ChronAlert User Manual

What ChronAlert Is

ChronAlert is a situational awareness dashboard you run on your own computer. It shows live radio, space weather, and emergency data on a big map with side cards and a scrolling ticker along the bottom. It is built to be watched from across the room, so once it is set up you do not need to click anything. Think of it as a newsroom wall or an operations center display, tuned for ham radio operators and anyone who likes to keep an eye on what is happening.

It is local-first: the app runs entirely on your own PC, with no cloud account and no ChronAlert servers hosting it. It does need internet to pull the live feeds, since that is the whole point, but the base map and the most recent data keep showing even if a single feed or your connection briefly drops.

First Launch

The first time you open ChronAlert it asks you to pick your country (United States, Canada, United Kingdom, or Australia). This tailors the app to where you are: it sets the national map, the weather-alert authority, the radar source, and sensible defaults for airports and news. You can change it later in App Settings.

After that it loads a ready-made World Overview panel: a world map with weather alerts, tropical storms, earthquakes, volcanoes, cloud cover, and the ISS already on. You get a useful screen straight away, with nothing else to configure first.

When you are ready to make it your own, click the gear icon in the top right to open the Config Console. The first thing worth doing there is setting your location.

The Config Console

Almost all setup lives in one place. The gear icon in the top right (or Alt+S) opens the Config Console, a full-screen control panel with a menu down the left:

• Overview. How this installation is set up, at a glance.
• Panels. The saved map and card views ChronAlert can show.
• Screens. Assign Panels to each physical display. Pro
• Watch Zones. The locations you care about.
• App Settings. Station, location, map style, sizes, map tier zoom, the crawl and alert rules, panel rotation, and the Pro features.
• Alert Sounds. Choose a sound for each type of alert, and the master mute.
• Feed Health. Live status of every data feed.
• User Manual. Opens this guide.
• Manage License. Enter or view your Pro license.

The rest of the top bar is deliberately minimal, so the wall stays clean: a play / stop button for the panel rotation, a Next button to jump to the next panel, a mute button, and the gear.

Your QTH

Your QTH is your station location. ChronAlert uses it to center the Regional and Local views, to decide which weather alerts are near you, and to seed your first Watch Zone. To set it, open the Config Console and go to App Settings, then either type a city into the Locate by City box and press Find, or enter your latitude and longitude directly. Give it a callsign too if you like, which shows in the top left corner.

Tip. Getting your QTH right early makes everything downstream more useful, because proximity, direction, and the local views all key off it.

Map Views

ChronAlert frames the map at one of four zoom tiers, and each Panel picks the tier it uses. There is no separate view switcher: you change what is on screen by switching Panels (the Next button, or Alt+→) or by editing a Panel.

• World. The full globe. Good for global events like space weather, big earthquakes, and hurricanes far out at sea.
• National. Framed on your country and labeled for it (USA, Canada, UK, or Australia, following your country setting). Good for national weather and alerts.
• Regional. A radius around your QTH, about 100 miles by default. The weather headed your way.
• Local. A tight radius around your QTH, about 10 miles by default. Street-level context for what is right on top of you.

Each tier's zoom is configurable in App Settings under Map Tier Zoom: World and National are a zoom level (National can auto-fit or use a set zoom), while Regional and Local are a radius in miles around your QTH. Press Alt+N at any time to snap back to the World view. The flat views share one map and just move the camera, so switching between them glides instead of reloading.

Map Layers

Everything drawn on the map is a layer you can turn on or off, chosen per Panel. Open the Config Console (gear), go to Panels, edit a panel, and use the MAP switches to choose what that panel shows. A few common layers also have keyboard shortcuts, listed later.

