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I need a Zara Radio Guru to consult


Bowshock

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I have not worked through setting it up, but allegedly you can have weatherbug put temp and humidity text files out there, and locate announcement sets so that zara can at least play time, temperature, and humidity periodically.

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-klb- wrote:

I have not worked through setting it up, but allegedly you can have weatherbug put temp and humidity text files out there, and locate announcement sets so that zara can at least play time, temperature, and humidity periodically.

Yes you can and it awesome. you need to download the weatherwatcher program and set it up with zara. you also have to download the voice annoucements. I know that Micheal Farney has them as he sent them to me. either pm him or i can ask him if i could send them to you.
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It is possible to do a full blown weather cast, there are several ways to do this. Here is how I do it. Since I have a friend at the television station I work at he simply cuts an audio track for me and FTP's it to a specific folder. I then schedule zara to run a cut of audio from that specific folder. This works for me great the only thing you need to do is empty the folder daily (i've been looking for a way to have windows scheduler do it for me). The trick is to have the audio file in that folder before it is set to play. I have been trying to do this with the juice podcast catcher program the same way except to use a local news podcast. It seems to work however if the folder is not emptied it may run old audio files.

You can also use the Time and temp files, they also work great. you can tag the files with extra audio for instance you can have a file that is attached to the time file for the 1300 hours that can say something like "merry christmas, the show is only 5 hours away stop by tonight at 6:00 the current time is 1...." . zara will play that file at the start of every time annoucement that runs in the 1pm hour and insert the appropriate min file where needed.

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friskybri wrote:

I started to play with it and it looks cool. To bad you cant have automated weather put in every 15 mins from weather channel or something. lol.


You can have your computer "scrap" the Weather Channel website and retrieve the info. I do this with my homeautomation server at 18 min till the hour. It is written to a text file, then at 2 min to the hour, is announced (voice) through all the computers in the house.

You do have to have a license from the Weather Channel, and agree to their terms and conditions regarding how many times an hour you hit their site. Without the license, they can and will ban the ip address of computers scrapping their info from their pages.
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John,

do you have a script that checks the web site? is it simply text and to you ues a text to voice program to convert it to an audio file?

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Greg wrote:

John,

do you have a script that checks the web site? is it simply text and to you ues a text to voice program to convert it to an audio file?


Yes, it is a script and for the weather text to speech I use the voice Kate from Neospeech, and their voice Paul for weather alerts. This file could be used by Zara.

Other events use voices from Acapela, Heather for announcing caller ID info, and Mike for alerts of someone in the driveway or front porch, voices from AT&T (Julia) for event reminders, etc

Now, back to the Zara topic.
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Has anyone used an internet stream with Zara from a site that broadcasts music? I've fiddled with it and, of course, it didn't do anything.



Tim

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Tim wrote:

Has anyone used an internet stream with Zara from a site that broadcasts music? I've fiddled with it and, of course, it didn't do anything.



Tim


Sure you can. This is how I pull all my newsfeeds. I play 30 second world news headlines and a 5 minute news segment. Try this for your internet stream:

http://208.53.170.180:8392

Bingo! You now have planetchristmas radio in your display!
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Michael,



Thank you so much!! It WORKED!!! I wanted some music playing when the show is finished and now I've got it! Thanks again!



Tim

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ok got zara, got weather info. where do I go to get scrips and how do I set them up in zara. Its not that easy right now. I am some what computer savy but not on this stuff.

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Michael F.

According to Joshua earlier in this thread, he mentioned you had some audio announcement files for time, temperature, and humidity. Are they something you can share? Did you record them yourself or did someone else make them? I have been looking at some Text-To-Speech (TTS) software and services available on the web, trying to decide the best way to tackle this problem. Just wondering how you or anyone else did this in previous years.

The ZaraRadio software seem pretty simple, as I already have it configured to play something I recorded (a single time such as 11 o'clock), I am just not looking forward to doing the recording over-and-over again...to cover all the time, temperature, and humidity possibilities.

Thanks again.

Z

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michael,

if you do decide to cut the audio tracks yourself it is not really that bad, you need everything seperate, the numbers 1-11, noon (or 12) and midnight (or 12) and minutes 1 to 59, this is if you are not using military time. Zara reads seperate files for the hours and minutes.

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Hi all.

There has been great interest in zara recently. I am working on a web tutorial to cover the miniplus presentation as well as a demo of some of the more advanced configuration options. The requested voice files will be available at that time.

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michael.farney wrote:

Hi all.

There has been great interest in zara recently. I am working on a web tutorial to cover the miniplus presentation as well as a demo of some of the more advanced configuration options. The requested voice files will be available at that time.


THANKS!!

I can't wait to see it!! :)
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Hi Michael F.,

I have spent a ton of time researching freeware radio station software and my hands-down favorite is ZaraRadio. From the scheduling options and sweepers to support for multiple sound cards, I continue to be amazed that it is free. Granted, Zara has a version 2 available that is for fee, but v1.6.2 seems perfect for this Christmas nut.

It appears that you have some experience with Zara. Have you used it for a while? Did you consider any other options before you settled on Zara?

Thanks again for your commitment to help us with a .ppt file and the voice files.

Z

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Michael R. Zlatic wrote:

Hi Michael F.,

I have spent a ton of time researching freeware radio station software and my hands-down favorite is ZaraRadio. From the scheduling options and sweepers to support for multiple sound cards, I continue to be amazed that it is free. Granted, Zara has a version 2 available that is for fee, but v1.6.2 seems perfect for this Christmas nut.

It appears that you have some experience with Zara. Have you used it for a while? Did you consider any other options before you settled on Zara?

Thanks again for your commitment to help us with a .ppt file and the voice files.

Z


I tried out direttore first. I used it for a while, but Zara blew it out of the water. Zara radio is coming up on 3 years for me. I've done it all with Zara from toggling multiple sound cards to batch files enabling/disabling LOR to DTMF. DTMF is by far the best option. A close second is two sound cards (can do seemless audio when configured correctly.) Batch files are not desirable and neither is schedule start/stop.

The tutorial is video based; no PPT needed. You'll have the full miniplus presentation and then some. Give me 2 weeks or so...
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good morning, i won't be able to make it to your mini to see your video. we are having one this next weekend in KC if you would like to come, but i would love to have access to your video when you get it finished if possible i wasn't aware of this program untill reading this post and i have downloaded it and have just started playing with it and it looks very interesting. it kind of reminds me of a controller i used to program for my ham repeater with the day and date and time announcements and then scheduling them all. any how Thanks and keep the info comming,

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Dale J wrote:

good morning, i won't be able to make it to your mini to see your video. we are having one this next weekend in KC if you would like to come, but i would love to have access to your video when you get it finished if possible i wasn't aware of this program untill reading this post and i have downloaded it and have just started playing with it and it looks very interesting. it kind of reminds me of a controller i used to program for my ham repeater with the day and date and time announcements and then scheduling them all. any how Thanks and keep the info comming,


I did look into your mini a few months ago, but it was too far away to justify the cost. And, I will be in Michigan to check out miniboyink's toys. :)http://forums.planetchristmas.com/showthread.php?t=32746 Now if I could only afford one.....LOL.
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