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Zara Radio temperature announcement


Wayne K

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Since weather watcher pulled the plug a couple of years ago, is there anyone who has come up with anything else to use? I done quite a bit of google searching today and found some old post with a couple of .bat files that people tried to make work. I tried to follow a couple of them but got no where. I know there are a lot of people still using Zara radio and thought I would ask. I use the Zara radio before and after my show and use the time stamp and would like to get the weather back working.

Thanks

Wayne

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I ended up writing my own C# program to pull the current weather from a data source (I forget at the moment which one I used) and format it for use in Zara.  It's not pretty but it works.

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I would like to get it working too.  This is my third year with Zara Radio which went on the air Monday evening and will run until whatever day I shut down my show.  I run it 24x7 EXCEPT for show hours or when I am testing.  Ran the temp the first year and was unable to last year.

 

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I've reworked my program to now use a parameter file, so for anyone who would like, you can get a copy of it from here:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1v3bbitid775alk/AABNMXFA3JMBETh_euA5WKi5a?dl=0

It's just a basic console application that retrieves the current weather conditions for your area (identified by zip code) and writes them to a formatted file that Zara can use.  It also displays the data on the console screen.  It's not pretty, but it gets the job done.

Make sure to read/follow the instructions in the ReadMe.txt file to get all of the parameters set.  You'll need to get an API key from OpenWeatherMap.org, but that's easy (and free).  Instructions are in the ReadMe.

I've done very limited testing (I know it works on my PC) but let me know if you run into problems and I'll see what I can do.  Also let me know if you have suggestions for improvements.

Joel

 

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Joel

Thanks for the file. I struggled with getting it to work a little. There was a couple of symbols in the key area that I did not get deleted. It looks like it will work at this time.

Thanks again

Wayne

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28 minutes ago, Wayne K said:

Joel

Thanks for the file. I struggled with getting it to work a little. There was a couple of symbols in the key area that I did not get deleted. It looks like it will work at this time.

Thanks again

Wayne

Hi Wayne,

I'm glad it looks like it will work.  If you have any problems, please let me know.

Joel

 

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I have it working.  I likely had the same issue with which characters to insert into the API key.  Worked on the second try...  Now I just need to find where I have my temp and humidity voice files.  I likely did not move them from the old show computer.  Might have to go out to the data cabinet and power that one back up so I can get them...

 

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11 hours ago, k6ccc said:

I have it working.  I likely had the same issue with which characters to insert into the API key.  Worked on the second try...  Now I just need to find where I have my temp and humidity voice files.  I likely did not move them from the old show computer.  Might have to go out to the data cabinet and power that one back up so I can get them...

 

I'm glad you got it working.  I've updated the config file to remove the characters that were causing the confusion so hopefully it's a little more clear now for anyone else.

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I would like to say that I got "involved" with this subject over on the DIY forum a few days ago and was concerned that Weather Watcher would no longer work with Zara Radio!  I sent Mike Singer an email about it and he replied to me over the weekend.

He never "pulled the plug" on the program, the suppliers of weather data changed their RSS feeds and formats for weather info so his "free" version of Weather Watcher would no longer work.

The current version of WW works just fine with Zara Radio as I have it installed on this machine and will place it on my sequencing computer later on (no show for me this year again due to health).

I can understand Mike's making the program a paid subscription as it is a fine program with many improvements over the years to the basic free one that probably many of us used I'm sure.

But with that said, this "patch" that Joel posted looks very nice and should help out those using the Zara program!  Free is great if you can find something that works easily for those of us who are not programmers or do code stuff!

Happy Holidays to all this year!

Bill

Edited by beeiilll
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  • 2 weeks later...

Yo Bill, just curious what version of Windows you are running ZaraRadio on?  I have used it for many years, but recently had to update my computer and came with Windows 10.  ZR 1.6.2 does not seem to run on my windows 10.  I'll probably post this info elsewhere as well to see if there is a solution.

 

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1 hour ago, k6ccc said:

Ah, another reason to stick with Windows 7...

