US 5,848,378 AGranted

System for collecting and presenting real-time weather information on multiple media

AssigneeThe International Weather Network

InventorsWilliam Anthony Shelton, William R. Healy, Joseph Francis Earl Jones, Samuel Issac

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Abstract

A computer-based system for collecting and presenting real-time weather information includes a number of automatic weather detecting stations, a centralized database for storing weather data, and a number of presentation software modules for presenting the data to a number of users over a variety of different media. According to specific embodiments, the system includes a presentation module for presenting real-time data via voice messages to telephone callers, a presentation module for presenting data over a television broadcast, a presentation module for presentation data over a multimedia computer network, and a shared interface and local database module for communicating data to and from the weather database and for maintaining a local database of weather data.

Claims16

Dependent claims

A system for detecting weather conditions at multiple sites and reporting those conditions in real time via multiple interactive voice messages comprising:

a. multiple weather stations, each comprising:
(1) one or more weather instruments, each capable of sensing a particular weather parameter, and converting said sensed weather parameter into an analog electrical signal;
(2) converters for converting the analog signal from each said instrument into a series of digital electrical signals corresponding to the values of the sensed weather parameter over time;
b. one or more base computers programmed to
(1) receive digital signals in real time encoding weather data collected at a particular weather station;
(2) store and retrieve said digital signals to and from local data storage;
(3) communicate weather data with a centralized server database;
c. a server database computer programmed to
(1) receive digital data from said base computers in real-time encoding weather data collected at a particular weather station;
(2) store and retrieve said digital signals to and from data storage;
(3) transmit selected real-time weather data in response to requests received over a network;
d. a telephone driver unit for
(1) retrieving real-time weather data for selected weather station sites from one of said base computer's local storage;
(2) presenting voice menu options to a telephone user;
(3) encoding said real-time data into voice messages and playing said voice message to callers in response to caller input.

12 more elements

A system for collecting real-time weather information from a plurality of sites and making said information available to a plurality of users in a plurality of different formats comprising:

a plurality of remote weather stations, each of said remote weather stations capable of collecting weather data from a plurality of weather-sensing devices and of communicating said weather data to a weather center module in real time;
a plurality of weather center module computers capable of communicating with said remote weather stations for receiving real-time weather data collected by said weather stations and capable of communicating with one or more presentation modules for presenting said weather data to a user, said weather center modules transmitting summary data, on a real-time basis to a remote weather server database for use by other weather center modules and capable of retrieving data from said weather server database for remote weather sites when requested by a presentation module;
a database server computer capable of receiving weather data from said base station computers and compiling said data into a real-time multisite multivariable database;
and
a presentation module computer capable of communicating with said database server through a weather center module and capable of presenting real-time data from said multisite multivariable real-time database in response to specific user requests as a series of voice messages.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.