Here is what each layer shows:

• Weather Alerts. Live warning, watch, and advisory polygons colored by severity, from your country's authority: the National Weather Service (USA), Environment Canada, the UK Met Office via MeteoAlarm, or the Bureau of Meteorology (Australia).
• Weather Radar. Animated precipitation radar looping through recent frames. The source follows your country: NEXRAD (USA), Environment Canada's 1 km national radar (Canada), and a global radar service everywhere else.
• Global Precip. Worldwide precipitation-rate imagery (NASA GPM IMERG), for rain anywhere on the globe.
• Clouds. Global satellite cloud cover. Radar and clouds can be on at the same time.
• Lightning. Real lightning flashes, fading as they age.
• Earthquakes. Recent quakes, sized and colored by magnitude, with a pulsing ring.
• Tropical Storms. Active hurricanes and tropical systems with a cyclone icon and wind ring.
• Volcanoes. Currently reported volcanic activity, shown with a volcano icon colored by alert level.
• GDACS Global Hazards. Worldwide disaster events, each with its own hazard icon.
• Aurora Oval. The modeled auroral oval, which grows during geomagnetic storms.
• Day and Night Terminator. The line between daylight and darkness, with a soft night shade.
• Satellites. Live positions and ground tracks for the ISS and Hubble.
• Sea Surface Temp and SST Anomaly. Ocean temperature and how far it is from normal.
• METAR Stations. Airport weather reports shown as windsocks colored by flight category.
• PSK Reporter. Where your signal is being heard, drawn as spokes from your station.
• POTA, WWFF, WWBOTA. Parks, flora and fauna, and bunkers on the air, each with its own icon.
• NCDXF Beacons. The international beacon network, with the currently transmitting beacons highlighted.
• DXpeditions. The rarest DX operations on the air right now, shown as orange towers on the map and a ranked card.
• AMSAT Passes. Amateur satellite positions.
• Maidenhead Grid. The grid square locator overlay, with the square under your cursor shown on hover.
• Time Zones. Real timezone boundary lines with the live local time labeled across the top.
• Watch Zones. Rings for the locations you care about. Covered in its own section.

Note. A few feeds are card-only and have no map layer, including the MUF Matrix, D-RAP Absorption, Space Weather, X-ray Flux, Dst Index, Moon Phase, and Planets.

Side Cards

The cards down the left side are compact readouts for each feed: space weather numbers, X-ray flare class, the MUF matrix, D-RAP absorption, earthquake counts, the moon phase, and more. Like map layers, cards are chosen per Panel. Open the Config Console, go to Panels, edit a panel, and use the CARD switches to pick which cards appear.

Click a card to open a larger detail view with charts and more context.

If a panel has more cards than fit on screen, the column scrolls itself slowly - creeping down through the cards, then easing back to the top - so an unattended display cycles through everything without anyone touching it.

The Crawl

The ticker along the bottom scrolls severe weather, emergency alerts, and news headlines. It has a fixed scope so it does not change as your panels rotate. Set the scope in App Settings under Bottom Crawl and Alert Rules:

• World. Global hazards (GDACS, big quakes, geomagnetic storms).
• National. Nationwide weather and emergency alerts for your country.
• Local (QTH). Only weather and alerts near your station.

Your chosen news, sports, and market headlines scroll in every scope, so they are always visible no matter which scope you pick. What the scope changes is the geographic weather and emergency items around them. Breaking headlines lead the crawl; a severe-weather or emergency alert always takes priority over the news.

Severe weather is deliberately narrow. To keep the ticker readable, only hurricane and tornado watches and warnings appear; routine wind, heat, and flood advisories are left off. Emergency (FEMA IPAWS / EAS) items are filtered to genuine active alerts, so the constant stream of required weekly and monthly tests never reaches the crawl. You can turn severe weather off on the News Feeds page, and turn EAS off under App Settings.

A Screen can override the crawl scope for one display, which is handy when the shack TV should show local weather while the office monitor shows global.

The crawl is on by default, and optional per panel. To hide it on a specific panel for a cleaner look, edit that panel in Panels and turn off News ticker along the bottom under Display Overlays, the same way the world-clock bar is switched on per panel.

News, Sports & Market Feeds

The News Feeds page in the Config Console decides what scrolls in the bottom ticker. It has one control at the top for severe weather, then several groups of public news sources you can switch on and off:

• Severe weather. On by default, free for everyone, and separate from the source limit below. Uncheck it to keep all weather out of the ticker.
• News. A wide range of US and international outlets: NPR (default), BBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, Deutsche Welle, France 24, Sky News, Fox News, New York Post, Washington Examiner, The Washington Times, National Review, WSJ Opinion, The Daily Wire, The Federalist, The Daily Caller, Breitbart, The Blaze, Newsmax, and the Washington Free Beacon.
• Ham Radio. Amateur-radio news from the ARRL and DX-World.
• Sports. Headlines from ESPN (top, NFL, NBA, MLB), CBS Sports, BBC Sport, and Yahoo Sports.
• Markets & Business. Headlines from CNBC, MarketWatch, Yahoo Finance, WSJ Markets, Nasdaq, and BBC Business.

