Live feed not always active

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LGemini

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Hello,

I just signed up to stream Central Carolina Skywarn (amateur radio). Skywarn is only active when there is bad weather in the area. When there is fair weather in the area, its just a normal amateur radio repeater. My plan was to only stream skywarn activity, but I see that if your stream goes down for extended periods of time, you can lose your account. I do not want to "get in trouble", but i'm not sure what to do during the times that there is no skywarn.

Is there a way to get special permission to be down for extended periods, and only have the stream up during bad weather?

Thanks!

LGemini
 

c5corvette

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I have to jump in here. I agree with where you are going with this and I want to elaborate. I'd like to see a special feed "type" for on demand feeds, such as "On Demand" or "Interop" or something similar.

I realize your feed could fit into many 'types' such as "amateur radio" "public safety" "special event" or "disaster event" but if there was a type dedicated to feeds that were not broadcasting all the time, I suppose the RR software web could designed to be smart enough to only categorize and show the feed in a select list when its online. (Yes this may take some programming, but it would be slick.)

For example, right now when my stream is offline it still shows up in the county select list with a big red box that says OFFLINE. It would be really cool if any of these interop and skywarn feeds could be kept in a feed providers list of feeds, but hidden from telling the world of its offline status.

If there was a special category for this (that had to be requested seperately and reviewed for approval by the live audio admins) then the awesome RR web developers could write code to interact with only those 'types' of feeds to hide the offline status from the general live audio users.

I plan to feed several interop feeds for my hometown and this would be great feature to have.

Some people might ask, why not just keep the feed broadcasting the time even if there is no traffic on the channel. The answer to that would be the same reason many public safety agencies don't keep all 'patches' up all the time - it takes up valuable resources. In this case, I can use my $500 digital radio elsewhere when there isn't an emergency going on and people browsing RR.com dont have to be disappointed that another feed is offline ;-)

For public saftey, these patches are established in advance because they know there will be a need, but they are only activated on demand. Same thing here, we would be asking RR to give us a feed mount point that is permenant (and won't be deleted for being "offline" too much) but these special feeds would have some automated or semi-automated way or ability to hide the feed info and offline message a casual user sees when the feed is offline.

Hey, Richard Tidd - can this be done? I have three interop feeds in request mode now.

THANKS in advance,
 

K4IHS

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I agree. Another time when you could use a feature like this is when something major is going on and you want to lock down on 1 or 2 specific talkgroups/frequencies from a second scanner feed.
 

sfd119

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I agree also. In a critical event, I can also rig up a second scanner for something huge.
 

NE1C4NSC4N

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Hello,
My plan was to only stream skywarn activity, but I see that if your stream goes down for extended periods of time, you can lose your account. I do not want to "get in trouble", but i'm not sure what to do during the times that there is no skywarn.
LGemini

You dont loose your account, you loose your free full membership that is given when you are feeding. It comes back when you start to broadcast again, as far as I know..hopefully one of the mods can confirm that.

You will still be able to post, and access most of the same information, even if you loose the full membership, you just revert back to basic/free account.
 
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K4IHS

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I pay the membership fee and provide a stream. RR is a good thing and I want to support it! :)
 

c5corvette

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I agree. Another time when you could use a feature like this is when something major is going on and you want to lock down on 1 or 2 specific talkgroups/frequencies from a second scanner feed.

That sounds impromtu like you dont know what TG's or Channels it might be. In that case you would apply for a new feed and select "Disaster Event" or "Special Event" as the type.

In the OP skywarn example, he knows the channles, freqs, etc and exactly what will be streamed and could pre-apply for a feed mount point by providing all those particulars. Or, in the case of an interop feed, you know exactly that you want to feed the freqs for only 8CALL/8TAC and nothing else. These types of feeds could have a permenant mount point. (I hope RR will read this an implement such - this is an excellent idea and service to the listening community.)
 

K4IHS

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What I mean is... I'd keep my original feed online all the time. Then let's say there's a plane crash at the airport. I'd fire up a second scanner feed with just the talk groups and frequencies in use for the aircraft incident. That way... folks wanting to listen to just the major incident wouldn't have to hear everything in my scan list like the FD getting dispatched to a "I'm fallen and I can't get up".
 

K4IHS

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ps: It would take days to request and get a second feed approved. The incident would be over by then?
 

c5corvette

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ps: It would take days to request and get a second feed approved. The incident would be over by then?

