Recreating the Classic Weather Channel Experience
Do you miss the comfort of watching The Weather Channel? KellyKlarkson did, so they created a system to generate their own version of it.
One collateral casualty of the demise of cable TV is an iconic hallmark of American television: The Weather Channel. Those of us who rely entirely on streaming services never get to see the comforting and quaint graphics of The Weather Channel, which is a real shame. Sure, there are much more convenient ways to find information about the upcoming weather, but they lack the nostalgic charm that many of us grew up with. KellyKlarkson refused to let that experience go into the long dark night, so they created their own version of The Weather Channel.
The experience provided by KellyKlarkson’s system is almost exactly the same as what you remember from The Weather Channel. A small CRT TV plays a simulated version of The Weather Channel at all times, complete with real-time information and the classic graphics for which we all have such fondness. But it doesn’t require cable or even an antenna — everything before the video signal output is all digital and created by a computer with weather data from the internet.
The computer is a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B (2GB model). It runs software called ws4kp-international, which KellyKlarkson forked from Matt Walsh’s WeatherStar 4000+ software.
WeatherStar was The Weather Channel’s technology for creating and displaying those familiar weather graphics and Walsh’s project was, in essence, an emulated version of that, which pulled its data from the US government’s official NOAA weather API. KellyKlarkson’s fork takes things international by pulling data from Open Meteo’s global weather API. It even plays music from the Weatherscan Music collection on the Internet Archive, so the simulated channel feels even more authentic.
KellyKlarkson could have connected the Raspberry Pi to any display, but the only way to get a truly genuine The Weather Channel viewing experience is with a CRT. They chose a Sony PVM, which is complete overkill for something like this, but it looks amazing. The Raspberry Pi is capable of outputting a composite video signal without any additional hardware, so the connection was straightforward. They also have it configured for a RTMP (Real-Time Messaging Protocol) stream, so any devices on the network can access the video feed.
If you want to recreate The Weather Channel in your own home, you can find the software on GitHub. Or if you just want to see what it looks like, you can access a web-based version here — just put in your location to see your region’s weather!