Every source is a free, public RSS feed and every one is available on every plan. Only the latest five headlines from each selected feed reach the ticker, so no single outlet floods it, and each headline is tagged with its source.

Free vs Pro. The plan controls how many sources can run at once, not which ones. Free is limited to 2 sources; Pro is unlimited. Severe weather does not count toward the limit. On Free, once two are selected the others are held until you uncheck one, and the Upgrade to Pro link removes the cap.

Changes save automatically - there is no Save button, and the ticker switches to your new sources within a few seconds. Sports and market feeds carry headlines, not live scores or stock quotes; live scores and prices are not published as public feeds.

Webcams Pro

Experimental feature. Webcams are still in development and may change or be removed in a future update.

Put an IP camera on the wall beside your data - a front-door cam, a shack cam, a public beach or traffic cam. Open the Config Console and go to Webcams to add cameras, then turn each one on per panel in Panels (under WEBCAMS), so a camera shows only where you want it, not on every screen.

• Snapshot. A still-image (JPEG) URL the camera serves, re-fetched every few seconds.
• MJPEG. A continuous motion-JPEG stream URL.
• HLS. An .m3u8 live-video stream URL, as used by many public beach and traffic cams.
• RTSP. An rtsp:// stream URL, as most security/IP cameras provide. Browsers can't play RTSP directly, so ChronAlert converts it to web video for you (needs ffmpeg - see below).
• ONVIF. The easiest option for most IP cameras: enter the camera's IP address and ONVIF port (plus its username and password) and ChronAlert auto-discovers the RTSP stream and snapshot for you - no stream URL to look up. Pick Main (HD) or Sub (low-res), and use the Test ONVIF button to confirm it connects. Also uses ffmpeg.

ChronAlert fetches the camera on the server and relays it to every screen, so a camera that is only reachable from the ChronAlert PC still shows on your other displays, and any camera password stays on the server rather than in each browser.

RTSP and ONVIF need ffmpeg. These two types use ffmpeg to convert the camera stream into web video. Install a Windows ffmpeg build, then set its location in App Settings → FFMPEG (or have ffmpeg on your system PATH). Snapshot, MJPEG, and HLS cameras don't need it.

Requires Pro. Webcam cards are a Pro feature.

Clock and Time Zone

The top bar shows a UTC clock and a local clock side by side. To set which local zone the second clock uses, open App Settings and pick a Local Clock Timezone. Leave it on Auto to follow the browser, which is usually what you want.

World clock bar Pro

An optional strip of up to six world clocks across the top of the screen, each showing a city name above its local time - handy for knowing the time in a part of the world you want to work. Turn it on per panel in Panels (under Display Overlays), or globally from the Map Layers picker. Choose the six cities - a wide list including many South Pacific and DX locations - and the bar's size in App Settings → World Clock Bar.

Card and Font Size

Two independent sliders in App Settings control how the display reads at a distance:

• Card Size scales the whole side card column up or down.
• Font Size scales just the text, so you can enlarge labels without growing the cards.

Both are per device, so the same server can drive a desk monitor at one size and a wall TV at another. If a Screen is assigned to the display, the Screen can set the card size instead.

Watch Zones

A Watch Zone is a place you care about, like Home, a repeater site, family in another state, a hunting property, or an event location. Each zone is a center point plus a radius in miles. The Situation Room uses your zones to decide when to interrupt, and it always tells you how far an event is and which direction it lies.

Creating a zone

Open the Config Console (gear) and go to Watch Zones, then Add Zone. Give it a name, choose a type (which sets its icon and color), set the location by city or by latitude and longitude, and drag the radius slider. If you have not added any zones yet, there is an Add Home shortcut that creates one from your QTH.

How zones drive alerts

A weather warning triggers the Situation Room when its polygon reaches one of your zones, meaning the warning either covers the zone or comes within its radius. The banner then names the zone and the distance, for example HOME, 7 miles NW. Zones are drawn on the map as dashed rings so you can see your coverage at a glance.

