Scannerless scanning

Status
Not open for further replies.
R

robynsjw

Member
Joined
Mar 28, 2003
Messages
123
Location
Edmond OK
Woody, you don't have to carry your scanner around anymore.
Well, I've gotten a little ahead of myself. Our transplanted Texan friend doesn't have enough scanners hooked up yet.

What I'm rambling about:
http://www.tuaw.com/2008/10/07/tuaw-review-wunderradio/

It's an iPhone application that connects to scanamerica.us; you can listen to scanners published there. Or the NWS. Or broadcast radio stations.

Sounds kinda cool. I may have to go buy an iPhone. Maybe someone will hook an M/A Com radio into scanamerica sometime.
 
woodyrr

woodyrr

Member
Joined
Dec 30, 2005
Messages
613
Location
Midwest City, OK
Scanning for 400.00 + 5.99 + (55.00/Mo) . . . I hope that Uniden doesn't get ideas.

The version 2 of the firmware for the iPhone has some very serious issues. In my case:

1). It will not retrieve email automatically every 15 minutes.
2). I'm not reliably getting my calendar alerts.
3). The alarm clock doesn't work every morning.

Since I have lost hope that Apple will let those of us who have "classic" iPhones revert to version 1 (that worked impressively) where you cannot download applications, I think that I'll download it.

I would like to see more of the radio station pages than those on the screen shot on the WunderRadio page. I'm sure that the scanner feeds don't require a 3G connection, but I'd like to be able to see how many radio stations where I travel will not work using the Edge network. But hey, it's only 5.99.

To complement this, Lindsay Blanton has developed a mobile version of the RadioReference database that works with the iPhone and other smart phones.

http://www.radioreference.com/forums/showthread.php?t=118506.

P.S. Our transplanted Texan friend could never have enough scanners hooked up :wink:.
 
woodyrr

woodyrr

Member
Joined
Dec 30, 2005
Messages
613
Location
Midwest City, OK
Well, I downloaded the app and while I was able to receive OKC NOAA WX radio, KRMG radio in Tulsa and KTOK radio in OKC, the connection to the friendly Texan's scanner feed failed twice. I sent a bug report to the wunderradio site.

I'll see how it works streaming audio later today when I get away from my wifi network here at home.
 
WX5JCH

WX5JCH

Completely Banned for the Greater Good
Banned
Joined
Dec 7, 2004
Messages
937
Location
Elk City, Oklahoma
I use windows media player on my blackjack 2 and I can listen to the streams just fine
 
woodyrr

woodyrr

Member
Joined
Dec 30, 2005
Messages
613
Location
Midwest City, OK
What a monumental disappointment!

robynsjw said:
Woody, you don't have to carry your scanner around anymore.
Click to expand...

That is a true and correct statement, especially when I don't want to listen to scanner radio transmissions.

Others' mileage apparently varies, but on my 1st generation iPhone, the only thing that works reliably is NOAA WX radio. I tried to connect to several random scanner streams without success. Even on WIFI, radio stations allegedly optimized for the slow Edge network cannot buffer fast enough to keep an audio stream going and when it gives up trying, it locks up and I have to hold the "home" button down to force quit and return to the home screen. Away from WIFI, forget about it: It cannot even connect to most of the radio streams that I tried.

I realize that I flippantly said "it's only 5.99", but I need to figure out if iTunes will disable my copy and refund the money, my expectations were so fully subceded. On my iPhone, this waste of space would be overpriced at "free". :mad:
 
R

robynsjw

Member
Joined
Mar 28, 2003
Messages
123
Location
Edmond OK
I'm sorry, Woody, I wasn't trying to trick you into spending money... but slightly in the app's defense, several scanners are showing "offline" at scanamerica, including the Oklahoma City-area one(s). And the archive doesn't show anything since 9/29. Maybe the app's just not smart enough to realize there's nothing to listen to there.
 
woodyrr

woodyrr

Member
Joined
Dec 30, 2005
Messages
613
Location
Midwest City, OK
Robin, concern your self, not. I was just long overdue for a good rip–tail rant. I wasn’t ranting at you.

