cs.com> wrote:

...

With spring storm season on its way, I would like to add the NWS Emergency Alert System messages to my setup. I wonder what other people are doing? Before I do an entirely hardware-based approach I wonder if there is some software approach that would eliminate some relays and cables and maybe function better?

I have a simple radio that does the SAME decoding and can turn on signals for 'alert' and 'warning' and so forth. Repeater-builder has an article about using these, but my recollection is that when a warning statement has been issued, the warning light stays on the whole time - until the warning is canceled. The EAS messages are, by definition, always less than 2 minutes.

What I would like to do is just play the message once whenever the NWS blows the horn (1050 Hz tone lasting from 8-20 seconds).

Seems to me that the require functionality (if one were willing to dedicate a URI to the weather radio) would be to listen for the tone (1050 Hz for 7 seconds or more) then, when the tone stops, link-in the audio until the end-of-message AFSK burst is detected - or two minutes, whichever comes first. Note: I have the MP3 forecasts (podcasts) already working on the machine but the EAS messages are not sent in MP3 format, being considered too critical for that.

Ken Jamrogowicz 27021 _______________________________________________ App_rpt-users mailing list App_rpt-users@qrvc.com http://qrvc.com/mailman/listinfo/app_rpt-users