Assistance setting up a scanner feed

[jrb6940]

Hello everyone,

Can anybody offer a basic idea of setting up a scanner feed on a website? I am interested in setting up a feed on a fire department website. I would like feed to two freqs, one being a VHF freq (simplex-county wide dispatch) and the other being the operational channels (County TRS). I listen to Mel's Garage (www.melsgarage.com) and like his setup. One feed, but you listen to two stations (1 per speaker).

Can anyone recommend software, bandwith.....anything really. I am kinda clueless with that stuff and Ive seen this forum do wonders for others.

Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Jeff

Our website is www.westamptonfire.org if anyone is interested.

 

[NYRHKY94]

Hi Jeff:

You may want to consider having Gordon at www.scanamerica.us do all of this for you (i.e. web site, hosting etc.) and just supply the scanner feed on your end. I found that to be much easier than doing it myself and Gordon's set-up process was painless. He's great to work with. I now run 5 feeds with him myself.

Just a thought for you.

 

[Scan-Denver]

Hello everyone,

Can anybody offer a basic idea of setting up a scanner feed on a website? I am interested in setting up a feed on a fire department website. I would like feed to two freqs, one being a VHF freq (simplex-county wide dispatch) and the other being the operational channels (County TRS). I listen to Mel's Garage (www.melsgarage.com) and like his setup. One feed, but you listen to two stations (1 per speaker).

Can anyone recommend software, bandwith.....anything really. I am kinda clueless with that stuff and Ive seen this forum do wonders for others.

Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Jeff

Our website is www.westamptonfire.org if anyone is interested.

I concur with Mike, I also have my feed of Denver, CO Police, Fire, & EMS on line with scanamerica.us and in my opinion, there is no other easier way of doing it and as a scanner feed provider, there are a few extra perks that I won't get into publicly. The web site also records about a months worth so if there was something you missed and want to listen to it - you can check out the archives page of your feed or anyone else's for that matter up to 30 days previous. I also have my feed split streaming Denver Police on the left channel and Fire/EMS on the right. You can contact me directly for more info if you're interested, otherwise visit the Scan America web site and see for yourself - Check it out and compare it to other sites that host live scanner feeds. You will see that Gordon provides more bang for your buck - which by the way is absolutely free but donations are always welcome.

As Mike indicated previously, Gordon is very helpful and can get you up and going in a matter of minutes.

 

[EdmontonFireRadio]

Out of curiosity, is the archives in real time? Or is the dead air between transmissions removed?

 

[Scan-Denver]

The archives are recorded just as it is received from the scanner. So if there is dead air in between transmissions received from the scanner, so it will be on the recorded file.

There is software that will remove the dead air space for you that can be found on the internet. For a nominal fee, I can do this for you and send you the edited file via email.

 

[SWCOScanner]

I concur with the above advice. I just recently finished setting up a feed on scanamerica.us - it was quick and painless, and what few issues I did have were quickly resolved. Gordon even had a solution when the preferred software wouldn't work with the PC I wanted to use.

If you use scanamerica, your bandwidth usage is fixed and predictable, and you don't have to figure out how to run a streaming service either. All you would need to do would be add links to the website. Do take note that direct links to the scanner feeds will be affected when scanamerica adds or deletes feeds, due to the system used for naming the feeds. Not a big deal really, but it's something that either has to be monitored for changes, or you have to link to the County level feed listing and give directions on which feed to select.

If you go with a privately hosted live feed, your bandwidth will be immensely variable unless you put a limit on simultaneous users. You will also have to figure out (and probably pay for) some sort of streaming application to run on your site. I considered it, very briefly...

Hope this helps!

 

[mtindor]

I agree 100% with what others have said. There is no better solution to making your scanner stream available to the public. If you used Teamspeak, listeners would have to download client sofware to listen. If you stream to a shoutcast/icecast server like scanamerica.us, anybody with a media player (which is pretty much 100% of the population) can listen to the feed. Gordon couldn't make it any easier, and just like Lindsay does with RR, Gordon is always doing things to make scanamerica.us better.

Of course, as others have mentioned, streaming to scanamerica.us is free - but it does cost something for Gordon to provide the services he does. If you decide to stream to ScanAmerica and find it to be useful, I'd encourage you to donate.... but it isn't mandatory and I streamed for a while before making my first donation.

Mike

 

[Scan-Denver]

Also encourage listeners to donate. This will help insure this awesome service will be around for a long time!

 

[jrb6940]

Thank you everyone for your input. Our stream should be up soon and I will let you all know!