Why is a Dataminr connection on my feed?

[iceman977th]

Last night, one of our fire departments responded to a structure fire, and for whatever reason nearly 500 people tuned in (we’re a rinkydink town on the Ohio River so that surprised the hell out of me) but I popped on to check statistics and checked the connected clients list.. at the bottom was a connection from “Dataminr Ingest Audio Consumer (ingest@dataminr.com)” that I have not seen on any of my other feeds. Is this some sort of partnership between RR/BCFY and Dataminr or what’s the deal? Any ideas?

Mike

P.S. it is still connected currently.
P.P.S. Phone was plugged in to charge. 😁

 

[alabamarailfan]

See this thread:

Dataminr.com productizing scanner audio feeds?

I noticed a User Agent in my Feed Listeners list today that I had not seen before: [Dataminr Ingest Audio Consumer (ingest@dataminr.com)] A Google-search later, I found a blog entry on their site describing their use of Artificial Intelligence to analyze scanner feed audio and identify...

forums.radioreference.com

 

[iceman977th]

See this thread:

Dataminr.com productizing scanner audio feeds?

I noticed a User Agent in my Feed Listeners list today that I had not seen before: [Dataminr Ingest Audio Consumer (ingest@dataminr.com)] A Google-search later, I found a blog entry on their site describing their use of Artificial Intelligence to analyze scanner feed audio and identify...

forums.radioreference.com

So, our feeds are being monetized by a third party service. Got it.

 

[alabamarailfan]

Looks like it. In their defense, Broadcastify has to pay for all this bandwidth somehow, I guess.

 

[IFRIED91]

I use dataminr…they are based here in nyc and govt employees/any civil servants such as police officers or firefighters can request an account for free…. it’s like the citizen app on steroids and works everywhere… perfect for situational awareness

 

[jaspence]

Just one more reason to see the en word to be part of the next board meeting.

 

[iceman977th]

I use dataminr…they are based here in nyc and govt employees/any civil servants such as police officers or firefighters can request an account for free…. it’s like the citizen app on steroids and works everywhere… perfect for situational awareness

I don't understand the point. They are using the same feed as the consumers, with delay etc. Literally makes no sense to me. If it's supposed to be used by first responders, why not talk to the agencies directly and set up their own direct feeds?

Side note, my other public safety feed is accessed by it as well, apparently..

Mike

 

[AB5ID]

I use dataminr…they are based here in nyc and govt employees/any civil servants such as police officers or firefighters can request an account for free…. it’s like the citizen app on steroids and works everywhere… perfect for situational awareness

That's sounds cool, what type of information do you get? How's it formatted?

 

[iceman977th]

That's sounds cool, what type of information do you get? How's it formatted?

Just an educated guess, they analyze scanner audio to pass along information on incidents to local news etc. My guess is it's also used for paid notification services, which is kind of aggravating personally, but I'm the one that signed up for an account on BCFY, so..

Mike

 

[IFRIED91]

That's sounds cool, what type of information do you get? How's it formatted?

here’s 2 photos

 

[IFRIED91]

I don't understand the point. They are using the same feed as the consumers, with delay etc. Literally makes no sense to me. If it's supposed to be used by first responders, why not talk to the agencies directly and set up their own direct feeds?

Side note, my other public safety feed is accessed by it as well, apparently..

Mike

They have an automatic internet search and can be customized using keywords and they can access public safety feeds, marketing, you can even set it up to send you sports team updates if you like haha

 

[AB5ID]

here’s 2 photos

Thanks for sharing! I've seen it connected to my feed for quite some time but have never seen an end product.

 

[prcguy]

Does the streaming software have the ability to block specific connections? If I were streaming for free and someone was taking my feed and potentially selling it I would try and block them.

 

[INDY72]

Does the streaming software have the ability to block specific connections? If I were streaming for free and someone was taking my feed and potentially selling it I would try and block them.

As far as I know Priscan and Radiofeed dont. You can limit the number of connections possible but not block the reception ports.

