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WiiEAS

Live Emergency Alert System alerts from across the United States on the Nintendo Wii, drawn to resemble a DASDEC (Digital Alert Systems Decoder) emergency alert screen, the hardware used by many US cable companies — purple-blue field, red border, white monospaced text, page flips for long messages.

Data comes from the free public GlobalEAS Central Alert Repository API. Audio is the official MP3 hosted on their CDN.

Idea credit: RetrokVR floated this as a homebrew wish-list item in June 2026. This project picks that idea up; they offered to help test on hardware.

⚠️ IMPORTANT SAFETY WARNING & DISCLAIMER

This app plays live, authentic Emergency Alert System (EAS) audio tones and data headers.

  • Do not play this audio over public speakers, microphones, or live streams.
  • Do not use this app near open microphones, radios, or smart home devices.
  • Keep your TV volume low, or use headphones.

The audio signals streamed in this app contain unmodified SAME data codes, which if picked up by a nearby microphone, smart speaker, ham radio, or PC running decoder software, could accidentally trigger real emergency alert systems. Broadcasting these tones over the internet or over radio waves may violate federal laws and result in severe penalties.

You are solely responsible for how and where the audio is played. The author is not liable for misuse of the tones provided by this application.

Features

  • DASDEC-style full-screen layout
  • Active alerts from across the United States
  • Details panel (sent time, expiration time, alert type, callsign, originator)
  • Consistently polls the API every 60s (same cadence as the CAR website)
  • Auto play: if left on, new alerts will automatically play as they are retrieved

Build

Requires devkitPro with:

  • devkitPPC, libogc, wii-grrlib (and FreeType/png/jpeg)
  • mbedTLS for PPC is vendored in libs/mbedtls/ (headers + static libs) — nothing extra to install
export DEVKITPRO=/opt/devkitpro
export DEVKITPPC=$DEVKITPRO/devkitPPC
make

Produces boot.dol / boot.elf for the Homebrew Channel.

Install on SD

Copy WiiEAS folder to your apps folder on the root of your SD card.

Controls/Usage

Action Wii Remote (Nunchuk optional) Classic Controller GameCube
Prev / next alert ← → / Nunchuk stick ← → / stick ← → / stick
Page up / down 1 2 / ↑ ↓ / Nunchuk stick Y X / ↑ ↓ / stick Y X / L R / ↑ ↓ / stick
Details panel + + Start (tap)
Play / pause audio A A A
Toggle auto-play B B B
Quit hold HOME hold HOME hold Start

The app itself keeps one small status line on the top bezel, which stays empty unless there's something to report (downloading audio, fetch results, errors).
A second status line is persistently shown on the bottom bezel, which shows how many alerts are currently available, which one you are on, and whether auto-play is active.

API

Documented at https://alerts.globaleas.org/swagger/index.html:

  • GET /api/v1/alerts/active → array of alerts
  • Each alert has translation (display text) and audioUrl (MP3)

Notice

This is a fan / homebrew viewer of publicly syndicated EAS data. It is not an official warning device, not a substitute for NOAA Weather Radio / WEA / local broadcast, and not affiliated with GlobalEAS, Digital Alert Systems, or any government agency.

License

Code in this repo: GPLv3. Font is Luxi Mono Bold (Bigelow & Holmes - Luxi License).
GlobalEAS data/audio: as published by GWES (public alert archive).

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Emergency Alert System viewer for the Nintendo Wii

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