WeatherStar 4000+: Weather Channel Simulator
weatherstar.netbymatt.com

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711 points

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adam_gyroscope

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8 days ago

140 comments

ndiddy ・ 8 days ago

If you're interested in this, someone on YouTube got a WeatherStar 4000 (device that sat at cable headends and generated the local weather report graphics) and wrote all new firmware to make 90's style weather reports on the real hardware. This was necessary because the original firmware was downloaded over satellite so it's now lost. It looks basically identical to the real Weather Channel from the 90s, except it doesn't have their logo in the corner (I guess for trademark reasons). Here's a stream of his WeatherStar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66mSjXpfD2c

post_break ・ 8 days ago

I run one of these on my desk 24x7 with a raspberry pi and a 3D printed monitor that simulates a CRT. I tried with a real CRT TV but the frequency and having it at the side of my main monitor started to make me sick.

https://imgur.com/a/wD2EINO

https://github.com/vbguyny/ws4kp

  • wiether ・ 7 days ago

    I love the contrast between using a book to raise your main screen... and having a whole computer dedicated to showing weather 24/7!

    • post_break ・ 7 days ago

      You missed the irony of the monitor sitting on a NUC that is probably 1000x more powerful than the Pi running the weather lol.

  • exikyut ・ 5 days ago

    What do you mean by "sick"? Headaches from coil/flyback transformer whine? Perceptible flicker due to the CRT being in the corner of your peripheral vision?

    I'm a bit susceptible to noises myself.

    • post_break ・ 4 days ago

      The flicker in the corner of my eye. It started to make me sick to my stomach somehow. It's a weird feeling.

gasgiant ・ 8 days ago

I listen to a lot of Pat Metheny Group, which my wife refers to as "Weather Channel Music". I used to argue that Pat was waaay better than the stuff on the Weather Channel, until one day we had it on in a hotel room and "Last Train Home" came on, and I had to shut the heck up.

  • colpabar ・ 7 days ago

    Music is so funny. I just listened to this on youtube and _immediately_ started crying because it reminded me of my late father who used to watch the weather channel all the time. Seeing this thread and all the weather channel talk makes me think of him, but man, hearing the music just wrecks me.

    • jader201 ・ 7 days ago

      Yeah, there's something about hearing -- especially music -- and smell that can somehow really induce major nostalgia, where sight just doesn't have the same effect.

      Sight still definitely can induce nostalgia, but not near to the extent as hearing and smell.

      Particularly music, where it already has the power to induce emotions already.

  • ecocentrik ・ 7 days ago

    "Last Train Home" was used in a popular supermarket chain (Publix) commercial in the 1990s. I'm pretty sure it was one of Pat's most commercially successful songs. The album, "Still Life", is great.

  • mortenjorck ・ 7 days ago

    "Last Train Home" is a banger, in any case.

  • alexjplant ・ 8 days ago

    Given how much fusion they played on "Local on the 8s" I wonder if they ever spun some Weather Report...

  • paradox460 ・ 7 days ago

    Enterprising TV producers used Pat Metheny a fair bit. The Search was used as a theme for a TV show (The Search for Solutions), and at least a half dozen KNME made TV shows in the 90s used bits of American Garage and First Circle

  • xorbax ・ 8 days ago

    Wasn't there also a text-to-speech voiceover of the local forecast text?

    I would have sworn they would replace the music with a guy "reading" the forecast.

    • dylan604 ・ 7 days ago

      In large markets, some of the local broadcast stations have a dedicated digital channel that plays a local version of this. In my market, they have the digital voice reading the forecast.

    • dcrazy ・ 7 days ago

      There was a time when it was only prerecorded “The forecast for your area”

      • dylan604 ・ 7 days ago
        ・ 2 more

        For a time, you could call a phone number for the forecast. A lot of banks would tell you the time with one of their numbers.

        • reaperducer ・ 7 days ago

          This still exists in some cities. Albuquerque is one.

    • xd1936 ・ 7 days ago

      "Your Local 'On the 8s'"

  • HeckFeck ・ 7 days ago

    "Last Train Home" was also used as outro music for the anime JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, S3, Stardust Crusaders.

