Summary: Alert the office, school, city, or your family to the tornado warning for their specific area. Automatically initiate a pre-recorded announcement or activate an alarm to encourage everyone to take shelter – but only if the alert affects the area. This information is available via the internet, but the internet might fail in the event of a serious storm. Redundancy via the weather band provides additional certainty that the message is received correctly. This open-source project takes us through python coding, GitHub, continuous integration, integration of messages from different sources with different specificity, and testing of a device that should carry out its primary function perhaps annually. The finished product will be suitable for offices, schools, and outdoor alerting.

Bio: From the country’s hot spot for tornadoes per-capita, Huntsville, Alabama, Jim brings together an understanding of the severity of tornadoes and concern for fellow Red Hatters’ safety as a Safety Warden into a nighttime coding gig to create the ultimate tornado warning device.