 

Well, I guess there is an assumption that the issue was caused by Windows 10, but I didn't make that assumption.  I did some experimentation and discovered the problem.  It was ZaraRadio.  I went back to my Ancient Windows XP computer and discovered that ZR crashed there as well, whereas it didn't do that before I disconnected the computer from everything.  To shorten the story, ZR doesn't like it  if there is no "output" connected to the computer for sending audio to the speaker driver.  The "output" can be a physical connection or a mapping to an output device.   Since I use a separate show computer and use TeamViewer to connect to it, I  don't have a reason to connect speakers to the show computer.  For my test, I simply connected a pair of headphones to the new show computer with Windows 10, and ZR stopped crashing when I started it.

Actually, I am quite happy with Win 10.  Aside from this issue with ZR, everything worked perfectly when I moved everything to the new computer, and I didn't need to make any adjustments or change anything.  Frankly I do like Win 7 (on my laptop), but not going to put it on the new show computer since everything works great with 10.

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Folks, slap me silly if I am misunderstanding your issue.  Is it that you want weather data imported from Weather Watcher Live into ZaraRadio.  It's actually quite simple if that is the issue.  Let me know and I will explain.

 

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  • 3 months later...
On 11/18/2017 at 10:13 AM, jfuller8400 said:

I've reworked my program to now use a parameter file, so for anyone who would like, you can get a copy of it from here:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1v3bbitid775alk/AABNMXFA3JMBETh_euA5WKi5a?dl=0

It's just a basic console application that retrieves the current weather conditions for your area (identified by zip code) and writes them to a formatted file that Zara can use.  It also displays the data on the console screen.  It's not pretty, but it gets the job done.

Make sure to read/follow the instructions in the ReadMe.txt file to get all of the parameters set.  You'll need to get an API key from OpenWeatherMap.org, but that's easy (and free).  Instructions are in the ReadMe.

I've done very limited testing (I know it works on my PC) but let me know if you run into problems and I'll see what I can do.  Also let me know if you have suggestions for improvements.

Joel

 

I used your console application on the free version of Zara we are using for our LPFM station for the past 6 months. Great work. Now we went a purchased ZaraStudio 3.0.9 and it now does not work. I contacted Zara support and they referred me to the Weather Watcher app (NOT). They told me that the output for ZaraStudio needs to be a text file (plain) and should look like this.

[weather]
temperature=[TEMP PLAIN]
degreeType=F
humidity=[HUMIDITY PLAIN]

I tested it by creating a text file above and inserted a temperature of 45 and Humidity of 60 and it worked. The new Zara does not like HTML or more detail than I've shown. Would it be possiable to modify your console program for ZaraStudio to create this output?

 

Thank you in advance.

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On 11/28/2017 at 1:51 PM, Richard Hamilton said:

Since I use a separate show computer and use TeamViewer to connect to it, I  don't have a reason to connect speakers to the show computer.

OK, that statement confused me.  How are you getting audio from the show computer to the show (speakers and/or FM transmitter)?  I understand checking on your show from a remote location with TeamViewer (I largely switched from VNC to TeamViewer this year), but the audio is delayed enough it would not work for your show.

 

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26 minutes ago, Kevin Crutchfield said:

Now we went a purchased ZaraStudio 3.0.9

Kevin,  I'm curious what was your reason for purchasing Zara?  I am also planning on that this year, and I'm wondering what your reason was.

 

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3 hours ago, k6ccc said:

Kevin,  I'm curious what was your reason for purchasing Zara?  I am also planning on that this year, and I'm wondering what your reason was.

 

We did as a tech team go this route, number one was it was a familiar product as the free version. So no training involved. Two, It had more features such as being able to play all the different file type extensions. 

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20 hours ago, Kevin Crutchfield said:

I used your console application on the free version of Zara we are using for our LPFM station for the past 6 months. Great work. Now we went a purchased ZaraStudio 3.0.9 and it now does not work. I contacted Zara support and they referred me to the Weather Watcher app (NOT). They told me that the output for ZaraStudio needs to be a text file (plain) and should look like this.

[weather]
temperature=[TEMP PLAIN]
degreeType=F
humidity=[HUMIDITY PLAIN]

I tested it by creating a text file above and inserted a temperature of 45 and Humidity of 60 and it worked. The new Zara does not like HTML or more detail than I've shown. Would it be possiable to modify your console program for ZaraStudio to create this output?

 

Thank you in advance.

Hi Kevin,

Yea, I should be able to modify it to produce an output file in this format.  Give me a little bit of time and I'll post another message on this thread when it's ready.

Joel

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