Weatheradio: Modern Weather Reports in a Retro Shell

Want your own talking weather appliance? This one runs on ESP32, Azure TTS, and NOAA.

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📻 What is Weatheradio?

Weatheradio is a retro-styled ESP32 appliance that speaks the weather using Azure Neural TTS. Housed in a vintage Realistic Weatheradio shell, it combines modern cloud speech with old-school charm.

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🔊 Audio Pipeline

• Azure TTS streaming — 16-bit, 16kHz mono PCM over TLS for annunciating the current and next weather forecasts.
• Talkie LPC voice — squawks, prompts, and personality Phil Schatzmann - TalkiePCM

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🌦️ Forecast Engine

• NOAA gridpoint API — short press gives: two-period forecast (current + next)
• ZIP detection — automatic via IP, or manual override
• Fallback content — long press gives: a random Shower Thought from reddit, or failover to a Useless Face

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🧠 Architecture

• FreeRTOS tasks — Azure, weather, showerthought, audio, button, watchdog
• Ring buffer — 32KB, aligned, underrun-proof
• Phrase lifecycle — begin → stream → end → silence flush

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📡 Connectivity

• WiFiManager — captive portal with MAC-suffix SSID
• Telnet commands — sp, lp, tt, restart, wifioff, wifion, etc.
• Watchdog — restarts on stuck tasks

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🎛️ Controls

• Volume knob — mapped to gain table
• Voice knob — Ava ↔ Andrew
• Single button — short press = forecast, long press = showerthought

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🧩 Reliability

• I2S reset before playback
• Ring buffer reset to avoid Talkie/Azure mixing
• Silence flush to prevent end-of-phrase static

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🧠 Personality

• Boot sequence — ZIP detection, “radio ready” confirmation
• Talkie squawks — retro robotic flavor
• Azure voice — smooth, natural speech

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This post is part of the Whiskey Bravo series — where ESP32 meets personality, clarity, and flavor.

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🛠️ Next Steps

I’m going to integrate it with my vesta board note