Maryland Scanner Test

[TinEar]

Hmmm...nope can't find it. I was going to use the email button at the bottom of your message if that's a real address. If that isn't it you can zip your address directly to me at boston@erols.com

[Edit] Broadcast ended at 0150. Will be back on tomorrow evening for sure and maybe during the afternoon also. I'd still like to get some more reports from some others that tuned in tonight as to quality of audio and video if you would please, along with the browser and Windows Media Player version.

 

[troymail]

OK guys -- this is sounding pretty cool. I just forgot about the
test last night. I'm giving myself a reminder to take at look...

I know we've discussed reception in the past - how yours is
so good and then how poorly I receive some things - including
AA Co that I'm sitting almost in the middle of..... given your
setup, antenna, etc - where are you again? Are you on a hill
somewhere?

I recently put an outdoor antenna in my attic (for starters) to
see if the reception improves ... It helped with BCity a bit and
possibly BCounty but that's about it....

 

[TinEar]

Troy, there is absolutely no reason why I should hear the things I do. When I first moved into this house I thought reception would be lousy. I'm not on a hill of any kind - just a fairly flat area, three sides of my house are blocked with towering oak trees and the fourth side has a neighbor's house that is about 15 feet taller than mine. And yet I hear fairly clearly up to southern PA and into northern VA with just the radio whip a lot of the time. It makes no sense from a technical point of view. I know many people expressed surprise when I ran the audio test a couple of weeks ago and have expressed amazement the past two nights during the audio/video tests at what was being heard from this very unsophisticated setup. Call it a hot spot, or blind luck or poltergeist. Somehow it works.

I'm not sure if I'll finish other tasks to get on this afternoon but will definitely have it running from about 8 o'clock on tonight.

 

[TinEar]

We're rolling again at 1430EST. I may not be attending to it very closely for the next hour or two. Right now I'm stopped on some AA County fire department special operation of some kind (TG240). They are talking about diving with the next dive happening at 1515. There is some kind of fair or event happening in the background.

 

[troymail]

You're hearing the Polar Bear Plunge at Sandy Point
State Park near the Bay Bridge...


I have the page up now.... interesting.

Nice delay .... 5 seconds or so?

 

[TinEar]

Fantastic! Thank you very much for that screen shot. Someday I'll figure out why my PC freezes when I try to connect to the web page while I'm broadcasting. I'd like to make that display a little larger on the page but it will take more bandwidth if I do. As it is, even dialup connections are telling me they can see it. It's showing an 87.1 kbps connection so that surprises me that they can see it.

I'm not sure of the delay since I can't connect to it. At this bandwidth though I have about a fraction of a second delay between the scanner, the ARC250PRO output and the Media Encoder output. The wider the bandwidth, the longer the delay even in house. So, if it's five seconds that's not too bad.

 

[troymail]

Perhaps the display screen can be reduced in size -- I'm sure that
is what is taking up most of the 87k... and I guess I can understand
since many dialups are 33k or less (I could only ever get 26-30K
on my 56k modem and phone line).

 

[dukescorner]

5:30 pm Saturday
coming in loud and clear.
Audio and Video working fine in embedded IE6 Browser.
on a 56k modem. Windows xp and WMP 10.
Good Job!

 

[wadeless28]

Sounds good at 1730L Allan.

Sounds like PG County working a robbery.


Mike

 

[TinEar]

Thanks for the reports guys.

Yeah, that was Palmer Park working a carjacking along with DC and Air 1. They got 'em. Just a few minutes previous to that we heard a double shooting in the Western Division of Baltimore. Gonna be one of those nights.

 

[wadeless28]

The screen on both the Media Player (V10) and the Maryland scanner screen are both keeping up with the scanner.

 

[TinEar]

Good...that was the goal.
As long as I stay with this fairly low bandwidth
it should stay that way. I went with this so dialups
could connect too and that seem to be working.