  • dcrazy ・ 7 days ago

    This reminds me of when I first listened to my dad’s Spyro Gyra CD.

jader201 ・ 8 days ago

It will only be the true 90s Weather Channel when I hear some Rippingtons playing in the background.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndaMC-Ug4Jg

  • huslage ・ 8 days ago

    I bought all of the Rippingtons albums because I heard them on the Weather Channel...I was inexplicably into smooth jazz at the time.

  • gosub100 ・ 7 days ago

    If you like the music more than the data, search YouTube for "weather channel vaporwave". I find it relaxing

  • 2OEH8eoCRo0 ・ 8 days ago

    I remember instrumental covers of Pink Floyd.

  • polygot ・ 7 days ago

    Not sure how they're going to go around that corner with that vehicle

doawoo ・ 8 days ago

I have a version (probably not exactly the same software for the head unit) of this on an SGI O2 sitting around including all the environment scripts and the HTML manuals. I have a tar.gz of it that I should upload to an archive location.

  • CursedSilicon ・ 7 days ago

    Please do! The software has been undumped and is highly desired by retro enthusiasts (including myself)

bdbenton5255 ・ 7 days ago

Love it, made me smile. The "warmth" of all this old tech is nostalgic, all the little human touches lost to history. The little bits of heart and soul that shaped the details of our lives, some nameless engineer on some forgotten afternoon implementing the little blue waves in the rain clouds. Something strangely bittersweet about it.

  • KurSix ・ 7 days ago

    There's something really touching about how even the most utilitarian things (like a weather report) had this quiet artistry to them.

ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 ・ 8 days ago

Looks like this was the original version? https://github.com/vbguyny/ws4kp

  • xp84 ・ 7 days ago

    Indeed, though significant work has been done on this one, detailed in the readme. On the other hand, the one you’ve linked has since the fork added a “custom RSS feed in the scroller” feature.

socalgal2 ・ 8 days ago

Not knowing what WeatherStar 4000+ was, I was expecting "Weather Channel Simulator" to use AI to generate live video of a weather reporter describing the weather.

Can't be too far off.

  • samtp ・ 8 days ago

    This is a lot more interesting and impressive than AI generated goop

  • pncnmnp ・ 8 days ago

    I was thinking the same thing! I've been working with some TTS applications, such as real-time commentary for Pong and personalized radio stations. I might give this a try, it sounds fun.

  • KurSix ・ 7 days ago

    Honestly, give it a year or two and someone will have a fine-tuned LLM generating endless 90s-style weather banter with a deepfaked Jim Cantore pointing at AI-generated radar maps.

  • beowulfey ・ 7 days ago

    Yeah! There's nothing quite like watching fake people on fake weather broadcasts presenting weather just for me. One day we'll wonder why we ever used humans for anything.

jasonpeacock ・ 8 days ago

Nice!

It'd be helpful to have the options stored in the URL, especially the kiosk mode, so it can be bookmarked.

And allow <esc> to exit kiosk mode.

  • trvr ・ 8 days ago

    It seems if you left click "Copy Permalink" that the site will generate a massive URL with all of your options. One of them is "settings-kiosk-checkbox". Change it to "true" in your copied URL and that should work.

    • jasonpeacock ・ 6 days ago

      Thanks! I didn't even notice the obvious share link below the options :p

gdubs ・ 7 days ago

Well, this wins the internet for today — pack it up everybody.

Seriously though beyond just being awesome, this site is such a good experience on mobile. Really well crafted nostalgia vibes.

burnt-resistor ・ 7 days ago

Yep. That's pretty much what it used to look like on cable and satellite TV in the late 90's/early 00's. Just missing the scan lines. Pretty awesome that you can skip sections. It needs terrible elevator music (mellow jazz) and occasional announcers to voice over and unenthusiastically explain what's already obvious in front of a green screen.

  • xp84 ・ 7 days ago

    look again, there is a scanlines option!

