Computerless Feed?

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Hello, I'm not sure if this is the right place for this question, if not please relocate it for me. Thanks.

I was wondering if it's possible to provide a feed WITHOUT a computer? I thought I had stumbled across a forum a while back on an unrelated topic and I could of swore a couple people on there had photos of a wireless device that used the WiFi in the house/garage or whatever to provide the feed. Of course after looking for hours I can't find that forum now.

My feed computer just took a nice dump on me today and I'm scrambling to come up with a budget friendly way of getting my feed back up. Anyone with any insight on this or know of a particular brand/model of a device that will do this I would be GREATLY appreciated! I don't even know what it's called, (if it exist that is). Any help would be great. Thanks!
 

Austin4Wyo

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I assume you're referring to a PC when you say "computerless." I could envision such a machine existing, but WiFi seems a long, roundabout way to do it if you're streaming a feed. Pulling it in on a second PC, then streaming that input? I'd just go buy a cheap used computer that could be used as a replacement.

I can't imagine any piece of equipment that you're describing being cost effective for providing an internet stream.
 

ramboton

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Thin Clients

not quite computer less, but I use a thin client to provide my feeds. A thin client is a computer with a solid state drive and windows xp embedded on a chip, because of this there are no moving parts, they do not have much horse power, usually used for point of sale systems, you can find them on ebay for $40-$100. I have three of them, two Wyse and one HP T5720, the 5720 has 512 megs of "hard drive" and 512 megs of ram, I am actually providing two feeds with that unit. They are very stable, I have mine in a storage shed in back of the house, last week we hit temps of 105, and the units kept going strong. Right now the t5720 has been up and running for over 25 days.

Here is one on ebay for about $85
HP Compaq T5720 Thin Client AMD NX1500 1GHz 512MB 512MB | eBay

The wyse unit I use is the 9150SE only $49 on ebay
Wyse 9150SE Thin Client Terminal XPe 512 256 (1560857) | eBay

these can be a little challenging to setup since they are real tight on space, but once configured they work great.
 
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That's it!

not quite computer less, but I use a thin client to provide my feeds. A thin client is a computer with a solid state drive and windows xp embedded on a chip, because of this there are no moving parts, they do not have much horse power, usually used for point of sale systems, you can find them on ebay for $40-$100. I have three of them, two Wyse and one HP T5720, the 5720 has 512 megs of "hard drive" and 512 megs of ram, I am actually providing two feeds with that unit. They are very stable, I have mine in a storage shed in back of the house, last week we hit temps of 105, and the units kept going strong. Right now the t5720 has been up and running for over 25 days.

Here is one on ebay for about $85
HP Compaq T5720 Thin Client AMD NX1500 1GHz 512MB 512MB | eBay

The wyse unit I use is the 9150SE only $49 on ebay
Wyse 9150SE Thin Client Terminal XPe 512 256 (1560857) | eBay

these can be a little challenging to setup since they are real tight on space, but once configured they work great.

Thin Clients... Yes! That's what I had seen in those photos. I didn't realize that those where tiny computers! You have answered my question perfectly. Thank you very much. Now to do some more research. :) Thanks again.
 

ausscan

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Do they require the use of a server or can they run stand alone
 

KI4VBR

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Answer Is..... Both

Do they require the use of a server or can they run stand alone

It will depend on the particular model of the Term and how much free system resources are available (memory, storage & processor). I have found if you load a trimmed down version of XP Embedded for terms, you can run a simple app or two native, but after that you will run out of memory. Then you will need to run a terminal session on another computer which in many cases is a server running Windows, Linux or other adnabced O/S. The session can map the Com & Audio ports and USB ports to the WinTerm so you can interface with radios and such.

The most common thing to look for is Windows XP Embedded, NOT Windows CE (compact edition) and at least 512 RAM. Also, it seems that XP SP2 is preferred as SP3 uses up more RAM once the DotNet client is loaded.

Best of luck,
Vince
 

NR8O

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I just set up a HP t5720 thin client to use as a feed and love it. Totally silent, no fan or hard drive, and low power consumption. I've been running it for 3 days now with 1 feed using the built in sound card and no problems. Once I get some USB sound cards I'm going to move my other two feeds over to it.

ausscan, the unit I bought comes with an embedded version of Windows XP so no server needed, it's totally stand alone.
 

zl2taw

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you could also add a 2.5" external drive to it & try that
I was playing with PDW with it, but never thought of using the thin client I have
 

ausscan

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I'd be interested to see someone write a basic setup guide whether it be for a stream or for PDW.
 

NR8O

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I'd be interested to see someone write a basic setup guide whether it be for a stream or for PDW.

I took pretty good notes when I did mine, maybe I'll throw something together. There is a tutorial on setting one up for a Magic Jack that gets you 90% of the way. Getting the right version of .NET Framework installed was where I had trouble.
 

nanZor

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You could also use Linux if your streaming software supports it.

I run Knoppix 6.4.4 right now from a CF card or USB thumbdrive, with the hard drives shut down / removed. That way you can resurrect an older computer and not even use the spinning drives.

http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html

There are other Linux alternatives of course - but so far my favorite for running from a "solid state" drive is Knoppix. Initially it is meant to be run in ram from a CD, but there is a built in one-button click to make it bootable from a CF or USB disk on a persistent basis.
 
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poltergeisty

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You could also use Linux if your streaming software supports it.

I run Knoppix 6.4.4 right now from a CF card or USB thumbdrive, with the hard drives shut down / removed. That way you can resurrect an older computer and not even use the spinning drives.

KNOPPIX - Live Linux Filesystem On CD

There are other Linux alternatives of course - but so far my favorite for running from a "solid state" drive is Knoppix. Initially it is meant to be run in ram from a CD, but there is a built in one-button click to make it bootable from a CF or USB disk on a persistent basis.

I run something called Tinyxp from a USB drive. I formatted the USB stick to NTFS then boot the burnned Tinyxp CD and it installed to the USB stick. I tried with a Kingston 3 GB USB stick but it did not work. I have Tinyxp on a 8 GB Toshiba USB stick

There's DSL! DSL information
 
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jaded

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Broken laptops on Craigslist (or flea market, garage sale, etc.) with a cracked LCD are often let go cheap, plus they'll typically draw less power than a desktop. Plus, if the battery is still good, it'll be able to ride out a small power outage. As long as you can attach an external monitor to it for initial setup, just set windows to not turn off with the lid closed. This is exactly how I run my feed (though I use Linux). Any laptop made in the past seven years should have more than enough horsepower to do the encoding and streaming.
 
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