 

[GTR8000]

Does the streaming software have the ability to block specific connections?

No. Once you decide to stream to BCFY's servers, you no longer have any control over where it goes from there.

You can limit the number of connections possible but not block the reception ports.

Limiting the number of connections only applies to direct connections to the software, it has nothing to do with BCFY streaming.

 

[fantasma25]

No. Once you decide to stream to BCFY's servers, you no longer have any control over where it goes from there.


Limiting the number of connections only applies to direct connections to the software, it has nothing to do with BCFY streaming.

So, potentially, anyone can be making a profit from the feed that you are providing for free by reselling it to others? That sounds like a text book maneuver from facebook...

 

[AB5ID]

So, potentially, anyone can be making a profit from the feed that you are providing for free by reselling it to others? That sounds like a text book maneuver from facebook...

Yes and it works well I give a local stream and in return I get free Premium status, server space, archiving, and unlimited streaming bandwidth.

 

[Kingscup]

So, potentially, anyone can be making a profit from the feed that you are providing for free by reselling it to others? That sounds like a text book maneuver from facebook...

‘And you are able to listen to the feeds for free rather than paying a monthly fee. No one is forcing anyone to become a feed provider.

 

[pb3400]

‘And you are able to listen to the feeds for free rather than paying a monthly fee. No one is forcing anyone to become a feed provider.

I get both sides of this. This sort of, opaque and overt monetization of scanner feeds that are generally of a public service and nature -feels- wrong, somehow. I think most feed providers broadcast as sort of a community thing, generally using also free/open source software. But the radios and other equipment are entirely funded by the feeder.
It's one thing to serve banner or other text/image advertisements to listeners, and another perhaps to directly monetize the stream itself. I have to imagine that Broadcastify makes a pretty penny with that deal with Dataminr, and I'm pretty sure Dataminr won't be the only such deal either. Not to mention all the other income from other community supplied frequency data and associated deals with the scanner makers.

Now, on the other hand, running such a site does incur costs. Storage, distribution and bandwidth isn't free. But, in 2022, these costs have plummeted compared to a decade ago. Media can be transcoded in the cloud in real time, for very little cost. Websites no longer require bare metal hardware. Kubernetes, docker, and the proliferation of serverless functions like AWS Lambda mean that when properly architected such a site may incur very little base cost, mainly only being charged when active listeners are present.

So, I guess it's just up to the feed providers to decide, if they feel like the monetization of their work product is wanted or a fair trade for a $30/annual benefit. It would help make that decision if we could know the full picture, but I suppose we won't get that.

Just a note, there are free alternatives. OpenMhz.com provides Calls type functionality and is community built and supported. The server behind OpenMhz is called TrunkServer and is also open-source and available for download too.

 

[KC2CQD]

Last night, one of our fire departments responded to a structure fire, and for whatever reason nearly 500 people tuned in (we’re a rinkydink town on the Ohio River so that surprised the hell out of me) but I popped on to check statistics and checked the connected clients list.. at the bottom was a connection from “Dataminr Ingest Audio Consumer (ingest@dataminr.com)” that I have not seen on any of my other feeds. Is this some sort of partnership between RR/BCFY and Dataminr or what’s the deal? Any ideas?

Mike

P.S. it is still connected currently.
P.P.S. Phone was plugged in to charge. 😁

View attachment 120312

Last night, one of our fire departments responded to a structure fire, and for whatever reason nearly 500 people tuned in (we’re a rinkydink town on the Ohio River so that surprised the hell out of me) but I popped on to check statistics and checked the connected clients list.. at the bottom was a connection from “Dataminr Ingest Audio Consumer (ingest@dataminr.com)” that I have not seen on any of my other feeds. Is this some sort of partnership between RR/BCFY and Dataminr or what’s the deal? Any ideas?

Mike

P.S. it is still connected currently.
P.P.S. Phone was plugged in to charge. 😁

View attachment 120312

Proof that posting alerts works too!
My stream usually peaks at 5 or 6 but I alerted to a Mercy Flight call a little while ago and I peaked at 369