I’ve mentioned in the past that my weather technology business has been hit hard by the current economy and that from time to time I would be using WUWT to announce new products or product reviews that might interest readers. Here’s my latest invention that turns any LCD monitor or TV into a private “live” weather radar channel by simply attaching this appliance to the rear and plugging it in. A number of customers for our regular StormPredator software have done similar setups with spare PC’s to provide radar displays at their home or office, but until now, there was never any simple and affordable way to just add the radar channel to an existing monitor or TV.
The cool part is that there is no subscription fee to get any of this imagery. Coverage is USA nationwide with 155 NEXRAD radar locations available.
StormPredator Radar Appliance for Desktop or Wall mounted LCD monitors and TV’s
Above: the StormPredator Radar Appliance automatically updates and loops the radar imagery.
Click image to see larger image showing terrain and storm detail.
What is it?
The StormPredator Radar Appliance is a small, self contained automatic appliance that connects to any LCD monitor or TV with a SVGA port or HDMI port and turns it into a dedicated 24/7 weather radar display.
It mounts directly to the rear of the LCD monitor/TV using the included VESA mount. Once setup, the StormPredator Radar Appliance will run continuously and unattended to provide live radar coverage of the area you select. It uses a special version of our popular StormPredator desktop software designed for unattended continuous operation.
A typical setup is to use your big screen TV normally with CATV or satellite, but to add this unit into a spare HDMI input or the SVGA input if your TV has one. You can easily switch back and forth from that input and live TV or if your TV offers a “picture in picture” feature, you can have a small radar window onscreen with live TV.
What else is it useful for?
Anywhere needing storm tracking at a glance. Unlike watching a cable TV channel like “The Weather Channel” you don’t have to wait for them to get around to showing your area of interest. For example: Radio stations that offer live weather reports can benefit by having “live doppler radar” to refer to at any moment.
Is the radar imagery really free?
Yes! Our system takes freely available raw radar data from NOAA’s National Weather Service and combines it with our stunning terrain imagery to produce a high quality presentation.
There are no fees for the data – ever. All you need is a working wired or wireless Internet connection to receive the data and start displaying your own radar channel.
Other applications include:
- Interstate truck stops, rest areas, and restaurants that cater to travelers
- Dispatch centers where weather is a factor in planning operations
- Hotels/motels that want to offer a lobby display
- Airports that want to add live radar to the flight schedule displays
- Local or in-house cable TV channels that wish to offer a live local radar channel
- Radio stations that report live weather, but who cannot afford a radar or radar service
- TV stations for offering a live local radar on a secondary HDTV channel
- Golf courses and other outdoor recreation facilities that need to track weather for safety
- Agricultural operations that have workers in the field
- Utilities that need to track storms in operations centers
What are the advantages of the StormPredator appliance?
- Works with your existing network, wired or wireless WiFi
- Setup in minutes, no special skills or tools required
- Operates like a web browser silently fetching and updating images
- Intelligent updater updates only images that change – low bandwidth impact
- Uses the NOAA national NEXRAD network – public data – NO subscription fees
- Nationwide coverage including Alaska, Guam, Hawaii, Puerto Rico
- Continuous unattended 24/7 operation
- Near silent operation (cooling fan at 26 decibels), internal automatic housekeeping
- Small, thin, low power – mounts anywhere – mounting hardware included
- No user interaction or mouse/keyboard input required
- Gives radio stations the ability to have their own live Doppler Radar Weather
- Custom basemaps with additional towns/locations can be imported
- Will automatically export the radar image as a still or animation to your web page
- Images are brandable as your own local radar service with your text/logo
- Customizable to send email/pager/cell phone alerts on severe weather detection
- Can also be operated interactively for tracking if desired, has all the interactive features of our desktop application available when used this way.
Want one? See more specs and order it here
Fathers day is coming up, which is a perfect excuse to buy one for yourself since you really didn’t need another tie anyway.
Oh, and no, I don’t have a radar appliance that tracks Al Gore…yet.
Above: the StormPredator Radar Appliance automatically updates
and loops the radar imagery. Click image to see larger image
showing terrain and storm detail.
What is it?
The StormPredator Weather Appliance is a small, self contained automatic appliance that connects to any LCD monitor
or TV with a SVGA port or HDMI port and turns it into a dedicated 24/7 weather radar display. It mounts directly to the
rear of the LCD monitor/TV using the included VESA mount. One setup, the StormPredator Radar Appliance will run
continuously and unattended to provide live radar coverage of the area you select. It uses a special version of our popular
StormPredator desktop software designed for unattended continuous operation.
What is is useful for?
