Maryland Scanner Test

[TinEar]

I'm in the process of getting the broadcast coding together for the scanner web site. I've set up an audio feed to test that portion of it. If some of you would be so kind as to open a Windows Media Player and enter this URL:
http://tinear.dynu.com:8080

Note: You've got to open the Windows Media Player first and then enter that URL within WMP to reach the broadcast. Just clicking on that address above won't get you there.

Then let me know if you're getting a decent sounding broadcast. Please add the version of Windows Media Player you're using. I have the broadcast set up to an old Regency air scanner and you should be hearing BWI airport traffic. But please don't post comments here. Send them directly to me using the email button at the bottom of this post.

Eventually, I'll have a Media Player embedded in the www.mdscanner.com web site and you'll get both audio and video. Thank you very much.

I'll edit this with the shutdown time when I eventually turn it off tonight and again with turn on times as they happen during the test.

Shutting test at 2330EST Jan12 (Apparently some trouble connecting for those I've heard from tonight. I tried with one PC using WMP7 and another with the new WMP10 and got connected on both. Will make some changes and try again tomorrow.)

 

[TinEar]

Okay...changes made to the setup. The broadcast is now running again as of 1600 Jan 13. I'd appreciate if you would try the address in the post above once more and send me reports if you can hear it and of the quality of the broadcast. Thanks very much.

Remember, you've got to open the Windows Media Player first, click File and enter the URL:
http://tinear.dynu.com:8080

I'd appreciate hearing from you if you can't connect. I currently have users connected from various parts of the country and even from the UK but I'm getting reports from others that they can't connect. It's still running as of 1800EST Jan 13 and will stay on until about midnight.

 

[RagnarD]

Hi Tinear,

Sound great! I have a 3mb cable connection and it sounds just great! I will be working in Baltimore next week and I may just leave my scanner at home and use your audio feed!

Seriously, sounds great and thanks for you contribution to allow folks to listen to the Greater Washington DC area.

73
de
chris

 

[TinEar]

Thanks Chris. Glad to hear you're hearing it with good quality. This will eventually all be on the web site with video of the scanner face too. But I had to start somewhere. I'm getting good reports from just about everywhere with just a couple of problems - actually 3 problems and they all have Windows Media Player 9. But others with that same system are reporting no problem. Hard to tell what it is. Perhaps just coincidence. Thanks again for your report.

 

[jimmyhat]

TinEar,
followed the directions exactly, and I'm listening loud and clear. Sounds great. Listening right now to what sounds like BWI flight traffic. I have a regular, old-fashioned dial-up.
Thank you for your efforts in making this happen.

 

[TinEar]

Yup, that's what you're hearing - BWI airport. That's about a 25 year old Regency air band scanner with the original whip antenna. I'm especially glad to hear you're receiving it well on a dial up connection. I doubt you'll be able to see the video when I add that later on but we'll see. Thanks for the report.

 

[TinEar]

Media Player test is closed at midnight as promised. Today was all BWI airport traffic. I was amazed at the number of people that told me they had never heard air traffic that included the ground controllers before this. Yes, that really was an ancient scanner. But it sure works well.

Sometime tomorrow morning - probably late morning will begin a test of another scanner. I'll post here when it goes live. The plan right now is to at least have Anne Arundel and Howard Counties along with a few VHF freqs to test readability of both analog and digital trunked systems.

Thanks very much to all that responded today. You provided great insight into what works and what doesn't. Setting correct audio listening levels is a little tricky also but I think we got it down to a science. So much of that depends upon your speakers but I think we hit a happy medium. I appreciate your feedback and will look forward to more tomorrow when the test is continued. Thanks again.

 

[TinEar]

Test is ongoing today. I have Anne Arundel and Howard Ccunties police/fire to test audio levels for analog and digital trunked systems - plus I have a few VHF fire freqs just to enliven the mix. In just a bit I'm going to add the BWI band again but from a different scanner than yesterday and this one will have the various airlines ground ops freqs included.

Open Windows Media Play, click file, enter URL:
http://tinear.dynu.com:8080

Once again, I'd appreciate reports of connectivity and quality of the signal to my email address. Click the email tab below this message. Thanks very much.

[Edit] No sooner did I post the above and then quickly ran into a problem. The feed is down until I can learn where the problem is. I'll post an edit here when/if solved.

 

[kc4jgc]

When I click file and type your url,
I get an error message. It's looking for a file in my machine.
What now?

