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Big D 51

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 15, 2011
771
0
Mobile, AL
I am trying to add live radar for zip code 36572 to my tv screen. I guess I'm not smart enough to figure it out without any help.

my screen.gif

I just learn what geek tool was today lol. I'm playing catchup on macs I guess. If anyone has any other suggestions to make it better, feel free to add. I really wanted a landscape (I like Alaska landscape pictures) to incorporate geek tool with but didn't have any luck finding a nice wallpaper that had cuts for different shells.
 
You need a source for the radar image, something that's updated as a picture and not in a flash movie or something. Find that first, then find out the URL of the picture itself (assuming it auto-updates that picture on a regular basis). Then you need to set up one script to download the image on a set timeframe, and then an Image Geeklet that will display that image. Someone else could give you more details, or the big Geektool thread that's around here somewhere will probably have a good reference in it.

jW
 
Search the (now huge) geektools thread.....there's posts in there describing adding radar images. Cool desktop BTW.

Thank you. I have spent almost 45 minutes going through it, but I haven't came across it yet. These threads get so large that it takes forever to go through them all. My time is limited. I guess I'll just keep looking little by little each day until I stumble across it.
 
How to put a live, looping weather radar map on your desktop using GeekTool

I've managed to get a looping live weather radar on my Mac desktop using Geektool, and I love it. It shows a looping weather radar from the last two hours. Sadly, GeekTool cannot directly display an animated gif, but it can loop through a folder of images. [Note: Sorry non-US residents, I don't know what the non-US version of NOAA is...but if you can find an animated gif for a weather radar, this method should still work for you.] Here's what you'll need:

1) Install ImageMagick. The easiest way to get it installed is to use MacPorts...or even perhaps Homebrew.

2) Install or confirm you have access to the curl command. The wget command should work too, but I haven't tested it.

3) Create a new shell script in GeekTool. This first geeklet won't display anything and is only in charge of periodically downloading an image file. The radar image on the server is updated about every 4 or 5 minutes, so you can set your script to refresh every 240 seconds, or whatever. Run these two lines of code:

Code:
# This first line downloads an animated gif containing 8 weather radar frames to a temporary directory.
# XXX is the type of radar image you want to see.  I'd recommend either "Base Reflectivity" (N0R) or "Composite Reflectivity" (NCR)
# YYY is the code for your nearest weather radar.  For example, SRX = Western Alaska, FWS = Forth Worth, Texas, etc
# Find the definition of XXX and YYY at the bottom of [URL="http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jetstream/doppler/ridge_download.htm"]THIS NOAA WEBPAGE[/URL].
# For example, if you lived in Fort Worth, Texas and you wanted to see the Base Reflectivity Radar Images
# you'd want the image at <http://radar.weather.gov/lite/N0R/FWS_loop.gif>.

curl --silent "http://radar.weather.gov/lite/XXX/YYY_loop.gif" -o /path/to/temp/weather.gif

# This next line uses ImageMagick's "convert" command to break the .gif into its component frames
# and store those 8 frames in a folder called "RADARIMAGES" in the jpg format
/path/to/convert /path/to/temp/weather.gif /path/to/temp/RADARIMAGES/radar_%03d.jpg

4) Create an Image geeklet on your desktop. The size of the weather radar image is about 600 x 550. Point the geeklet to look at the FOLDER /path/to/temp/RADARIMAGES/, not any individual image in that folder. Set the refresh rate on this geeklet at 1 second.

5) Boom. Every 4 minutes it should download a new radar image, break it into its 8 component radar images, then loop through those 8 images at the rate of about 1 image per second.

There is another way to do this, which could also display more than a 2-hour loop, but the method above seemed like the easiest way for now.
 
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