Anywhere needing storm tracking at a glance. Unlike watching a cable TV channel like “The Weather Channel” you don’t
have to wait for them to get around to showing your area of interest. For example: Radio stations that offer live weather
reports can benefit by having “live doppler radar” to refer to at any moment.
Above: Example of the StormPredator Radar Appliance on an LCD TV in a live radio booth
Other applications include:
- Interstate truck stops, rest areas, and restaurants that cater to travelers
- Dispatch centers were weather is a factor in planning operations
- Hotels/motels that want to offer a lobby display
- Airports that want to add live radar to the flight schedule displays
- Local or in-house cable TV channels that wish to offer a live local radar channel
- Radio stations that report live weather, but who cannot afford a radar or radar service – see below
- TV stations for offering a live local radar on a secondary HDTV channel
- Golf courses and other outdoor recreation facilities that need to track weather for safety
- Agricultural operations that have workers in the field
- Utilities that need to track storms in operations centers
What are the advantages of the StormPredator appliance?
- Works with your existing network, wired or wireless WiFi
- Setup in minutes, no special skills or tools required
- Operates like a web browser silently fetching and updating images
- Intelligent updater updates only images that change – low bandwidth impact
- Uses the NOAA national NEXRAD network – public data – NO subscription fees
- Nationwide coverage including Alaska, Guam, Hawaii, Puerto Rico
- Continuous unattended 24/7 operation
- Near silent operation (cooling fan at 26 decibels), internal automatic housekeeping
- Small, thin, low power – mounts anywhere – mounting hardware included
- No user interaction or mouse/keyboard input required
- Gives radio stations the ability to have their own live Doppler Radar Weather
- Custom basemaps with additional towns/locations can be imported
- Will automatically export the radar image as a still or animation to your web page
- Images are brandable as your own local radar service with your text/logo
- Customizable to send email/pager/cell phone alerts on severe weather detection
- Can also be operated interactively for tracking if desired, has all the interactive features
of our desktop application available when used this way.
Above: The StormPredator Radar Appliance mounted on the rear of a 27″ LCD TV
Above: The StormPredator Radar Appliance mounted on 27″ LCD TV, top front view showing
WiFi antenna and power switch/power indicator light
StormPredator Radar Appliance Specifications:
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
God that’s cool. Too bad it doesn’t work in Canada.
I’ve noticed that Doppler radar centered near Pendleton does not sweep into Wallowa County, and neither does the one in SE Washington. Is it the mountains blocking it? We have a large county surrounded by mountains and not much in the way of population. But it would be nice to track storms. If Doppler reached us. Am I just not reading it right?
REPLY: Yeah, mountainous terrain makes if difficult for radar which is line of sight. But looking at the Walla Walla radar range it seems to cover Enterprise, OR. Which is near you. -A
Too bad this is proprietary to DOS. Mac users must use a DOS partition. Heck, you can’t even use this on a web browser or an iPad. When will software vendors realize that there are an ever growing number of users who do not owe fealty to the Lord of Redmond?
REPLY:
1- Wrong, sorry. It is not proprietary to DOS. It uses Windows XP.
2- We looked at the Mac Mini as a candidate platform – We deemed it too expensive (about $550 average street price) and the software development tools would all have to be repurchased. It also has no HDMI port, putting it behind the power curve.
3- I’ve learned from personal experience with NuBuss and Power PC not to trust Apple to keep things available. Jobs has pulled the rug out from under me twice now as an Apple developer, and I really don’t care to repeat the experience.
4- If you wish to run the software on Apple Mac, no problem! It has been successfully run under the two most popular Windows emulators for Macs.
5- Who cares what it runs on as long as it works and is affordable? It’s an appliance not a personal tool. Your comment is just the never ending OS bashing based on personal preferences. We aren’t selling an OS, we are selling a solution. You can’t make the same solution on Apple hardware and software for the same price, and price is king.
6- Our next level product, ViziFrame, uses Linux, again we couldn’t do the same job with mac hardware and software for the price. Apple makes some great stuff, but their price point generally makes them unsuitable for most OEM implementations.
Awesome! Great idea and implementation!
K. Montgomery says:
May 8, 2010 at 5:07 pm
God that’s cool. Too bad it doesn’t work in Canada.
Bet Anthony will tell you it will work in Canada with a catch. I always thought Canadian weather was suppose to be a bit lame so just because you don’t get your area, for some real excitement you could hook in to the latest tornado chase across Texas or keep an ‘eye’ on those late summer Atlantic huricane ‘eyes’, right from the comfort and safety of your recliner, commercial free and 24/7!
(How am I doing Anthony?) 🙂
Oh, and no, I don’t have a radar appliance that tracks Al Gore…yet.
