[GreenKeys] TTYs in news service

Sun Apr 26 14:54:31 EDT 2009

All,

Here is my suggestion for those who do not have internet accessible and want
to do demonstrations.

Back home, connect to ITTY and listen (no TU hardware required). While you
are listening, use windows built in "sound recorder" or any number of
free/public audio capture programs (audacity comes to mind as well).

Basically you can record the audio coming from ITTY onto a .wav or better
yet .mp3 (smaller). Then transfer the file to any number of very cheap all
solid state mp3 players. These are very cheap on ebay and even new. Probably
less than $50.

Now you have a small RTTY news station in the palm of your hand. Go to where
your demonstration is, plug the ST6 into your hand-held mp3 player, press
the play button and you are in business.

You can even tell the mp3 player to "loop" the track(s) and you will get
continuous copy (albeit repeated).

You can even record different news stories on different files and pick and
choose which file you want to play.  Of course the downside is the news will
be a little old, but for the most part, I think its still very interesting
for a demonstration.

Of course, you can do the same with a cassette player too.

Good luck!
Eugene W2Hx

-----Original Message-----
From: greenkeys-bounces at mailman.qth.net
[mailto:greenkeys-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Duncan M. Brown
Sent: Sunday, April 26, 2009 10:29 AM
To: Alf Fisher; John Nagle; greenkeys at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [GreenKeys] TTYs in news service

Alf,

I don't think there has been any HF FSK distribution of news for the past
2-3 decades. It moved to dedicated phone lines and satellite and now it is
probably all on the Internet.  All the Internet transmissions are in ASCII,
but programs like HeavyMetal can do the translation to 5-bit TTY.

As  Tony mentioned, there may be access through a cellular service, but it
can be expensive, unless you can find one that is just low speed. (Most  US
cellular companies are pushing high speed Internet, so you can watch videos
on your phone!)

A dial-up connection to the Internet may be the simplest/cheapest solution.

We have a similar problem at the AWA Museum.  We are planning on doing a
demo at a school next weekend.  They have Internet, but we just found out
that they don't allow anyone else to connect in (for security reasons, I
guess), so we will be doing the cellular connection or dialup.

have fun,

Duncan

> [Original Message]
> From: Alf Fisher <alf_fisher at tiscali.co.uk>
> To: <duncanancy at earthlink.net>; John Nagle <nagle at animats.com>;
<greenkeys at mailman.qth.net>
> Date: 26-Apr-09 06:55:40
> Subject: Re: [GreenKeys] TTYs in news service
>
> John, Duncan and all,
> I would like to get something like this to work in the Signals Museum to 
> bring some life to an otherwise silent machine.
>
> Unfortunately, I don't have internet access in the museum so can't use
ITTY 
> etc but I was wondering if the likes of Reuters and other news services
were 
> available on HF FSK?
> Does anyone know what frequencies, code, shift and speeds do they use -
i.e. 
> is it 110 baud ASCII perchance?
>
> Regards,
>
> Alf Fisher
> Curator,
> Signals Museum,
> RAF Henlow
> Beds.
> UK
> http://www.rafsignalsmuseum.org.uk
>
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Duncan M. Brown" <duncanancy at earthlink.net>
> To: "John Nagle" <nagle at animats.com>; <greenkeys at mailman.qth.net>
> Sent: Sunday, April 19, 2009 3:16 AM
> Subject: Re: [GreenKeys] TTYs in news service
>
>
> > John,
> >
> > I'm also interested in driving TTYs from news sources via the Internet
for
> > a museum display.
> >
> > Is your HTML to text and RSS polling software available?
> >
> > It would be great to have a TTY just start up, print out  some news and
> > then shut down!
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Duncan Brown, K2OEQ
> >
> > Chief TTY operator & repairman
> > AWA Electronic Communication Museum
> > http://www.antiquewireless.org/
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >>
> >>      Even today, Reuters stories have a headline length limit that
> >> will fit on a Teletype.
> >>
> >>      If you want current stories, you can get them from the Reuters
> >> RSS feed:
> >>
> >>      http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/topNews?format=xml
> >>
> >> The Reuters feed is a good source; each story is about five lines,
> >> not just a headline.  Most other news feeds are just headlines or the
> >> first few words of each story, intended for use with programs that let
> >> you click on a link.  NPR's feed, though,
> > "http://www.npr.org/rss/rss.php?id=1012",
> >> is also story-like enough to be useful.  Let me know if you find any
> >> other good feeds.
> >>
> >>     I have a Python program I keep running which polls the Reuters RSS
> > feed
> >> and drives a Model 15 Teletype.  Each time Reuters puts up a new story,
> >> the Teletype starts up, types it out, and shuts down again.  This works
> >> for any RSS feed; the format is standardized.  RSS is designed for this
> >> type of polling; there's a low-overhead way to ask if the feed has
> > changed.
> >>
> >>     I do some basic text processing to make the output look reasonable.
> >> Unicode is converted to ASCII, HTML markup is removed, all white space
> >> is converted to single spaces, word wrap is applied to break the lines
> >> at word boundaries, and a preliminary translation to a smaller
character
> >> set is performed.  This last converts "[" to "(", "%" to " PCT. ", and
> >> such.  Finally the ASCII text is fed to ASCII->Baudot translation,
> >> which does the machine handling (CR, LF, LTRS, etc.)
> >>
> >>     The result gives the impression of a classic news Teletype.
> >>
> >>     This will probably go on display in a museum in the future,
> >> once I build a glass case for the machine to show off the works.
> >> I have contacts at the Exploratorium and the Computer Museum.
> >>
> >>
> >> John Nagle
> >
> >
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