Limits. Free one Watch Zone. Pro up to ten.

The Situation Room Pro

Free shows what is happening. Pro reacts to it. On every tier, alerts appear on the crawl and are drawn on the map, and you can navigate to them yourself. The automatic Situation Room, which reacts on its own, is a Pro feature.

This is the feature that sets ChronAlert apart. Instead of just displaying feeds, it watches them and takes over the screen when something genuinely important happens. Normally your panels rotate in the background. When a serious event arrives, a bold banner drops in, the map zooms to the event, the right layers switch on, and the countdown starts. When the event clears or you dismiss it, the normal rotation resumes on its own.

What can trigger it

• Tornado and other severe weather warnings that reach a Watch Zone
• A major earthquake, or one flagged as tsunami capable
• A hurricane threatening one of your zones
• A significant geomagnetic storm
• A severe high frequency radio blackout
• An X class solar flare
• A FEMA national alert

Acknowledging an event

Press the Dismiss button on the banner or use Alt+E to acknowledge the current event. If several events are active, dismissing one moves on to the next.

Turning it on and off

On Pro, the Situation Room is on by default. Find it in App Settings, in the highlighted Pro Features section at the bottom, under Situation Room. That same section has Preview buttons for Tornado, Hurricane, and Solar.

Try it on Free. The Preview buttons fire a clearly labeled demo takeover on any tier, so you can see exactly what the Situation Room does before deciding to upgrade. A preview fires on every connected screen at once, just like a real alert would.

Incident Fusion

Rather than throwing six separate alerts at you, ChronAlert connects related feeds into a single Incident. When a hurricane is approaching, for example, you get one Hurricane Incident that reads like a briefing:

• The category and wind speed
• How far it is and in which direction from your nearest zone
• Which tropical warnings are active at your zone
• The local wind right now from the nearest airport report
• The projected closest approach and roughly when

Solar activity is fused the same way. An X class flare, the radio blackout it causes, the absorption footprint, and the geomagnetic response are shown as one Solar Storm Incident that reads as a chain of effects rather than four disconnected numbers.

Escalation Levels

Not everything deserves to hijack the screen, so every event is graded automatically based on context, not just on a raw threshold. The grade decides how loudly ChronAlert reacts:

• INFO Stays on the crawl only. No banner.
• ATTENTION Shows a banner, but your panels keep rotating underneath.
• CRITICAL Takes over the screen. The rotation pauses, the map zooms in, and the relevant layers switch on.

The grade comes from real context. A hurricane far out at sea might be INFO, the same storm nearing the coast becomes ATTENTION, and a major storm threatening one of your Watch Zones becomes CRITICAL.

Incident Timeline

When the Situation Room takes over, it shows a short timeline titled How This Developed, so you see the sequence of events, not just the latest snapshot. When the event ends, a brief stand down summary shows how long it lasted.

Alert Sounds

ChronAlert can play a distinct tone for each kind of alert. Open the Config Console and go to Alert Sounds to choose a sound per alert type, test each one, and set the master mute. The alert types are:

• NWS weather warnings
• FEMA IPAWS / EAS national alerts
• GDACS global disaster alerts
• Space weather (geomagnetic) storms
• Solar flares / X-ray events
• Breaking news
• Situation Room takeover

By design. ChronAlert only sounds for real hazard alerts. A feed going offline is silent, and new alerts only start sounding a few seconds after launch, so the batch of alerts already active when you open the app does not all fire at once. Mute everything with the speaker button in the top bar or Alt+M.

Mesh Radios Pro

ChronAlert Pro can bring your local mesh network onto the wall. Plug a Meshtastic or MeshCore radio into the ChronAlert PC over USB, then open the Config Console, go to App Settings, and find Mesh Radios in the Pro Features section.

Connecting a radio

Enable the radio, then pick its COM port (or leave it on Auto-detect) and set the channel. Use Rescan Ports if you plug the radio in after opening the console. Once connected, the card shows how many nodes it has heard and the latest messages.

On the map and cards

Heard nodes appear on the map around you, and each radio's card shows its most recent messages right beside your weather. Enabling a radio turns its card on automatically.