Just always look near the oceans. Apparently he likes to live next to them….maybe to watch his 20 feet of ocean level rise first hand in luxury?
photo of Al Gore’s new “ocean view villa”
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_orkXxp0bhEA/S94eHo6LdjI/AAAAAAAAdDQ/wklhl-GODoA/s400/100502-gore-house5.jpg
…Southern California’s rich and famous…
http://www.latimes.com/classified/realestate/la-hm-hotprop-20100508,0,1010789.story
Anthony for a regular guy you come up with some real clever stuff.
REPLY: Thanks – Anthony
Looks like the Aspire Revo… I have one. Nice little PC, trying to get full 1080p with hardware acceleration working as we speak. XBMC beta might do the trick.
REPLY: Yes, that’s the hardware platform we chose, with a clean copy of WinXP. The OEM version of XP they offer is loaded with bloatware/adware, takes about 4-5 hours to uninstall it all. We also created our own custom machined VESA mount for it, as well as integrated WiFi, both of which are included. XMBC works best when installed to HD, rather than their live USB drive. -A
This is very handy but if you want to increase your intelect 27.3% then kill your TV.
REPLY: or just pull the plug on cable TV, and FYI, you may need to do just that as you spelled intellect incorrectly 😉 -A
What I really want is an Algore countdown clock to Armageddon (as in “we only have ten years to save the planet” and that was about 4 yrs ago) …
.
.
Do you have a vibrating chair that only works at detecting Earth Quakes as well?
Joe says:
May 8, 2010 at 8:39 pm
I already have one of those chairs, but it’s rather expensive. Consist’s of an office over an old barn/garage. Kinda wobbly, I can feel earthquakes in Eureka when nobody else can.
I am amazed. But will the new gizmo officially record my area’s historical low temps and convince THE government entity to allow our temps back into the record? Why has our government approved, government employed station been shut down? Is it because we are too cold to report?
We are fifteen degrees below average and almost fifty degrees below our record high. We have experienced 3-5 degrees below record lows and yet our local newspapers aren’t reporting any unusual weather. My gas furness is running as I type and it is May 8th. We had snow yesterday.
I now have to type “furnace” about a thousand times.
I wonder why Windows XP? 🙁
Why NOT BSD/Linux? Without the graphical burden and OEM prices?!
Regards
REPLY: Why program in not Cobol, or Fortran, or LISP? The simple fact is that I made the choice, and it was the best one for the product, since we would have had to completely rewrite our StormPredator application, which is designed for Windows. We choose Windows because it has the largest market share. Our next level weather display product uses Linux. Of course none of this matters since you can’t use this product in Poland anyway. -A
I’ve got a copy of Storm Predator and it’s great fun. Sometimes when I’m wondering what’s going to happen next, I just look out to sea from San Francisco (we get what ever is out to sea just a few hours later…).
Lots of cool things it does, but I’m still learning all the knobs and levers 😉
Oh, on the OS wars issue: I love Macs. My family has, oh, I donno, maybe a half dozen of them (at least 4 laptops…). I have to second what Anthony said… We’ve got 3 different processor types, a gaggle of plugs and cables nobody else has ever seen, and the peripherals du jour problem. Oh, and it’s a Mac kernel, so just like Unix / Linux under the skin… except when it isn’t… So I have figured out more ‘magic incantations’ than I care to think about just to get around how it does something unlike anyone else on the planet… then get to do it all again next week…
(For example, something developers frequently need to do, “Becoming Root” or the main Admin account. There is a bit of obscure magic needed to get it to LET you try to become root. Yeah, a ‘security feature’. I’ve done it once or twice. Then a year or three passes, one went to the shop for a repair and came back with root in the (disabled) default condition again. So now I get to go searching for that weird backdoor to turn on the ‘normal’ root access all over again… It’s that kind of stuff that drives you up a wall after a while…)
So despite the fact that I’d rate the OS choices from first to last as:
Mac O/S
Linux
Windoz
the fact is that were I developing a product, I’d direct my guys to develop for Windoz first, old windoz second, Linux 3rd, and Mac last. Simply for reasons of market share and cost. Take on the hardest lifting last…
But back on topic: you really do want this Storm Predator stuff, it’s fun to play with!
Off topic I know but puts politicians under radar surveillance,
“Cooler Heads Coalition 16/4/10 congressional briefing on the science and politics of the “Climategate” scandal. Featuring presentations by George Mason University Distinguished Senior Fellow Pat Michaels and International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project (ICECAP) Executive Director Joseph D’Aleo.”
Looks like the warmists were able to censor the earlier link to this video, which is well worth a look, but it is now embedded on this site.
http://www.palmerston-north.info
Anthony
What we really need is an instrument to detect temperatures. We could then record locations over a long period of timne and find out if…. Oh wait that device has already been invented some 350 years ago, trouble is that after all this time no one who draws a govt salary has learnt to use them properly yet.
