Bushnell Weather FX signal question

[TheOnlyScout]

My husband was gifted a five day Bushnell back in the day, and he's quite attached to it. Unfortunately, either whatever benevolent radio operator who was keeping it alive has stopped or our local transponder finally went dark. Now it says out of network and just keeps displaying the same temp from the day it lost connection.
I have a degree in EE, but I have done barely any work with radios at all. I built one cable transmitter/receiver for my class's senior project back in 2008, and I made a little AM/FM radio at some point. So I can learn, but I know very little as is. My radio operator buddy passed during Covid.
How difficult would it be to make a transponder for this guy? Is it likely I could reach the signal? I know they're supposed to be offline. Can I make my own small transmitter and hook it up to an API instead? Is it really worth the hassle? Are others trying to keep these guys running?
I've been looking everywhere for information, but the only source of data I've found is this forum. Even then, I haven't figured much out. I know the frequencies they run off, which isn't nothing, but I have no idea how this data is encoded.
Be honest with me, I can handle rejection. Hahaha
It can live on as a very orange wall clock if needed, it would just put a smile on his face if I got it working somehow.

 

[ScannerSK]

Google states the Bushnell WeatherFX 5-Day Weather Forecaster uses the WWVB time signal to operate properly. Someone mentioned WWVB is currently down (experiencing an outage) so this might explain the problems you are suddenly experiencing.

I would advise to wait a few days or weeks to see if it starts working properly again. The WWVB time signal is used nationwide to automatically set clocks so it should not be down for too long.

 

[mmckenna]

WWVB would explain the time, but not the weather data missing.

Here's the online manual:

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0947/2796/2920/files/WeatherFX1LIM_wv.pdf

If you look at page 23, at the bottom, you'll see a section that tells you what to do if you are not getting weather info. Looks like it's provided by a company called MyAmbient:

Ambient Signal Coverage Map

From what I can find, they used one of the paging networks to send weather data to these devices. Doesn't say which paging service, but I'd bet that it no longer exists. Doesn't look like there is much useful info on line regarding this. Looks like you can contact them here:

For Customers

Information at a glance.

www.ambientdevices.com

But several of the links are coming up bad.

Might be that the support for these things is gone. Paging networks have mostly gone away, and setting up your own would require figuring out which network it used, which frequencies, properly licensing those (don't even try…) and reverse engineering the data stream.

Might be time to just retire it and find a new product that does something similar.

 

[AK9R]

WWVB seems to work ok for me. I have an older clock/radio that syncs to WWVB every hour.

 

[TheOnlyScout]

Sorry, y'all! I got busy with work and forgot to reply.

Thank you so much! I kinda figured it was a fool's errand, but had to ask.