ScannerLive Open Beta

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rdale

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With a big storm making stream listening a fun weekend opportunity - I've allowed the nearly complete ScannerLive application to work through Feb 8th.

Take an early look at ScannerLive at ScannerLive (32bit Windows) and ScannerLive (same but optimized for 64bit machines.) With IE you can launch directly, Firefox requires you to download the setup and run that instead.

ScannerLive will allow up to 10 banks of up to 10 channels each. When it's not actively scanning, you can right-click over a feed in the list and delete. Add new feeds under the "bank setup" where you can access the RR database directly, or enter a URL from another site. Either use "bank setup" to save a particular bank config, or right-click over the bank name as a shortcut.

For machines with multiple sound cards, go to "sound card setup" and you can choose something other than the default. You can also turn on/off the tooltips on the main screen, the feedname popup at the bottom, or minimizing into the date/time tray.

Hit "start" and away you go!

Left-click over a feed (name or the audio bar) and it will hold on that feed. Right-click over the feed name allows you to set the priority channel. Priority checks the feed 10 times per second without interrupting your listening.

The volume slider works, and the checkbox allows you to temporarily lock out a channel. You can still see the audio meter move if you want to unlock. If a feed goes offline, it attempts to reconnect and if still unsuccessful will cross out the name so you know it's down.

Under "Scan Setup" you can mute all or clear priority (if set.)

You can manually hold on a channel by pressing the 'hold' button while listening to that channel, or just left-click on the audio bar for that channel. Priority will NOT interrupt you while holding, but again you can see the audio bar moving and change on your own if needed.

Anyways take a look, I expect full release in early February. More info on the final release features are down a few threads in this forum. There are still a few cosmetic changes coming (replacing the temp lockout checkbox with a "L/O" button, tweaking the colors, etc.) but overall this is about how the final app will work for v1.0 -- and I've got PLENTY of things to work on for v1.01 and so on.

Cost will be $19.99 with free upgrades, and $11.99 if you are a RR feed provider.

- Rob
 

GTR8000

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After just 10 minutes of using ScannerLive to monitor a handful of feeds, I AM COMPLETELY SOLD! This program is simply awesome, and should revolutionize the way people listen to live feeds.

The "silent sampling" priority feature is outstanding, and extremely quick and responsive. In fact, it's so good that I'm now depressed that scanners don't operate this way!

One thing I noticed is the "Minimize to Tray" is acting a little flaky. Sometimes it works, other times I have to uncheck and recheck the option to get it to work properly.

Running XP Pro SP3 32bit on an AMD 64 X2 platform. Resource usage is next to nothing, never goes above 01% CPU usage or 5,000 K memory usage. In fact, it's been running for 30 minutes and only shows a paltry 3 seconds of total CPU usage time. Quite impressive indeed.

Great job, Rob!
 

DaveIN

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Thanks for all the hard work on this Rob. This is a must have for live feed monitors.
 

GTR8000

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Rob,

After running for a few hours, here are some observations:

- I'm getting a fair bit of crosstalk between streams, especially if I have one setup L and one R, they are overlapping. I was under the impression this is not the design of the program, that it should mute all other streams when there is activity on one?

- There are times the stream just drops off in the middle of a transmission and it switches to another stream (non-priority).

- Similar to the above issue, there are times the delay is ignored and it switches to another stream immediately after the carrier drops.


I'm also curious if there will be a way in the future to edit the stream settings without having to delete and re-add them all, or to edit the txt files directly. In particular, a way to change/adjust the L/R/Stereo setting, the delay times, and the 1-10 order of streams in a bank.
 

rdale

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THanks for the feedback - what are the specs on the computer you are running? I've never been able to duplicate the "two at once" problem but I'm on a high-end quad core system. I may need to drop the "squelch check" interval down a bit.

Every time I've tested for the problem where a feed drops out and goes to another, I've had the feed running on another window and noticed that the feed audio goes to zero on the stream and that confuses the app (thinks it is a dead feed so moves on.) I'll see what I can do about putting in more protection for that dropout (which is related to the delay issue.)

In the future there will be an "edit on the fly" option, but I wanted to at least get this out the door since I'm being hammered with requests to release so I've got a nice list of v1.01 features!
 

GTR8000

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- AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ 2.7GHz (which is almost always running underclocked at 1GHz via Cool'n'Quiet) dual core CPU
- 4GB DDR2-800 RAM
- XP Pro SP3 32bit OS
- Seagate 250GB SATA HDD
- ATI Radeon 2100 GPU
 

bezking

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Very cool. The only thing is you really need to sign the installer to get rid of those security warnings... Especially if you plan on selling it.
 

rdale

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Thanks c6, I'll keep looking at that.

bez - I have signed it, and haven't heard anyone else have any security warning issues... What's your system specs? Anyone else have security warnings?
 

GTR8000

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Yeah the "Unsigned" message came up for me as well. Downloaded in FF 3.6 and installed from the desktop with an admin account.
 

bezking

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I'm running 7 Ultimate x64, IE 8.0. It didn't happen the second time I launched it, I mush have added an exception. The ClickOnce launcher (very cool, BTW. I've never actually seen a clickonce deployment in production before.) just told me that the app was unsigned - I just clicked through it and it loaded fine.
 

rdale

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I'm not sure what's happening there - I've installed it on three totally separate systems and never had that pop up. I've resent the 32bit version "unsigned" so we'll see if that changes things.

- just saw your reply bez, I think it's because Skywatch doesn't have a Verisign ID. At $895 per certificate, it never will ;) We'll see how the 'unsigned' works.
 

WB2UZR

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Out of curiosity, do those using ScannerLive show up in the total listener counts for the feeds?

I like the program, works great!

Scott/WB2UZR
 

rdale

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I would assume so - the server thinks it operates just like any other media player... The only difference is that the program autoselects which "player" to active depending on your settings.
 

WB2UZR

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OK, good deal! Just listening to the feed from KSC, Looks like the weather will co-operate, but very windy down here in Melbourne today, going to be a chilly night/morning for viewing the launch!


Scott/WB2UZR
 

Tweekerbob

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rdale, again, great job. I did notice in this version that the stream name doesn't show up when minimized to the taskbar as it did in the "first" test version. Without metadata at this time, this would be the next best thing.

Works great though, and I believe we are all looking forward to its official release and its subsequent updates.
 

rdale

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Thanks for the words...

Do you have "show feedname in taskbar" checked?
 

04Z1V6

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Although I did not do much I also Alpha and Beta tested this. I think this will go down as one of the biggest online scanner programs ever. I run this constantly with the RR interface it is very easy to use and light on my hard drive. I will be purchasing this when my free use is out of date. I am seeing the alpha tags pop-up no problems here.
 

Tweekerbob

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Well, I'll have to echo the other user's comments as to how it is intermittent in showing up in the tray. The first time I tried it, it did not go to the tray; it simply went away (not in the tray, nor taskbar, yet still running). I had to kill it with taskman. Running XP 32 bit.

Now, when minied to the tray, it does appear to be working properly.

Metadata would put this over the top; yet I am a patient man, Again, kudos to a great program! I'm sure to be one of your first customers.
 
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