Alert if feed reaches a certain number of listeners

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raf10

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Bristol County, Ma
Is there a way to alert the feed owner or other listeners if a certain number of listeners are connected to the feed? The other night I had 460 listeners because of a major fire in the city and never new about it. I average about 20 - 30 listeners so if I could set an alert at 50 and be notified by email or text that would be a great feature.

Rick
 
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truckie36

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Feed Provider
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Aug 14, 2009
Messages
76
The feed provider and other subscribed listeners could start listening (not everyone can monitor a feed 24/7). The feed provider could put out a regular alert so that listeners that see the feed on the top 50 or alert feed page will know if it's something that they would be interested in listening to.
 

Rob_K

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Feed Provider
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Mar 10, 2009
Messages
221
Location
Tolland County, CT
It works OK (not great) but the bbscanner app for blackberry does this. A number of listeners per feed can be set and a popup comes up when that number is reached.
 

richtidd

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Joined
Dec 19, 2002
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1,150
Location
San Mateo, Ca
Is there a way to alert the feed owner or other listeners if a certain number of listeners are connected to the feed? The other night I had 460 listeners because of a major fire in the city and never new about it. I average about 20 - 30 listeners so if I could set an alert at 50 and be notified by email or text that would be a great feature.

Rick

Not at this time & not for free.

That is part of the Premium feed option at what is est to be $14.95 per month per feed.

The Premium feed is not yet available.
 

KJ6HCB

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Joined
Sep 21, 2011
Messages
474
Location
San Luis Obispo, CA
Would it be a nice feature? Yes
Is it worth $180.00? Probably not

Exactly. If there was an alert and it was say a fire I could load up a fireground freq in the stream. But making the stream owner pay to provide better services when they are already giving by providing a stream? No thanks.
 
Joined
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Messages
580
Location
Edmonton, AB
You could use a service such as IPN to alert your listeners if you hear something happening on your feed. Your listeners can also participate by signing up for a dispatcher account and as long as a person sends out a few alerts per month, the service is free. If they only want to receive alerts and not contribute by helping to send I believe the cost for the end user would be $8.95 per month. This would take the cost of providing an additional service to your listeners out of your pocket and place it in theirs. If they don't feel it's worth contributing or paying the subscription fee they can just use the feed as it is now.
 

SCPD

QRT
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Location
Virginia
I just wanted to let everybody know in this forum that I'm working on a program to do what is wanted in this forum. The program will do as following:

This program is program that would sit on the user’s computer and alert them if the feeds being watching goes past a certain listener count and notification if the feed goes offline (useful for non-feed owners). The program would also allow a fast link to the feed's page / player.

One feature I will work hard on is the ability for the application to sit in your system tray (the icon area by your clock on the taskbar) and when something of interest happens it will popup a message alerting you. I will also allow the program to send an email to an email address using an email server you specify (SMTP). Another option will be that if you don't want to specify your own email server you can get a package from my server ($2 a month for email only) and my server will send the email to you. Also you can specify an email address that relays the alert as a text message but if you can't find the email address or it doesn't work I'll offer a package for text messages that are routed directly to your phone without using email addresses ($0.15 per text message).

Later this project will possibly be integrated into a full feed monitoring program for Windows that allows you to listen to feeds, record them, scan feeds, and other options.

I will start this project under beta testing and will move it to a paid application for a one time fee of $15. This fee will also give you a free license to the full feed monitoring program coming in the future. If you are a feed provider, I will lower the fee to $10. Remember that this program isn't provided by RadioReference so I can't give it away for free for being a volunteer feed provider. It is already clear that integrated functionality for feed listeners notification will be in the premium package only.

Let me know what ideas you guys have and what you guys think. Once I have something to present I will move this to a new forum and start a new thread.
 