    I didn’t notice it there this afternoon, so he may have added it for you :D

  • duskwuff ・ 7 days ago

    > It needs terrible elevator music (mellow jazz)

    Did you click the unmute button? :)

    • burnt-resistor ・ 7 days ago

      Didn't see it. It's not obvious. There are too many controls.

catgirlinspace ・ 7 days ago

Completely forgot about Local on the 8s! I remember when I was much younger (probably around 12 or 13) I was obsessed for a while with how it worked on DirecTV- there was a national feed that was being played as normal, but when that started there was also some signal sent that (if you were lucky enough for it to actually work) would cause the receiver to generate a few static images for the saved zip code that were styled to look like Local on the 8s, and those would just be shown on top of the national feed. Best video I could find of it was https://youtu.be/WX2KQHJ8vHA (usually it was not synced that well to start and finish with the actual national feed, from what I saw it was pretty often you'd see the first few seconds or last few seconds of the national feed).

  • KurSix ・ 7 days ago

    How much effort went into creating the illusion of locality with national infrastructure

theturtle ・ 8 days ago

Far out! From the old days before they had shitty non-weather shows all the time and before they started "naming" winter storms.

And before they started saying "impactful" nine times a minute.

And before they hired that fuckface Justin Michaels.

Before that 1970s "comedian" bought the channel and fucked it up.

disposition2 ・ 7 days ago

Is there anyone who could point me to a way to get this running and served up via a stream that is consumable via VLC?

I have an hdhomreun and watch my antenna via IPTV apps and would love to have a personal “weather channel” on my TV.

I’ve looked in to this in the past, using a node program to take screenshots of the page and try to splice things together with ffmpeg but it was quite awful and didn't work well.

I also wasn’t sure how to have this all ‘spin up’ when the stream is accessed, vs running all the time…but I suppose that is less important.

I'll take any advice! Thank you!

  • jpdb ・ 7 days ago

    You should be able to get this done with OBS.

    Set OBS up so your streaming a window of this application.

    Go into OBS settings and go to "Stream" and set it to custom.

    For server use "srt://127.0.0.1:7777?mode=listener&timeout=50000&transtype=live"

    Then in VLC, open a network stream for srt://127.0.0.1:7777.

  • numpad0 ・ 7 days ago 

      Xvfb :1 -screen 0 640x480x16 &
  export DISPLAY=:1.0
  firefox -kiosk [URL] &
  gst-launch-1.0 ! (ask llm tbf) ! udpsrc
laweijfmvo ・ 8 days ago

I yearn for Local on the 8's

ivraatiems ・ 8 days ago

I love this. Why is the music so good? How do I get more music like this?

  • alexjplant ・ 7 days ago

    There's an archival effort here [1]. It seems to have primarily been instrumental jazz fusion and adjacent artists like The Flecktones, The Rippingtons, Pat Metheny, Spyro Gyra, Phish, etc.

    I'm personally a bit more into the guitar shred-oriented type of fusion as practiced by Frank Gambale, Alan Holdsworth (RIP), Shawn Lane (RIP #2), Guthrie Govan, and Scott Henderson. The insane guitar acrobatics more than make up for any dated ROMpler synthesizers or cheesy drum samples :-).

    [1] https://twcclassics.com/audio/

    • ivraatiems ・ 7 days ago

      Thank you, I love this!

    • vanadium ・ 7 days ago

      This is impressive.

DigiEggz ・ 7 days ago

Thank you for sharing this and to everyone else in this thread posting other resources. I've followed W* projects for a long time and I always am invigorated when they pop up anywhere, in any form. I hope the experience is remembered for as long as possible!

jader201 ・ 7 days ago

The only thing missing is the voiceover.

“A look at your local radar.”

“Currently the temperature is 81 degrees under clear skies.”

I feel like that’s the natural next step, and we’re probably not too far away from being able to do that.

barbazoo ・ 8 days ago

Wow, that's horrible, I love it!

lordfrito ・ 8 days ago

Great stuff! Reminds me of when the web used to be fun...

  • lobsterthief ・ 8 days ago

    Same here. I’ve been doing web design and development for 24 years now so I’ve witnessed the full pivot towards homogenization of interfaces; it’s necessary for commerce and usability at this point. But once in a while I’ll throw together a microsite like this to return to my roots a bit. This is my latest (a basic Trump presidency countdown clock): https://timeleft.now/

eth_hack77 ・ 7 days ago

This sounds interesting but here's what I experience: I put London and pressed continue - nothing happened. I gave the location permission and pressed continue - nothing happened again.