 

[TinEar]

See end of post immediately above yours Steve. Yesterday, it worked fine all day. Today, I had crash of all systems and am currently trying to sort through the mess. I'll make another post here when it's ready to go again. Thanks for the report.

 

[kc4jgc]

OK; I missed that before; Thanks.

 

[OntarioScannerNut]

Ya know, you may have better luck by saving your bandwidth running either shoutcast or icecast, and you can still include the text data tags also.

Check out these tutorials:

- http://www.scanmassachusetts.net/livescan/feed_tutorial.pdf
- http://www.scanmassachusetts.net/livescan/feed_tutorial.doc

See end of post immediately above yours Steve. Yesterday, it worked fine all day. Today, I had crash of all systems and am currently trying to sort through the mess. I'll make another post here when it's ready to go again. Thanks for the report.

 

[TinEar]

Right Ontario...I've talked with Scott and considered going the Icecast route but thought I'd do it the hard way. I do like the Icecast broadcast because of its simplicity and video that matches the audio. When all else fails, I'll try something different. Thanks for the suggestion though.

 

[OntarioScannerNut]

I don't know, winamp seems to by my favourite with Real Player sliding into 2nd. Windows Media Player, well......I find it kinda slow.

I suppose your feed would've been a good one to listen to for that 5 Alarm today eh?

Right Ontario...I've talked with Scott and considered going the Icecast route but thought I'd do it the hard way. I do like the Icecast broadcast because of its simplicity and video that matches the audio. When all else fails, I'll try something different. Thanks for the suggestion though.

 

[laser21012]

Tin Ear , I was away last week and I missed the the Maryland Scanner Test are there any scheduled repeat of the test. I live in Arnold and have tried to receive BWI, but I must be just out of range.

 

[TinEar]

Yeah, in Arnold you would be out of range of the ground stations. I'm not entirely sure when I'll be back on with more testing. I'm working on the video today and just in the past five minutes learned how to get a good presentation. Now that I have that part, I can't get the audio to mix with it. It's always something. All I can say at this point is that it's coming; I'm just not entirely sure when that will be.

I'm also having a bit of a problem with assignment of the port for the broadcast within the router's DHCP and Forwarding setup. The router seems to be arbitrarily changing the internal numbers of the PCs on my home network. The only way I can keep it static is to have all the PCs on at once - anything less than that and the numbers start scrambling. It's uncanny. I'm almost starting to believe that rotten router is possessed.

 

[Llwellyn]

What brand/model router do you have? Any decent router should allow you to statically assign your IPs... let me know and I can try to figure it out.

 

[TinEar]

It's a Linksys BEFSR41. I suppose it's operator error but I can't seem to solve it. If I get into the router setup, select DHCP and look at the Client List, it shows the assigned PCs as 1 thru 4. Other times it's 2 thru 5. But that all depends on the order the PCs are turned on. If I have all 4 PCs on, it'll keep them static but as soon as I turn one or more off, the numbers for the remaining PC(s) will be arbitrarily assigned. I have a static IP address but that shouldn't make any difference. Only two of the four PCs seem to have names assigned to them which came from somewhere that I don't now remember. One is labeled MAINCOMPUTER and the other is RADIOROOM. The two remaining PCs are bastard children with no paternity I guess. What am I doing wrong doctor?

 

[Llwellyn]

Well, you've got a couple of choices.

You can turn DHCP off, since this is a 4-port wired router with 4 ports used, and then it will let you statically assign the 4 PC's an IP, and they will always keep them, PC on or PC off, until you change them.

You could also leave DHCP on and set the number of IP's issued to 4, and set the lease time to 9999 minutes. If two out of the four are almost always on, they'll keep their IP's and the two machines that get powercycled more often will jump...

If you're not going to expand this network anytime soon, I'd go with the first option as it's just easier to deal with. The R41 doesn't support DHCP and assignable IPs at once, at least not with the regular Linksys firmware.

As far as the computer names go, you set those in the System applet of the control panel under NT/2000/XP. If it's running 98 or ME, it's in a different applet.

 

[TinEar]

I agree...the first option seems to be the choice, especially since I intend to reserve one of them just for the scanner traffic. It would make sense for that PC to always have a static IP. So how do I turn DHCP off and statically assign IPs to the four PCs? I use the PCs for countless hours every day but, unfortunately, know very little about some things that I really should know. This is one of those things. I appreciate your advice and help Llwellyn.