I understand what you are saying, thats why I called it impormptu. However, unless you can predict what audio traffic you would want to have on your second feed, I can't imaging them pre-approving it anyway. In the case of the Skywarn example, he knows what he is going to run on the feed and can input those details into the feed applicaiton.

If you apply for a feed for "future accident at the airport" to go along with your main feed of the local county and then you decide to stream the current accident at the local meat packing plant, i guess you could change your description on the fly, but then RR.com didnt really approve that feed per se. I dont make the rules so I guess they could do this. But I think the Skywarn or Interop examples are much more cut and dry.
 

kendrik578

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ps: It would take days to request and get a second feed approved. The incident would be over by then?

Hmmmm...If we have enough info, we usually get feeds approved within a couple hours(sometimes minutes). The ones that take days are the ones that did not provide sufficient info therefore they are on the bottom of the list.

You dont loose your account, you loose your free full membership that is given when you are feeding. It comes back when you start to broadcast again, as far as I know..hopefully one of the mods can confirm that.


Correct
 
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c5corvette

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What I mean is... I'd keep my original feed online all the time. Then let's say there's a plane crash at the airport. I'd fire up a second scanner feed with just the talk groups and frequencies in use for the aircraft incident. That way... folks wanting to listen to just the major incident wouldn't have to hear everything in my scan list like the FD getting dispatched to a "I'm fallen and I can't get up".

And just incase you hadn't thought of this... if your scanner has a REC out jack and your main feed is using the speaker output jack - for the emergency incident you can program those segregated channels or talk groups to pass to the REC out jack and program them as priority and essentially you have created the source for your emergency feed without the need for an additional scanner. ;-)
 

c5corvette

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Hmmmm...If we have enough info, we usually get feeds approved within a couple hours(sometimes minutes). The ones that take days are the ones that did not provide sufficient info therefore they are on the bottom of the list.

BTW, I submittied three (3) new feed requests yesterday around Noon with plenty of supporting info - not yet approved.
 

KC9RGU

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Ok Im a first time user of the live streaming Scanner feed. I have one feed pending, I am not sure i can keep the computer on all the time because my laptop dose not yet have broadband connection and i use it everywhere. so I guess my question is, do I lose my account if I turn off the laptop or lose connection to my city's free broadband? I have no problem setting up an online feed but i do have a problem providing it 24/7-365. I would be nice to have it on when Im at home or using the laptop but be able to turn it off if i have to do somthing.
 

K4IHS

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Just to clarify... the scanner and computer I use for my RR stream is not very accessible. It's out in the garage high up on a shelf close to the antenna and hooked to backup power. I'd need a step ladder just to change the programming for a specific incident. I rarely listen to my own feed but I see it listed consistently in the top 50 feeds.

Here in my shack I have a second scanner I listen to all the time. Many frequencies like PD, FD, EMS, marine, MilAir, air, rail, etc. If say for instance there's a 2 alarm fire... I listen to just the FD TAC talkgroup assigned to the fire. Folks listening to my RR stream can hear the same thing except the scanner is stopping on other channels that don't apply to the fire so they miss out on a lot. I get some nasty email sometimes! :)

It would be nice... to quickly bring online the second scanner with just the fire and post an RR alert as well. Multiply that by a plane crash, marine search/rescue, Skywarn, etc. A second feed would nice for listeners. I'm already hearing it and know what they are missing.

It's been awhile... but it took 3-4 days to get my first feed approved too and I didn't have to submit any additional information. I still say by the time I submitted and got approved a second feed for the plane crash (etc)... the action would be over.
 

kendrik578

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It's been awhile... but it took 3-4 days to get my first feed approved too and I didn't have to submit any additional information. I still say by the time I submitted and got approved a second feed for the plane crash (etc)... the action would be over.

Yea it was 2009-07-30 when your feed was approved. The whole live audio was still new plus there was no audio admins, that has sense changed. Just ask fellow providers who we didn't have to go back for info how long it took to approve their feed. Not trying to like a butt just making a point. Like i said we get feeds approved very fast if we have all the needed info. I think its safe to say if a event was to occur and someone was to submit a feed for that event than we would have it approved in time.
 
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K4IHS

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OK... the next time a plane crashes at RSW I'll request a second feed. Just letting you know... I have a stopwatch! :)
 

kendrik578

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BTW...whats wrong with locking the scanner on those channels just being used for the event and posting an alert about it?

I dont think Lindsay would want to have all these "standby" feeds. That would create a lot of feeds on the servers not being used.
 
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