 

[laser21012]

Tin Ear, I can't believe the area that your radio covers. What radio do you have?
Ok, here is my report on your broadcast. Let me tell you I am impressed.
I have 3 Pcs networked at my house and for the winter months I'm trying to build another one(not on the air yet). On all 3 pcs I tried to open windows media player first, and put in the url http://tinear.dynu.com:8080/ and got no response from the server. I then closed wmp on all 3 pcs and opened the url http://www.mdscanner.com/ and it came up on every pc. The video and the audio were good, matter of fact I had all three running at the same time. There was a delay on the different pcs, but I could still hear the scanners even though there was a delay. I am running Netscape 7.2 on all 3 pcs.
The first pc is an old laptop running wmp 6.0, the second is an old desktop running wmp 9, and finally the last is a new laptop running wmp 10. The first 2 pcs are running windows 98se while the new one is running windows Xp service pack 2. I hope this helps, if you need more info let me know. I enjoy listenning to BWI. By the way I am like Llwellyn, I wold like to have copy of your radio file so I can try to receive all the freqs that you are getting. Thanks alot, I know it is alot of work but there are people out here that appreciate your effort.
Thanks, Bob

 

[TinEar]

Excellent...that's the first confirmed report of Netscape on the web site.
I was curious about that since I wasn't sure of the command to include
Netscape and took a stab it it. Being a total rookie at programming, I'm
not sure of anything I'm doing.

And the radio is a Uniden 785D with digital card.

 

[pepperpot]

Picking your broadcast up via the site on IE6. Tried my Netscape 7.02, but a no-go. Didn't try WMP10 on Windows XP SP1 via DSL. Another time.

With the breadth of your coverage, TinEar, do realize how significant your broadcast would be in case of a "serious event"? Almost scarey! Even the Pentagon would be listening in and a few other "bad guys".

What are your plans for broadcasting since this is now working? Daily? When you have time?

Great job in getting it running with a little help from your friends. Looks great and sounds great with a little adjustment to speaker volume now and then.

Your site will be the first place I check in case of something "serious" in this part of the mid-Atlantic region.

Congrats! Pat

 

[TinEar]

Thanks Pat. For the immediate future it willl run only when
I can be around to monitor it. Before I can let it run unattended
I'll have to get rid of some of the noisier frequencies that would
prevent the scanner from moving. Until then, look for it to be on every
evening from around 8-midnight. I wasn't aware until I started
this broadcast that my receiving range was anything special. From
all the reports I'm getting though, it seems it is.

 

[ResQguy]

Running WMP 9.0 thru W2000 and MSIE 6.0 it works great in Marley...

 

[TinEar]

Thanks ResQguy and dukescorner for the reports.

Troy, the screen capture you have shows the page title (Maryland Scanner)
out the right side of the box that's supposed to be around it. Is that the
way it really looks or was that just the capture that did that?

Those that thought the broadcast was sounding trashy between 8-9 pm
were right...that funky antenna setup I have upstairs had
fallen over and was almost horizontal on the desk. Sorry...it's fixed now
and squeezed between two radios so it should stay in place.

Bob(laser21012), I just noticed the URL you tried to enter in the WMP
when you tried it that way instead of at the web site is the wrong address.
That's the old one.
The new one is http://tinear.no-ip.info:8080

All the channels with plows and salt spreaders are coming back up on
the air in the past hour. Lots of accidents suddenly being called out.
Airport plows and sanders are out in force also. Airport is a parking lot
with planes backed up waiting for gates.

 

[jimmyhat]

TinEar,
I'm late for the ball game tonight, but I'm seeing/hearing LIMA-CHARLIE, right from the website, on a dial-up.
I'm glad everyone was able to listen in on the knucklehead carjackers getting roped this afternoon. Fine piece of work (PG, and MPD) if I do say so myself!!!!
Great site, just made my favorites list. Thanks for all your hard work.

 

[mlevin]

Alan, one word for ya....WOW!