Requires Pro. Mesh integration is a Pro feature, so the mesh controls and cards are hidden on the free tier.

Windows drivers. Most Meshtastic and MeshCore boards use a USB-serial chip (often a Silicon Labs CP210x). If Windows does not show a COM port for the radio, install the manufacturer's USB-serial (VCP) driver and reconnect.

QSO Map Pro

ChronAlert can listen to your ham-radio logging software and draw the classic great-circle arc from your station to everyone you work or hear. It reads the UDP broadcasts sent by WSJT-X, JTDX, JS8Call, N1MM+ and Log4OM, locates the other station by its Maidenhead grid (or a rough callsign-prefix fallback), and maps it. Arcs are colored by band and the QSO Map card lists recent contacts. History rolls over the last 24 hours.

Turning it on

Open the Config Console, go to App Settings, and find QSO Map in the Pro Features section. Check Enable, choose what to show - Worked (stations you log), Heard (stations your radio decodes), or Both - then turn on the QSO Map arcs and card per panel in Panels (under Ham Radio).

Pointing your logger at ChronAlert

Every logger works the same way: you tell it to send its UDP output to ChronAlert's address and port.

• Address. Use 127.0.0.1 if the logger and ChronAlert run on the same PC (the default; usually no change needed). If they run on different PCs, use the ChronAlert PC's IP address - the QSO Map panel shows it for you - and set ChronAlert's Listen On to 0.0.0.0 (all interfaces).
• Port. ChronAlert listens on 2237 (WSJT-X / JTDX / JS8Call) and 12060 (N1MM+) by default. The port in your logger must match one of these exactly.

Setting up your logging software

Labels vary a little by version, but these steps cover the common loggers. After you set them, log or decode a contact and an arc should sweep from your QTH.

WSJT-X

1. Open File → Settings and click the Reporting tab.
2. Under UDP Server, set UDP Server to ChronAlert's address and UDP Server port number to 2237.
3. Click OK. WSJT-X now sends its decodes and logged QSOs to ChronAlert.

JTDX

1. Open Settings and go to the Reporting tab.
2. Under UDP server, set the address to ChronAlert and the UDP server port number to 2237.
3. Double-check the port is exactly 2237 - a mismatched port is the most common reason nothing appears.

JS8Call

1. Open File → Settings and go to the Reporting tab.
2. In the UDP Server section, set the server to ChronAlert's address and the port to 2237, and make sure it is enabled.

N1MM Logger+

1. Open Config → Configure Ports, Mode Control, Audio, Other... and select the Broadcast Data tab.
2. Tick Contacts and set its destination to ChronAlert's address followed by :12060 - for example 127.0.0.1:12060 on the same PC, or 192.168.1.50:12060 across the network.
3. Click OK. N1MM+ broadcasts each logged contact to ChronAlert.

Log4OM

1. In Log4OM's outbound / third-party UDP settings, add the ChronAlert PC's address and one of the QSO Map ports above, and enable sending when a QSO is logged.
2. The exact menu path changes between Log4OM versions, so check its documentation if you cannot find the UDP option.

Tip. A logger's live-decode stream and its logged-QSO stream can be separate UDP outputs. WSJT-X, JTDX, and JS8Call send both on the one UDP Server you set above; with N1MM+ you are sending logged contacts. Choose Worked, Heard, or Both in ChronAlert to decide which of those it maps.

Checking it works

Put the QSO Map card on a panel and turn on the QSO Map arcs layer, then log or decode a station whose report includes a grid square. Within a moment an arc should draw from your QTH to that station and the contact should appear in the card. The card also shows which ports ChronAlert is listening on and whether the listener is bound, so you can confirm it is up.

Requires Pro. The QSO Map listener is a Pro feature.

Network configuration is not supported. Getting UDP from your logger to ChronAlert across a network is standard IP networking, and it depends entirely on your own setup - computer IP addresses, the Windows Firewall (or other security software) on the ChronAlert PC, your router, VLANs, and your logger's UDP settings. ChronAlert does not provide support for configuring your network, firewall, router, or logging software. If packets are not arriving, that is a local network/firewall/logger configuration matter for you (or your network administrator) to resolve. The ChronAlert installer opens the default QSO ports on Windows Firewall for private networks; anything beyond that is outside the scope of ChronAlert support.