I was, however, ranting at Apple Computer for the grossly over-hyped, grossly under-performing second generation iPhone firmware. I have been a Mac user since they introduced the 128k Macs in 1985, back when I turned it on, and a “happy Mac” icon appeared on the screen smiling at me. It’s probably a good thing that they abandoned that idea, because judging from the quality and performance of my latest MacBook Pro laptop and my updated iPhone, that Mac icon would likely be sporting a less pleasant gesture.

I was really ranting at myself for suspending disbelief and becoming a Kool-aid drinking, brain dead moron for giving credence to the 50 or so users on the wunderradio site who gave the app an enthusiastic four and a half stars. I can barely carry on an intelligible phone conversation using my iPhone: What in the world was I thinking that I could actually stream audio into the thing. I had better be careful or the next thing that I’ll find that I’ve done, is that I’ve replied to some email from the exalted Sultan of Transvestistan respectfully requesting my help moving a fortune into the United States. – There I go ranting again, so I’ll stop and say something nice and scanner related:

First. UPMan, Paul Opitz, over on the Uniden board, takes a ton of criticism on behalf of Uniden, and takes in stride a level of guff that I absolutely would not tolerate. If more companies had courageous, dedicated, representatives like Paul working and actually delivering in the face of their lousy customer service otherwise, there would be a lot fewer ranting lunatic customers. Well, that was mostly nice.

Second, after clicking on some more random scanner feed links, I was able to connect to some that were streaming. Wunderradio apparently doesn’t handle offline feeds very elegantly. I guess that as long as a feed is there, it is scannerless scanning.
 
mam1081

mam1081

Member
Feed Provider
Joined
Dec 19, 2002
Messages
1,104
Location
Next to a scanner...
Yea, I don't hear the engines responding to the calls - but I don't know if they do that anymore. I'm having a little reception issue also - at least while the radio is plugged into a power source other than just running on battery - that could be an issue!

Currently scanning OCFD & Hefner...
 
R

robynsjw

Member
Joined
Mar 28, 2003
Messages
123
Location
Edmond OK
I'm hearing some kind of tone and then a pre-recorded "Alarm, east concord" a couple of times, then "Alarm, west concord" a couple of times. East in a female voice, west male.
Otherwise heard a lot of , some requests for other equipment, OG&E to come take care of something, and some PD calls.
 
P

Patio_RF

Member
Joined
Jan 26, 2006
Messages
55
Location
Deer Creek, OK
robynsjw said:
I'm hearing some kind of tone and then a pre-recorded "Alarm, east concord" a couple of times, then "Alarm, west concord" a couple of times.
Click to expand...

These are usually references to the concourses at the airport. Security or the airline agents usually activates this alarm and the Airport Police Officers have to respond to that location in a specific amount of time, such as 1 minute or so.

I'm not hearing Fire Ops or anything on the website this morning.
 
woodyrr

woodyrr

Member
Joined
Dec 30, 2005
Messages
613
Location
Midwest City, OK
WunderRadio issued an update this morning and using the Edge network exclusively, I am now able to listen to KRMG 740 in Tulsa and KMGL 104.1 without having the buffer constantly running dry and crapping it out. I have been too busy to play with it much today. While I was in Dallas, the Dallas weather radio was and still is offline.

At 16:29 I cannot seem to get Mark's OCFD / Hefner stream.

All in all, it appears as if there have been improvements made. I'll try to listen to some of the commercial radio streams this evening and see if they play for an extended period without "buffering out".
 
R

robynsjw

Member
Joined
Mar 28, 2003
Messages
123
Location
Edmond OK
Patio_RF said:
These are usually references to the concourses at the airport. Security or the airline agents usually activates this alarm and the Airport Police Officers have to respond to that location in a specific amount of time, such as 1 minute or so.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the info!
 
iamhere300

iamhere300

Member
Joined
Jun 27, 2004
Messages
1,346
Location
Chappell Hill TX
Being a cheapskate like me, one might do good to check out fstream in the ap store. Lots of
scanner streams, and unlike wunderradio, fstream is FREE!

I like free!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top