I brought back the 1980s Weather Channel by self-hosting it
Before we could check the weather forecast with our phones or computers, we could check it by turning on the television. The Weather Channel’s automated local weather information would tell you what you needed to know while playing a smooth jazz musical number. I was able to bring this back to my homelab.
This Self-Hosted App Gave Me a Retro Weather Feed
There is a free and open source project called WeatherStar 4000+ whose sole purpose is to bring back that familiar experience of watching “Local on the 8s” programming. You may not know this, but the underlying technology that generated these local forecasts was called WeatherStar 4000, and the goal of WeatherStar 4000+ is to simulate this functionality while extending it and allowing you to control the experience.
A WeatherStar 4000+ server is capable of retrieving and displaying local weather data from NOAA, including multi-day forecasts, hourly forecasts, radar, almanac, regional temperature and wind reports, and much more. Using the web interface, you can easily control which ones appear in the video loop, and although they come with royalty-free music, you can also configure other music to play.
If you want to use it without self-hosting, you can try the WeatherStar 4000+ demo. It’s fully functional, but you won’t be able to customize and manipulate it like you would with a self-hosted instance.
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Installing and running WeatherStar 4000+ is easy
There are several ways to install and run WeatherStar 4000+. The easiest method I found was to install a “static” instance via Docker, which essentially provides the application framework for the service and your web browser handles the rest.
On a device with Docker installed, simply run this Docker command to get it up and running:
docker run -p 8080:8080 ghcr.io/netbymatt/ws4kpOnce it starts working, you can simply head over to http://localhost:8080 if you are on the same device you installed it on, or enter the IP address of the device running it, followed by the port section of the URL, :8080. It will look like this:
http://192.168.1.131:8080/You’ll instantly be taken to a feed where you can enter a zip code or city and start watching your local weather forecast in retro style.
If you scroll down, you can see a number of checkboxes to enable various features and tweaks that you may or may not want. You can even insert your own custom text that will appear at the bottom of the screen along with other weather updates. It also claims to support RSS feeds to display live headlines instead of just plain text, although I personally couldn’t get this feature to work on my system.
Once WeatherStar 4000+ is configured the way you want, click the “Get Permalink” button to generate a URL that you can paste into another browser or bookmark. The permanent link saves all your settings so you don’t have to configure it repeatedly every time you open WeatherStar 4000+.
For a more advanced and efficient setup, you can install a full WeatherStar 4000+ server, which handles all API calls while providing multiple feeds using cached data. See the WeatherStar 4000+ Docker deployment documentation to learn how to do this.
How I got it on my TV
What if you want to watch your WeatherStar 4000+ stream on your TV? The easiest way I found was to get a browser app on my Google TV, enter my server address and click the full screen toggle button. It’s certainly not as simple as simply changing the channel or selecting an app on your home screen, but it will get you there.
If you want to do a more technical setup, it’s possible to make your WeatherStar 4000+ stream appear as a live TV channel for media servers with TV connectivity like Plex or Jellyfin. You can check out the ws4channels GitHub repository for details on how it works and all the different ways to configure it. Personally, I was able to get it working by pulling the Docker image:
docker pull ghcr.io/rice9797/ws4channels:latestThen I ran this command, making sure to replace your_zip_code, ws4kp_hostAnd ws4kp_port with my zip code and the IP address and port number of my WeatherStar 4000+ setup, respectively.
docker run -d \
--name ws4channels \
--restart unless-stopped \
--memory="1096m" \
--cpus="1.0" \
-p 9798:9798 \
-e ZIP_CODE=your_zip_code \
-e WS4KP_HOST=ws4kp_host \
-e WS4KP_PORT=ws4kp_port \
ghcr.io/rice9797/ws4channels:latestFrom there, if you follow along, you’ll need to look for instructions for adding live TV channels to your self-hosted media server. On Jellyfin, I had to provide an M3U playlist, which is located at the IP address of the device running ws4channels with :9798/playlist.m3u attached at the end. To get a channel guide you will need the same but with :9798/guide.xml attached.
Some limits to know
WeatherStar 4000+ is designed to work specifically with NOAA. This means people outside the US will have to look elsewhere to get a similar setup. Specifically, there is an international version of WeatherStar 4000+ on GitHub that you might want to check out.
Additionally, the specific types of forecasts and information screens available depend on data availability in the selected area. If some data isn’t loading, you can try entering a nearby city or zip code instead.
Be sure to read the WeatherStar 4000+ Readme on GitHub, as it has a ton of documentation on fine-tuning the experience with things like original music and optimization for mobile devices.
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