Live Aircraft, Ships & APRS Pro

ChronAlert Pro can put live aircraft, ships, and APRS ham stations on your map. Aircraft and ships come from your own RTL-SDR radio receiver on your network - nothing leaves your network. APRS comes from the internet (the worldwide APRS-IS network) and needs no radio - just your amateur callsign. Each contact appears pointed the way it is moving, with optional trails. The three are independent; set up only the ones you want.

What you need

• For aircraft and ships (not APRS): an RTL-SDR dongle (the RTL-SDR Blog V3 or V4 is the common choice) plus an antenna for the band you want: 1090 MHz for aircraft, or marine VHF (about 162 MHz) for ships. A good outside antenna makes a big difference, and one dongle can only listen to one band at a time. APRS needs none of this - it works over the internet (see below).
• The matching decoder software running on a PC on your network - the ChronAlert PC itself or a separate machine (a Raspberry Pi is popular).
• The web address (URL) that the decoder publishes its live data at. You paste that address into ChronAlert - that is the whole connection.

One-time: install the dongle driver (Windows)

Before any SDR software can use an RTL-SDR dongle on Windows, you install its WinUSB driver with a small free tool called Zadig: plug in the dongle, run Zadig, select the RTL-SDR device (its "Bulk-In, Interface"), choose WinUSB, and click Install / Replace Driver. This is the standard RTL-SDR first step and the "RTL-SDR Blog Quick Start Guide" walks through it with pictures. You only do it once per dongle.

Aircraft (ADS-B)

1. Install and run an ADS-B decoder against your dongle - dump1090, tar1090, or readsb are the usual ones. It publishes a live aircraft list at a web address ending in aircraft.json. Open the decoder's own map page in a browser to find the exact address; common forms are http://<PC-IP>:8080/data/aircraft.json, …/tar1090/data/aircraft.json, or …/dump1090-fa/data/aircraft.json.
2. In ChronAlert, open the Config Console → App Settings and find Local ADS-B (RTL-SDR). Check Enable local ADS-B, paste the aircraft.json address into Receiver URL, and Save.
3. Put the Local ADS-B card and layer on a panel (open Panels, find them under Ham Radio).

Aircraft appear pointed the way they are flying, with planes and helicopters shown differently, and are colored by type: military green, airline yellow, and private/general-aviation white.

Ships (AIS)

1. Install and run an AIS decoder against your dongle - AIS-catcher is the common one. It publishes a live ship list on its web address; open AIS-catcher's own web page to find the exact address (it usually ends in /ships.json).
2. In ChronAlert, open App Settings → Local AIS (RTL-SDR), check Enable, paste the ships address into Receiver URL, and Save.
3. Add the Local AIS card and layer to a panel (under Ham Radio).

Ships appear pointed the way they are heading, and the card lists the most recently heard vessels with a rough count of how many are under way versus at anchor.

APRS (ham stations) - over the internet, no radio

APRS uses the worldwide APRS-IS network instead of a radio, so there is no dongle, antenna, or decoder to set up - just your amateur callsign.

1. In ChronAlert, open App Settings → APRS (APRS-IS) and check Enable APRS-IS.
2. Enter your callsign (it connects receive-only, so no password is stored; it defaults to your station callsign). Set the Range - how far around your location to pull stations, which covers your National, Regional, and Local views.
3. Add the APRS card and layer to a panel (open Panels, under Ham Radio). Click Save.

Stations appear with their real APRS symbols - the same recognizable icons used on aprs.fi (weather stations, digipeaters, homes, cars, gateways, and so on). The card lists the most recently heard, and the count narrows to whatever view you are in. Moving stations show their speed in your local units (mph in the USA, km/h elsewhere). The APRS symbols are from the aprs.fi symbol set by Heikki Hannikainen (OH7LZB), used under CC BY-SA 2.0.

You can choose which kinds of stations to show under App Settings → APRS (APRS-IS) → Station Types. Uncheck any of Vehicles, Weather, Digipeaters, Home, Boats, Aircraft, Balloons, People, or Other to hide that type from both the map and the card.