KMA367

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Premium Subscriber
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Location
Redwood Coast, N Calif
What purpose would this serve? What else could the feed provider do?
It would be real handy for me. Since I don't monitor my scanner (or feed) very regularly, an email or text msg would alert me to lock in/out the specific channels of interest for whatever incident is going down. I usually have about 20-30 frequencies scanning freely, but when there's a hot call most of them become irrelevant and an irritation for the listeners.
 

SCPD

QRT
Joined
Feb 24, 2001
Messages
0
Location
Virginia
Ok, I have taken time to put thought into how this will work. I still have to run this change by Lindsay but I have a new way of going about it.

I am changing this project to an online service where you can view reports of feeds (similar to how you have in the dashboard, but expanding it more). I will still make available a windows application to popup alerts about your feeds but you will still be able to get email and text message alerts. There will be a monthly cost of $3. This cost will go to maintaining reports and the server(s) to host this. Because text messages cost per alert, I would still have to make a cost per text message ($0.09 / text message) but I will include about 15 free text messages per month that WILL roll over into the next month if not used.

I will eventually attempt to expand this server to mobile apps so you can access these reports from your phone. This service will be cheaper than the premium feed of $14/month for reports.

I need to know if this service is what you guys will be willing to pay for. The $3/month price will be if you prepay for the year ($36) or $4/month if not.
 

SCPD

QRT
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Location
Virginia
I forgot to add that this will allow you to watch more than one feed because my server will request all feeds and save it to a database.

What you'll be able to see from your desktop, web browser, or mobile client will be as following:

(Emails are free, there are 15 included text messages and then $0.09 per text afterwards)
- Alerts if a feed goes down/up
- Alerts if a feed enters or exits a defined listener count/range
- Alerts if a feed is no longer available
- Alerts about new feeds
- Alerts if a feed's description is changed.
- Alerts if a feed has new counties or counties are removed.

Reports will give statistics and more (I will be open for suggestions).
 

KMA367

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Premium Subscriber
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Messages
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Location
Redwood Coast, N Calif
À la carte?

This sounds great. Do you anticipate that users/subscribers will be able to select which features they want or don't want (à la carte), and if so, be able to change them according to their needs? F'rinstance, I seldom send/receive text messages, so I'm on a pay-per-message plan with my Tablet, but web browsing and emails are essentially unlimited. So normally I'd prefer emails and pop-ups, but with the ability to turn-on txt msgs occasionally.

Appreciate the effort you're obviously putting into this!

I forgot to add that this will allow you to watch more than one feed because my server will request all feeds and save it to a database.

What you'll be able to see from your desktop, web browser, or mobile client will be as following:

(Emails are free, there are 15 included text messages and then $0.09 per text afterwards)
- Alerts if a feed goes down/up
- Alerts if a feed enters or exits a defined listener count/range
- Alerts if a feed is no longer available
- Alerts about new feeds
- Alerts if a feed's description is changed.
- Alerts if a feed has new counties or counties are removed.

Reports will give statistics and more (I will be open for suggestions).
 

SCPD

QRT
Joined
Feb 24, 2001
Messages
0
Location
Virginia
Actually, this probably won't be À la carte due to the fact that the server is going to cost to put up and I went as low as I could on price (the included text messages weren't an extra charge but instead taken from profits)
 
Joined
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Messages
237
Location
Bellingham Washington
Most cellular providers have an email to text "gateway" that is free for the sender.

For instance I am on Verizion and you can send an short email to ##########@vtext.com and I will receive it as a text message.
 

SCPD

QRT
Joined
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Messages
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Location
Virginia
That's an option I plan to put with the email one (the email can be mobile, text, or html). Because there are a lot of different emails for different providers I would have to do what RadioReference.com does and have the end user find out what their email is and put it in themselves. People that don't know where to look or don't have time can use the 15 free text messages and pay for small extras. Also, I will add the option to use any text messages on the account (including the 15 free ones) and then default to an email text (which in my opinion looks uglier when reading it from the email as it doesn't display correctly on my phone).
 
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