[arm-allstar] SkywarnPlus install notes

[Larry Mollica]

I’m not an expert on the subject, but here’s a few things I ran into installing SkywarnPlus on hamvoip that might save those working on it some time.

https://github.com/Mason10198/SkywarnPlus <https://github.com/Mason10198/SkywarnPlus> 

Regarding the instructions for installing dependancies on  " i. Arch (HAMVOIP) ":

The first step will prompt you twice to select a provider for repositories. Per advice in the GitHub discussion, take the defaults (just hit return).


In some other steps you will see scary warnings: 
"DEPRECATION: Python 3.5 reached the end of its life on September 13th, 2020. Please upgrade your Python as Python 3.5 is no longer maintained…"
Per the FAQ way further down the page, ignore these warnings and do not try to update Python.


When it comes to the step: pip install ruamel.yaml==0.15.100
It may look like it stalled at "Building wheel for ruamel.yaml (setup.py) ... /")
…but it just takes a while, let it do its thing.


After the install and config, I tried to use the CountyIDGen.py utility to generate county name sound files (optional), but it threw an error “TypeError: expected string or bytes-like object” and did not work. I ended up manually generating the names at voicerss.org <http://voicerss.org/>. I used the “Amy” voice as I thought it was closest to the hamvoip lady.

Don’t forget you have a few changes to make in rpt.conf

The instructions try really hard to convince you use county codes and not zone codes. This is probably good advice for most counties, but San Bernardino County where I live is the largest county in the contiguous United States by area. If I used the county code, it would be announcing alerts for some spots almost 200 miles away - boy would I hear about that. So, you know; use your head.

If you have questions about SkywarnPlus, I would think the best place to ask would be the discussion forum on GitHub:
https://github.com/Mason10198/SkywarnPlus/discussions <https://github.com/Mason10198/SkywarnPlus/discussions>


BTW In my last post I messed up and got a slanted quote in the reload command, copy/paste of that will fail. Should have read:
asterisk -rx "rpt reload"
to reload rpt.conf.

Larry AD6G