Feeds in specific area... Multiple areas from one broadcaster... And how to know which area is is speaking when there is multiple areas.

[CMDemon]

I understand that a every feed has a volunteer provider.

I'm in Minnesota. I'm trying to listen to Brooklyn park police scanner, which is in Hennepin county MN. When I click Hennepin county I see options like on the attachments that I added. How do I find out if that includes Brooklyn park since saying things like Minneapolis-St Paul, or Hennepin county precinct 1-4 is so broad?

Also with broad channels, I noticed sometime it's kinda dead. For example... There is a channel that has like 6 counties, but there will be times where nothing is happening. That's hard to believe with 6 feeds. Does that mean that where only hearing bits and pieces of clips from each county randomly? Also how do I know what county the current clip that's playing is from?

What's the difference between the Broadcastify regular feed & Calls platform?

Which is best if I want to know if there are police coming to my apartment building at any time?

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN 👇

What do I have to do to be able to listen?

 

[ChrisABQ]

I run both a traditional feed for Albuquerque, NM and also a Broadcastify Calls feed. The Calls feed is FAR better for these reasons:

Broadcastify Calls.
1. You hear everything on each talkgroup. Nothing is cut off. Each comm as it comes in is recorded then played back in the order it was received. A traditional feed is run by a scanner and all comms depend on the scanning process. You could catch 100% on the conversation, half of it or catch the very end and hear the repeater drop off and hear nothing.
2. When you are a subscriber, you can create playlists of only the talkgroups that you want to hear. You can organize multiple playlists (fire only, police only, district and so on) and listen to them as you wish.
3. All calls are archived for 30 days, so you can go back and listen to specific incidents. (which I've done several times now).
It's a young platform and I'm sure there is MUCH more to come.

I run SDR Trunk to run my feed. It is far superior to the scanners, that I listen via my Calls feed all day long and the scanners are collecting dust.

If you're in the listening area that you want to hear, I encourage you to learn more about SDR, SDR Trunk and how low cost the equipment is and how easy it really is, then you would never have to rely on others to broadcast.

 

[sonm10]

I'm from central MN. My understanding the metro area is quite complex. Hennepin County law is encrypted, however the towns are not. I am not knowledgeable enough to know who's dispatching. Brooklyn Park has talkgroups - see attachment

 

[edweirdFL]

Working in reverse order of the original poster's questions, the last screen shot shows a talkgroup in the Calls platform that only the feed provider and admins have access to due to Broadcastify's Terms of Service. The solution if you are in that area is to purchase your own scanner to monitor it's radio broadcasts directly.

The best way to know if the police are enroute to a location, would be to listen to the the dispatch channel. Some departments use mobile data terminals for dispatch, in which case you wouldn't know. Visits based on the results of an ongoing investigation would very likely not have anything sent over the radio in a way that was available to a casual listener.

There's a good explanation of the Calls platform above.

Sometimes you may have to contact the owner of a feed to find out what's being streamed if it's not identified in the label or description. You might have to ask around to find out which communications center does the dispatching for a particular town or city.