Options for every receiver

• Draw trailing line. Leaves a fading trail showing where each contact has been.
• Dwell time. How long a contact stays on the map (dimmed) after its last signal, so it does not blink out between updates. Use a longer dwell for slower feeds like ships and APRS.
• 5V bias tee. Turn this on only if you use an inline amplifier (LNA) or an active antenna that needs 5 volts sent up the coax. It switches the dongle's bias-tee power. Leave it off with an ordinary passive antenna. It needs the rtl_biast tool - set its location once in App Settings → RTL-SDR (shared).
• Start receiver software when ChronAlert launches. Optional convenience: give ChronAlert the command that starts your decoder and it will start it with the app and stop it again on exit, so you do not have to launch it separately. The status line shows whether it is running.

Checking it works

With the decoder running and the address entered, the card shows a live count and the most recently heard contacts, and icons appear on the map. If the card says the receiver is not reachable, open that same address in a web browser on the ChronAlert PC - if the browser cannot load it either, the problem is your decoder or the address, not ChronAlert. If the card connects but stays empty, that is normal when nothing is in range: reception depends heavily on your antenna and location, and traffic comes and goes.

Requires Pro. The live SDR receivers are Pro features, so their settings, layers, and cards are hidden on the free tier.

You supply the receiver; ChronAlert reads it. The dongle, antenna, decoder software, and getting its data across your network are your own setup. ChronAlert does not provide the RTL-SDR hardware or decoder software, and does not provide support for configuring your dongle, driver, decoder, antenna, firewall, or network. ChronAlert's part is simple: point it at the address your own receiver publishes, and it maps what it finds there.

Panels

A Panel is a saved scene. It captures a map view, which layers are on, and which side cards show. The carousel cycles through your panels automatically so one screen can tell a rotating story: World, then Ham, then Weather, then Local, and around again.

Setting up panels

Open the Config Console (gear, or Alt+P) and go to Panels. Add a panel, choose its map view, then use the two switches next to each feed to decide what shows on the map and what shows as a side card. Rename or delete panels from the list.

The carousel

Set how many seconds each panel holds in App Settings under Panel Rotation. Start and stop the rotation with the play button in the top bar or Alt+C, and jump to the next panel any time with the Next button or Alt+→ (Alt+← goes back). Stepping to a panel while the rotation is stopped lets you flip through your views by hand.

Limits. Free two Panels. Pro up to ten.

Screens Pro

A Screen is a complete profile for one physical display. One ChronAlert install can drive several screens, each showing something different: the living room TV runs weather, the shack monitor runs propagation and spots, the office shows world and news. A Screen sets:

• Screen type. TV, Monitor, Tablet, or Browser. Choosing TV turns on reduce effects and keeps everything clear of the screen edges automatically.
• Panels. Which panels that screen rotates, and in what order.
• Card size. An optional per-screen override.
• Crawl scope. The ticker scope for that screen.

Creating and using a Screen

Open the Config Console and go to Screens. Add a screen, choose its panels and options, and copy its URL from the page (there is a Copy button). Open that URL on the TV, monitor, or tablet, for example http://your-server:8420/?display=living-room. Screens are a Pro feature.

Watch on Another Screen

ChronAlert serves to your whole local network, so any TV, phone, tablet, or computer on the same Wi-Fi can open it in a browser. The address is shown at the top of the Config Console (with a Copy button), and on a small banner when the app starts. Type that address into the other device.

Use the address shown by the app. Each computer has its own network address, so always read it off the screen you are serving from rather than guessing. On Windows, the installer opens the needed port through the firewall for you.

Reduce Effects (TV mode)

Television browsers and streaming sticks often have weak graphics, and the blur and animation that look great on a computer can make them flicker. Reduce effects mode drops the blur and the continuous decorative animation so the display stays steady.

It turns on automatically for TV and streaming stick browsers. You can also toggle it yourself in App Settings under Reduce effects, force it on any device by adding ?lite=1 to the address, or let a TV type Screen switch it on. It also adds a safe margin around the edges so nothing gets cut off by a television that crops the picture.