Grea idea Anthony-is this something that could likely be adapted for potentially large markets such as the UK or can it only ever be specific to the US radar installations?
(my mother worked on the very first radar installation in England during WW2)
tonyb
I think a similar product in Europe would have a market. The euroweather channel on Sky never seems to show the radar and satellite data, or if they do it’s not for Italy. The data does seem to exist because google earth shows the both satellite and radar data.
Maybe if the box could alternate between satellite and radar, that would be nice too.
That is really cool; can you make one for New Zealand, please.
E.M.Smith says:
May 8, 2010 at 11:36 pm
Good to see a comment from you. Been rare for a while. I’m still hoping for the day I see you and Anthony kicking butt on a Glenn Beck show. A guy can hope, can’t he?
Mr Watts,
Perhaps I was too succinct in my questions.
It’s not my piece of cake what OS platform your software runs on. But I saw an autonomous hardware which does NOT have to have any OS screen. It suffices to have any web browser running in kiosk mode. In such case it is better to use something more reliable, efficient and for free. Simply Linux.
But “my” problem with your announcement lies in the form of the advertisement and the issue of correctly selecting target users. The whole text is misleading, yes, misleading (e.g. “StormPredator Radar Appliance is a small, self contained automatic appliance” – excellent piece of new-speak from Orwell’s 1984).
If I read the features data correctly, the StormPredator Radar Appliance is de facto a small PC without PC attributes. Why you didn’t say so? Just like many ATMs or Information Kiosks, where the OpSystems are of secondary importance. BTW, the “market share” used by you as one of the decisive arguments for Windows XP is not relevant here then.
Of course I forget the application issue. Mea culpa. I suppose the software existed in Windows version and was written prior to the device what gave you no choice.
But I still do not know if this “appliance” is for me – the common TV user (forget my country) – or for the radio stations or other institutions.
Once I wrote that I like to read your weblog not only for the science but also for the interesting views from all over the World and contained in comments, however lofty it sounds. Up to now I was convinced that all Americans know that there is NO such thing like “free lunch” (apart from “free Linux” of course 🙂 ). After reading your text I have no doubts that I was wrong because – “radar imagery (is) really free”. “Only” the appliance has a cost attached… (sarcasm). Nice hype with this “really free”…
I may watch radar maps from all over Europe on my PC for some time in 24/7 mode and for free. Perhaps there is a significant difference between typical radar maps found in Internet and the maps offered by the StormPredator software/appliance? Make me convinced to them then.
Another example – what’s the difference between StormPredator Radar Appliance and StormPredator Software? Why “the Appliance” is better then an old cheap PC running StormPredator Software? Could the application run on Linux+Wine platform? Etc. There more “niches” you define in the times of “hard economy” the more products you will sell (or the probability of doing so will be higher).
From PR side or efficient advertisement point of view the ad should be rewritten.
Regards
P.S. I wish I live in the USA. Perhaps I wouldn’t play smart Aleck but I would download the software and test it. 🙂
REPLY:[“radar imagery (is) really free”. “Only” the appliance has a cost attached… (sarcasm). Nice hype with this “really free”…]
Amusing, to say the least. Next time I’ll just give everything away for free, hardware and all, so as not to offend Linux users such as yourself. 😉 -A
As found in Przemysław Pawełczyk from May 8, 2010 at 10:52 pm:
Well, I just installed Wine on my Debian Linux box to run an old Windows app. I did not have to reprogram the app for Linux, and arguably it was working better since my previous OS was Win ME. 🙂 Less crashing is always nice.
Shouldn’t take much to see if StormPredator will run on Linux with Wine. If it does, well then… BTW, before any complaints about Wine start flying, please follow the link I provided and click on the large “About” graphic. In the “Learn more” section, “Common Myths about Wine” is rather informative. Also there is a link there for Codeweavers, who sell a supported version (CrossOver), and they also have a service to get a software developer’s product quickly running on Linux and on Macs (if needed).
Should be worth looking into. Plus if it works with Wine you can likely build a custom Linux kernel with just the basics needed, and have a much smaller OS that can run as well (or better) on less hardware.
REPLY: Windows ME aka Mangled Edition, truly the worst Windows OS ever released. (Not counting MS “Bob”) -A
The link (click on the picture) which is supposed to show larger image and terrain does not work on three different browsers in the UK. Just leads to a tiny place-holder. Can it be fixed?
REPLY: works fine here, maybe you have a popup blocker turned on -A
“…attaching this appliance to the rear and plugging it in…”
Naughty!