Console printed these logs: Uncaught (in promise) TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'relativeLocation') at ws.min.js?_=5.21.3:1:133923 at ws.min.js?_=5.21.3:1:89730

volleygman180 ・ 8 days ago

I was impressed as soon as it loaded and immediately said, "Yea but what about the music?". Then I noticed the sound toggle button.

Absolute perfection!

  • sharksauce ・ 8 days ago

    Anyone see an easy way to add the sound-on setting to the URL options generated by "Copy Permalink"?

    • 9Ljdg6p8ZSzejt ・ 8 days ago

      Yes! Add &mediaPlaying=true to the url. You might also need to allow audio autoplaying for the website first in the non-kiosk version or launch the browser allowing it.

Vitamin_Sushi ・ 8 days ago

Love the WS4000. I've been meaning to make a WS4000 like application I can throw on my firestick and just have it play all day on my TV as a side project. As someone without any GUI or graphics programming knowledge, it's definitely been a nice learning experience.

  • dustinsterk ・ 7 days ago

    Please share if you go down this road!

crmd ・ 7 days ago

This is so fucking cool. I expected it to be an SGI Indy or Octane running weather channel software outputting via its SDI card, which in itself is cool, but it turns out to be a much more interesting hardware and software architecture!

crims0n ・ 8 days ago

Very neat! I put it in kiosk mode and could almost hear the hum of a CRT.

  • dylan604 ・ 8 days ago

    hum? you mean a very high pitched squeal?

hospadam ・ 8 days ago

Is there anyone who could point me to an easy-ish way to get this running on a PI + Screen? I have a special-needs son who would LOVE to have this running. I'll take any advice! Thank you!

noduerme ・ 8 days ago

This page on an Android phone displays briefly and then crashes the tab in Chrome, and crashes the entire app in Firefox. Neat trick.

  • xp84 ・ 7 days ago

    It crashes Chrome every time on my Samsung Galaxy Tab A7, a cheap tablet from circa 2020.

  • throwanem ・ 8 days ago

    No trouble here. Galaxy S10+, Firefox whatever's current.

  • untrust ・ 6 days ago

    Same on Safari iOS

jakebasile ・ 7 days ago

I can't believe how nostalgic this made me for the Weather Channel.

Thanks for showing me this. Made me smile.

jxf ・ 7 days ago

This has unlocked a deep part of my brain that I didn't know I had memories about. Bravo, OP.

jb1991 ・ 8 days ago

When I visit this site, it just keeps automatically refreshing the homepage over and over every second.

nipperkinfeet ・ 7 days ago

Thats cool. Can it autoplay when sharing from permalink? It always wants me to click to play.

b8 ・ 7 days ago

I wish the watermark was smaller, because it blocks so much info.

dbg31415 ・ 8 days ago

Love it!

Music is a bit too fast, I miss the sleepy jazz feel from the 90s. (=

joeevans1000 ・ 7 days ago

I came for the weather, stayed for the music.

burnte ・ 7 days ago

This is fantastic.

ramumb ・ 7 days ago

This is amazing! It takes me down memory lane.

dustinsterk ・ 7 days ago

This is incredible, thanks for sharing!

absurdo ・ 8 days ago

I miss this late 80s early 90s jazz fusion.

KurSix ・ 7 days ago

Wow, instant nostalgia hit

duxup ・ 8 days ago

Very cool.

Music is a bit too high fidelity ;)

bamboozled ・ 7 days ago

*Only works for Americans

parpfish ・ 8 days ago

half expecting this to veer into some analog horror

  • throwanem ・ 8 days ago

    The horror lies in seeing 2025 with eyes from 1990.

fitsumbelay ・ 7 days ago

nothing but love for this. excellent stuff

hacker_homie ・ 7 days ago

Not to be confused with WeatherHammer 40000

phkahler ・ 8 days ago

Oh, man I thought I was going to see an AI generated Heather Tesch.