Feed Health

Because this is a situational awareness tool, it matters that you can trust what is on screen. The FEEDS chip in the top bar shows the health of the important data sources at a glance. Green means the critical feeds are live, amber means one is stale, and red means one is offline. Click it, or open the Config Console and go to Feed Health, for a full list of every source with how long ago each one updated, marked LIVE, STALE, or OFFLINE.

The whole point is that stale data never gets dressed up as current. If a feed stops updating, you will know.

Config Reference

The Config Console menu, and what each page holds:

• Overview. A summary of your Panels and Screens, with quick links to manage them, plus a Connect a Screen QR code and address for opening ChronAlert on another device.
• Panels. Create and edit the saved map / card views, with the two MAP and CARD switches per feed.
• Screens. Pro Assign Panels to each physical display and get its URL.
• Watch Zones. Add and edit the locations the Situation Room alerts on.
• App Settings. Everything host-wide, described below.
• News Feeds. Pick the ticker's news, sports, and market sources and toggle severe weather. Saves automatically.
• Webcams. Pro Add IP cameras (experimental).
• Alert Sounds. A sound per alert type, plus the master mute.
• Feed Health. Live LIVE / STALE / OFFLINE status of every feed.
• User Manual. Opens this guide.
• Manage License. Enter a Pro key, view your tier, or clear the license.

Inside App Settings

• Station Name / Callsign. Shown in the top left corner.
• QTH. Your location, set by city search or by latitude and longitude.
• Country. United States, Canada, United Kingdom, or Australia. Sets the national map, weather-alert authority, radar source, and airport and news defaults.
• Map Style. How the satellite base map is tinted, from darkest to brightest: Dark Matter, Midnight Blue, Carbon, Twilight, or Daylight. The last two are brighter daytime looks.
• Card Size and Font Size. Two per-device sliders for the card column and the text.
• Local Clock Timezone. Which zone the second clock uses.
• Reduce effects. The TV mode described above. Per device.
• Host URL. The address to open ChronAlert from other devices.
• Map Tier Zoom. World and National zoom levels (National can auto-fit), and the Regional and Local radius in miles.
• Bottom Crawl and Alert Rules. The crawl scope, whether FEMA IPAWS / EAS national alerts appear (US only), and minimum severity filters for weather and GDACS.
• Panel Rotation. The auto-cycle interval in seconds.
• Pro Features. Pro A highlighted section with the Situation Room takeover (and its Preview demos), QSO Map (logger UDP), and Mesh Radios (COM port and channel).

Free and Pro

ChronAlert works fully on the free tier, forever. The line is simple: Free shows what is happening, Pro reacts to it. Free receives and displays every alert; Pro adds the automatic Situation Room, higher limits, custom Screens, and mesh radios.

Get a key on the ChronAlert Pro page, then enter it in the Config Console under Manage License.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Troubleshooting

Another screen is showing an old version

First, make sure you are viewing the correct ChronAlert computer. Each ChronAlert installation on your network has its own address. On the computer you want to view, open the Config Console and check the Host URL at the top, and use that exact address on your other device.

ChronAlert opened on a different port than expected

ChronAlert normally serves on port 8420. If that port is already in use, it automatically moves to the next free port and shows the real address on a banner at startup and at the top of the Config Console. Always use the address it shows, not a guessed one.

A feed says STALE or OFFLINE

Click the FEEDS indicator at the top of the screen to see which source is affected and when it last updated. Most feeds recover automatically when the data provider or your internet connection becomes available again. The base map and locally generated layers continue working independently.

The picture flickers on a TV

Open App Settings and enable Reduce Effects, or set the screen type to TV. You can also add ?lite=1 to the end of the ChronAlert address.

Content is cut off at the edges of a TV

Enable Reduce Effects or select the TV screen type, which adds a safe margin. If content is still cropped, check the television's picture settings for Screen Fit, Just Scan, Full Pixel, 1:1, or Overscan, and disable overscan when possible.

A phone or TV cannot connect

Make sure both devices are on the same local network or Wi-Fi. On the ChronAlert computer, open the Config Console and use the exact Host URL shown. The Windows installer automatically configures the required firewall access for private networks.

A mesh radio is not connecting

Mesh radios require Pro. Confirm the radio shows a COM port in Windows (install its USB-serial driver if not), then in App Settings pick the right port or use Auto-detect, set the channel, and use Rescan Ports after plugging it in.