scwis

Automation experimenter Randy writes: “A friend of mine wrote a small freeware program called WeatherGrabber…”

Automation experimenter Randy writes: “A friend of mine wrote a small freeware program called WeatherGrabber…”

Download WeatherGrabber here: WeatherGrabber

I use it to automatically have the local weather read every half hour. It’s very easy to configure.

It will go to any internet web page (URL) and use the data it finds to generate a text file on your hard drive in the location of your choice.

Place a shortcut in your start folder to run it automatically every time you boot your PC.

I use a Winamp plugin to read the text file it generates. The plugin is named Text Speech / in_txt v1.01 (free) located 3/4 of the way down the page at http://support.xmplay.com/Plugins_input.html, here is a direct link: http://support.xmplay.com/Plugins_Files/in_txt.exe.

The plugin requires Microsoft Text-to-Speech Engines for SAPI5 (free): http://www.bytecool.com/voices.htm

I use the Winamp Radio Scheduler plugin (free) to schedule the reading of the text file every half hour: http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details.php?id=138768 Radio Scheduler only works with version 2 of Winamp. Version 2.95 (free) can be found at: http://www.oldversion.com/program.php?n=winamp

My next step will be to get the AT&T natural voices to replace the Microsoft voices. These sound so real, you almost think you are listening to a real person. I use the online demo of the Crystal voice to generate my station IDs and jingles http://www.research.att.com/projects/tts/demo.html . Other voices can be found at http://www.rhetorical.com/cgi-bin/demo.cgi, check out the Valley Girl!

I use the Audacity audio editor (free) to add background audio to her voice, found here: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/windows.php?lang=en, and midi background music is here: http://www.lynnemusic.com/midi.html