Broadcastify Calls - One Year In - 300+ Systems

blantonl

Founder and CEO
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San Antonio, Whitefish, New Orleans
After one year into our Broadcastify Calls experiment and launch we've exceeded hosting over 300+ systems now. On a typical weekday we are seeing averages of 2,500 calls/min received into the system. We've had an opportunity to fine tune the infrastructure to support much more, and we're excited for what is coming here in 2021.


Our developer incentives resulted in application developers enabling Broadcastify Calls features for the following apps:

Trunk Recorder: robotastic/trunk-recorder
Trunking Recorder: https://www.scannerbox.us/TrunkingRecorder/
SDRTrunk: Releases · DSheirer/sdrtrunk
VoxCall: aaknitt/voxcall

Some details on what we're working on for 2021:

1) Lots more reporting and statistics on calls, including talkgroups captured, source IDs etc. There is an amazing amount of intelligence we can gather now that we have some of the largest and busiest trunked radio networks beginning captured across multiple sites and locations

2) We're going to rewrite the entire interface to be much more user friendly and provide better features and functionality. What we've deployed so far was to function as a proof of concept on how Broadcastify Calls could work, with integration back to RadioReference. That has matured, and now it's time for us this year to make it easier and more powerful to use

3) I'm envisioning a new dashboard functionality where users can create dashboards of icons for talkgroups and frequencies they want to hear - similar to a dispatcher's console. This will allow both scanning talkgroups and frequencies in addition to multi-listening.

4) We're going to roll out this year the ability to create legacy Broadcastify feeds from Broadcastify Calls

5) We will release an API this year for application developers to develop clients that use Broadcastify Calls. This will be great for mobile app developers.

6) A Raspberry Pi feed appliance image based on the Model 4 is about 80% completed and will include preinstalled and configured software for Trunk Recorder, VoxCall, RTL_Airband, darkice, OP25, audio loopback interface, and more to provide an easy way to get a small Broadcastify Calls node up and running quickly. It will also support legacy Broadcastify Feeds. We'll have this available for download and testing shortly.

As you can see - we've done a great job getting this off the ground - and we're going to continue the momentum to get us to 500+ nodes this year.

Thanks for all your support.
 

MtnBiker2005

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Dec 19, 2002
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San Diego County, California
Nicely done with the Calls product.

FYI..
Some talkgroups are showing up from one trunked system(San Diego City 700) to another trunked system(RCS NextGen) on the Broadcastify Calls product.
Someone should look into that problem. (SD City Trash talkgroups and others are showing up on the RCS NextGen Calls page.
 

blantonl

Founder and CEO
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Dec 9, 2000
Messages
11,096
Location
San Antonio, Whitefish, New Orleans
Nicely done with the Calls product.

FYI..
Some talkgroups are showing up from one trunked system(San Diego City 700) to another trunked system(RCS NextGen) on the Broadcastify Calls product.
Someone should look into that problem. (SD City Trash talkgroups and others are showing up on the RCS NextGen Calls page.
You are going to have to provide me more details and examples to troubleshoot this issue.

Please contact me offline with details.
 

scannerboy02

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Nov 16, 2004
Messages
2,046
You and the team are doing a great job with Calls, thank you!

My plan for 2021 is to build and deploy nodes in several different locations that I am particularly interested in hearing that are not currently covered so I am very excited to hear about the Pi development as that could make it a lot easier and cheaper than I was thinking it would be.

I'm looking forward to the future and again thank you for all the great work.
 

Kingscup

Member
Feed Provider
Joined
Jun 1, 2006
Messages
597
I like that the database frequencies link to active Calls feeds. On that note, it causes a minor problem in my case. I provide some frequencies (conventional analog) for a statewide agency that has licensed frequencies for statewide use. They use the frequencies on a regional basis and not statewide so they can reuse those freqs in different areas of the state. If/when someone in another part of the state starts a Calls feed and uses the same freqs, it may cause confusion with the listener hearing radio traffic from a different part of the state. I don’t have an answer to this but I am pointing it out.
 

wa8pyr

Technischer Guru
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Ohio
4) We're going to roll out this year the ability to create legacy Broadcastify feeds from Broadcastify Calls

Really like this idea! Setting up something like this would free up at least one scanner at Casa de Radio. Could it be made to work from an existing Calls node our would it require a new machine to be set up?

6) A Raspberry Pi feed appliance image based on the Model 4 is about 80% completed and will include preinstalled and configured software for Trunk Recorder, VoxCall, RTL_Airband, darkice, OP25, audio loopback interface, and more to provide an easy way to get a small Broadcastify Calls node up and running quickly. It will also support legacy Broadcastify Feeds. We'll have this available for download and testing shortly.

Like this too!
 

NebraskaCoder

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Oct 26, 2016
Messages
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Location
Omaha, NE
Any chance this is a REST API? Bonus for providing apps with tokens instead of sending the username and password for each transaction? I'd love to jump in building apps.
 

nick0909

Antenna flicker
Feed Provider
Joined
Jan 4, 2003
Messages
137
Currently feeding 2 calls systems and 3 "old fashioned" audio feeds, can't wait to retire the old feed hardware and just do it all from the Calls system. The simplicity of it will be amazing, thanks for all the work building it!
 

Dogodile

Newbie
Feed Provider
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Mar 31, 2015
Messages
3
Really looking forward to all of these improvements, especially number 4 and 5!
 

ScanYak

Member
Feed Provider
Joined
Apr 22, 2009
Messages
157
Location
Eastern Washington
I noticed this morning all of my playlists in the calls platform no longer work, all that comes up is "No Calls Seen in the Past 10 Minutes". I created a new playlist and I get the same results. I'm hoping something is going on in the back room with the developers putting the last finishing touches on a new reveal that's about to come out. (hoping)

EDIT: Looks like it turned out it might be something with cookies in the Chrome browser... (I was too eager to for something new)
 
Last edited:

blantonl

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#6 - the feed appliance software has been released:

 

Deziel0495

PE/NB Database Guy
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Feb 11, 2008
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PEI
Lindsay,

Do Broadcastify Calls have the option to be designated as official?
 

louisik1

Member
Feed Provider
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Jul 31, 2009
Messages
74
Location
Seattle, WA
Curious - if a system is already registered and publishing to Calls, is there any reason for another person to offer the same (trunked) system as well?
 
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