Setting Up Local Weather & Traffic Information For SmartInfo (Myriad Playout 6)

In this guide, we will show you how to setup SmartInfo to display local traffic & travel information for your area as well as your a weather summary for your location.

 Available Sources

As the source for this information varies from place to place, we have built in some common sources that can easily be configured for your location. 

Included Weather Source Options

• UK MET Office - Free location based weather for the UK.
• Weather Watch Live - PC application what connects to local weather sources (Get accurate weather conditions & forecasts | Weather Watcher ).
• Australian Bureau of Meteorology - Free location based weather service for Australia.
• OpenWeatherMap.org - Worldwide weather service, requires API key (at time of writing, there is a free service available).
• Isle of Man Government - Free weather service covering the Isle of Man.
• Meteorological Service of Canada - Free location based service covering Canada.

If your station is not based in one of the areas covered by the supported national services, we recommend using OpenWeatherMap.org or Weather Watch Live.

Included Traffic & Travel Sources

• Highways England - Free location based traffic and travel information for England (includes optional TFL train information).
• Traffic Wales - Free location based traffic and travel information for Wales.
• Generic RSS Feed - Display traffic and travel information from any source that provides a text RSS feed.
• Here.com - Worldwide traffic information service, requires API key (at time of writing, they have a free service available).

Once you have established which services you want use, if the service requires an API key, ensure you have that to hand before you start configuring the source within Myriad Playout.

Setting Location & Configuring Sources

To set your location and enable the appropriate sources, follow these steps:

1. In Myriad Playout 6, click on Station Menu > Station Settings.
   
   
2. Click on the Location/SmartInfo tab.
   
   
   
   
3. Type on your Geographic Latitude & Longitude Coordinates.
   
   
   If you do not know your geographic coordinates (which is very likely), you can click on the Online Location Search link to open a webpage that allows you to type in a location and returns the coordinates. You can then copy and paste them into the appropriate fields.
   
   
   
   You can also use the Find Location button to allow the system to set coordinates via Windows location, although this often fails to work in our experience.
   
   
4. Once the location is set, select your preferred weather source using the Weather Provider drop down list.
   
   
   Depending on the selected provider, the options in the Weather Options section will change to allow you to set the appropriate information.
   
   In the example below, the UK Met Office has been selected. As this is a free service, no API key is required.
   
   
   If you select an alternative source, the appropriate options will be displayed, for example, in the below, the OpenWeatherMap.org source is selected and the options change to allow you to add your API key.
   
   
   The information you will need to configure for each source is as follows:
   
   UK Met Office - Select region from drop down list.
   Weather Watch Live - Copy file location and template for Weather Watch Live to export to.
   Australian Bureau of Meteorology - Select region from drop down list.
   OpenWeatherMap.org - API Key, Weather Period (drop down) & Units (drop down).
   Isle of Man Government - Tick options for information to display.
   Meteorological Service of Canada - Region (drop down), Site (drop down after download) & Period (drop down).
   
   
5. Next, select the Traffic & Travel service option. In the example below, the Highways England source is selected.
   
   
   As with the Weather source, the options will differ depending on selected service.
   
   The options for each Traffic & Travel source are as follows:
   
   Highways England - Area (drop down), Radius (in KM), option to include Transport for London (TFL) train status.
   Traffic Wales - Tick option for Welsh language.
   Generic RSS Feed - RSS feed URL.
   Here.com - API key & incident radius (in KM).
   
   
6. Click on the OK button to save the settings and close the Station Settings window.
   
   
   
   
7. Any Dynamic Layout that includes the SmartInfo, will now include Traffic and Weather on the Summary Tab as well as individual tabs for Traffic & Travel and Weather, which displays more detail.
   
   
   
   

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