Calls - Listening via Individual Nodes no longer available

[mtindor]

Curious as to how the Calls system 'picks' which node it accepts traffic on a particular TG from. My area now has more than one node that picks up traffic (at times), but it seems to be picking the other node, which misses traffic and has worse audio quality, even though my node is catching all the traffic.
Does it pick based on time delay? Any other factors we can know about to improve things on the provider end?

This has been discussed to some extent in this thread. Please go through and read the thread thoroughly.

• Make sure your computer has time that is accurate as possible (run Dimension 4 or some other app on it to ensure regular updating of time)
• Uptime -- the longer your Calls feed is online, and assuming it is properly time-synced, it should be an active partipant in uploaded traffic that you would end up seeing in a playlist.
• Decent internet connection. I imagine if somebody is on a dialup, or some connection with more latency, that may affect how much of their traffic is preferred over someone with a low-latency connection.

I don't think that Lindsay has particularly outlined EVERY detail about what determines whose Calls feed upload gets added and whose is rejected, but he has gone a long way in indicating some clues in this thread.

Mike

 

[jblackst]

I've searched and don't seem to find the information. How (or can) does someone make a 'personal' playlist public, so that it shows up on the playlist page?

https://www.broadcastify.com/calls/playlists/

 

[blantonl]

You click "Actions -> Create Playlist"

 

[jblackst]

You click "Actions -> Create Playlist"

Sorry, I was referring to having a private playlist made public. I have now found the instructions here: Calls - Public Playlists Now Available

Thanks for hosting a great site!

 

[slhorne]

I see we're able to go into archives for a single TG, any plans to make the feature available for playlists?

Hoping to replay an incident's comms for recording purposes, but they're across multiple TGs so I'd have to manually stitch the audio together if not.

 

[blantonl]

We build playlist calls from in memory caches…. Which have expirations of 10 minutes I believe….

Given that playlists are all unique groupings, we would have to pull all the calls from a timeframe from the database, merge them together, and then display. It’s doable, but complex.

 

[AB5ID]

It would make life easier to build those playlist if we could filter the database page by streaming talkgroups (keeping hope alive)

View attachment 155985

@blantonl still keeping hope alive with my semi-annual request.

 

[blantonl]

I hear you. I do see how this could be helpful. I'l get it on the actual radar. Stay tuned

 

[blantonl]

I hear you. I do see how this could be helpful. I'l get it on the actual radar. Stay tuned

To go further, how exactly do you see yourself using this?

Have you used the playlist builder?

 

[AB5ID]

To go further, how exactly do you see yourself using this?

Have you used the playlist builder?

View attachment 170890

I've used the drop-down menus, and they work great! What I'd love is to access a large database page that provides a filtered list of call links across all countries, including all available tags for the entire system. It sounds like a fun, quick, and easy way to explore an unfamiliar system—just click a link, listen for a while, then move on to another.

 

[kmartin]

Yes, but there is a good chance that you'll completely miss traffic on a node that might be outvoted. Now you have to "choose your node" based on which one is capturing the talkgroup at any given time, and you don't really have visibility into that. Additionally, if the node is outvoted for a talkgroup you're no longer going to get it.

Perhaps someday modern technology will create a way to listen to all unencrypted TGs without any interruption or missed conversations because a node didn't load or get backed up/ logged but we have sure come a long way to this point !

 

[kmartin]

You should be listening via playlists, not via nodes. I'm not sure why my pleas are falling on deaf ears. We're capturing all the talkgroups, it just depends on which node is capturing the talkgroup.

You need to listen via playlists... I keep saying this and people keep just ignoring this.

We're going to force you in the right direction. That's all I can say at this point to folks who want to belabor this issue. 😜

So I created a playlist for Houston PD all districts. The problem with this is one hour I will hear the north and perhaps the south Central TGs only an hour later I will hear the south east and north east TGs. So you miss a lot of what is happening in the city

 

[n0esc]

So I created a playlist for Houston PD all districts. The problem with this is one hour I will hear the north and perhaps the south Central TGs only an hour later I will hear the south east and north east TGs. So you miss a lot of what is happening in the city

I don't think this is a BCFY issue so much as an issue with either how TGs are labeled in the database or how Houston is patching/using the talkgroups. Looking at the overall archives for some of the Houston dispatch channels, traffic is continuous and consistent and then will all of a sudden stop completely, but another of the quadrant TGs will start picking up traffic. As of the time of this post, at 8:30pm, the traffic on the quadrant labeled TGs is light, but several non school sounding traffic stop type calls are happening on the School District HISD PD1 talkgroup.

As far as your other post suggestion of listening to "everything", that is possible currently, by viewing the system page in Calls you will get all calls from all nodes, but on larger statewide systems like TX or MN, it's essentially a firehose of calls, and moving too fast in reality to be of much use other than very busy background noise. Texas Wide Area Radio Network (TxWARN) - All Calls Live ... On 2x speed it took less than 60 seconds to fall the entire 30 entry log tail behind from what I was hearing to the latest call processed. And that's on what I would think is a relatively slow time of the night, day, week, year. I can imagine a busy holiday weekend would be impossible.

 

[kmartin]

They try pushing this playlist thing as the way to go , but in reality it's just okay, some good some bad. You still miss a lot of traffic