csgaraglino
Member
I don't see this a assisting a competitor - I see it as a partnership.
Subscription Scanner Service
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I don't see this a assisting a competitor - I see it as a partnership.
csgaraglino
Member
Ye have but little faith - look I know it takes a different mindset to see with an entrepreneurial eye, but let me share with you a short story:
In 1990 I moved up to Big Bear Lake, California form San Diego where life was nothing but girls, surfing, skiing and mountain biking - and not necessarily in that order. This was back when cell phones were 5 pounds and $10/ minute and the internet was just a form of sharing porn and bad ideas! In 1994 (before Google) the internet started to gain real traction and the attention of small business owners. I over heard someone say they wished there was a way to advertise on this internet thing - but had no idea how or if it would even work - yes an idea was born and so was my company ILGM, Inc..
I took that idea and ran with it. Someone needed something and I felt I had the solution. This restaurant owner's thoughts has now become a software company that is 23 years mature and services over 90,000 websites with software, code snippets, applications and more. We are in 2 different states services clients all over the world.
One man's idea, another man's desire and hard work = tens of thousands serviced. If you think small your solutions will always be small!
Let me leave you with this:
Howard Schultz founder of Starbucks:
“Dream more than others and think practical”
“I was turned down by 217 of the 242 investors I initially talked to. You have to have a tremendous belief in what you’re doing and just persevere.”
"Risk more than others think safe. Dream more than others think practical. Expect more than others think possible. Care more than others think wise."
Again, what's in it for them to help you? How would it benefit Broadcastify to help you?
I'm sure Broadcastify would like to monetize their subscriber base more directly than they are now. If what you propose was workable, they would have already done it. If not, I don't see any upside in them helping you poach their subscriber base.
I'm sure Broadcastify would like to monetize their subscriber base more directly than they are now. If what you propose was workable, they would have already done it. If not, I don't see any upside in them helping you poach their subscriber base.
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Hi all, I run a website (https://radiocapture.com/radio) that sort of accomplishes what you're suggesting, however it's still very much in development (and has been for several years). Rather than using scanners, I use software defined radios along with a good bit of custom software. Instead of capturing individual channels, I capture entire systems in full, the control channel and every voice channel, then the control channel is demodulated and monitored to manage voice recording of every talkgroup on the system.
Currently the software handles EDACS, Motorola Smartnet, P25 Phase 1 (FDMA) and P25 Phase 2 (TDMA) systems. The software will track all active transmissions, record them, and then upload them to the website along with the control channel metadata that labels calls with who is talking and what talkgroup they're talking on. I currently have 4 different receive sites, across which I am capturing about 35 different P25, Motorola, and EDACS transmitters, as well as all their associated traffic.
Obviously, this is no small task, and really the problem what what you're suggesting is profitability. You need to have receive coverage in every physical area, which will include computer equipment, RF equipment, splitters, antennas, and tower access / decent quality locations for receive sites, and all of that costs money. Then you need the web site, which would include enormous amounts of storage (if you were talking about country wide), and a good bit of database and web work in order to manhandle the millions of calls you'd be receiving every day. Currently, radiocapture does all of this for a few systems in Colorado and Pennsylvania, where I already have easy access to receive sites and a reason to do it, and I've already wasted way too much money on it considering only myself and a few other people actually use it to do any listening.
That said, you can listen to any and every talkgroup that is unencrypted (access to some portion of talkgroups is restricted to admin users only), you can listen historically, and if you have two talkgroups that are transmitting at the exact same time (where on a scanner you'd only receive one) they will play back sequentially. There is also some logic to deal with receiving audio traffic from multiple sites for the same call, although not much of it has made it to the normal web UI yet (it just works behind the scenes to pick the transmission with the fewest errors). In fact, some talkgroups will capture the same exact call up to 5 times because we received across that many transmitters. There are also additional things that you can do with a system like this, label radio IDs, track radio IDs across multiple talkgroups, link people into a "view" at a specific time so "replay" an incident, and other such fancy stuff that is possible with a database fill of millions of records.
TL;DR: I'm basically doing what you're asking about, although for a much smaller region, and my conclusion was that there isn't enough people that are interested in it to make a subscription service profitable, I'd love to find a way to make it profitable, but haven't yet.
It seems to me the primary complaint of the OP is the poor P25 performance of his scanners. This is an issue plaguing many, and the number is steadily increasing as more of the country switches to digital. It can be argued that this current P25 difficulty might inspire a fair number of people to pay for a subscription service, but what happens when the scanner makers finally get this issue figured out? And they will figure it out. Think they don't care about this? Whichever one comes out with the next generation of P25 boxes that works as well as a Unication pager, or a Relm unit, or OP25, or something from the big /\/\, will be selling a boat load of scanners in a very short time frame. It is only a matter of time before this happens, and once it does a lot of the problems folks are complaining about will go away. How will this subscription service fair then?
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Wow people I never thought this wild idea would have attracted so many responses. And I have to admit some really good points were brought up. As far as having broadcastify already available I was speaking of a service much better than what broadcastify now offers which like many people pointed out yes you are at
the mercy of the provider as to what you can listen to. You can't pause or do anything other than listen. No this would have to be a service almost like having a scanner. But at the end of the day let's be honest this is really a fantasy.
the mercy of the provider as to what you can listen to. You can't pause or do anything other than listen. No this would have to be a service almost like having a scanner. But at the end of the day let's be honest this is really a fantasy.
Scan-Denver
Member
Everyone who says it can't be done, it's ALREADY a working model (RadioCapture.com - Radio). Un-registered users are stuck with what you see with little functionality. Registered users are able to select interested systems/talk groups and have control over what you want to listen to. At this point in time, it is free for registered users to try out and use. When it does become a pay to play setup, it will be well worth it in my opinion.
Not a perfect model yet, but it's being worked on in the creator's spare time.
Seems to me those who say it can't be done don't want to see/hear about it for whatever reason and aren't open to the idea. Perhaps these same people don't know about wide band receiver capabilities along with software that make this idea already a working solution. Perhaps these same people who think this will be just another excuse for more agencies to go encrypted don't realize that criminals already use scanners for criminal activity and will use whatever means necessary to carryout their objective. If online scanning either by way of Broadcastify or other means was of such concern, Broadcastify would not re-broadcast scanner communications. Those who chose to use the internet for criminal activity do so at their own peril.
Also, with one wide band receiver, the system is recording communications from every talkgroup in the system and posting it to a web site with meta data containing the date, time, frequency, talk group, radio id and has the ability to add the call sign of the radio user and the specific talk group/frequency information.
You are also able to stop on a specific talk group you are interested in listening to which blocks out everything else, same as the manual button on a physical scanner.
This system also has a time specific archive which allows you to go back in to a specific time/date and listen to what you have missed by talk group or radio id.
Allows you to setup bookmarks of systems/talk groups and be able to bring up those bookmarks at the click of a mouse and booya, you have what you want to listen to instantly. Similar to the pre-programmed radio stations you have in your car.
Works well on a computer as well as ios and android devices.
As "Fourtyfive" indicated earlier, it's still a work in progress but it has come a long way since it first evolved.
Not a perfect model yet, but it's being worked on in the creator's spare time.
Seems to me those who say it can't be done don't want to see/hear about it for whatever reason and aren't open to the idea. Perhaps these same people don't know about wide band receiver capabilities along with software that make this idea already a working solution. Perhaps these same people who think this will be just another excuse for more agencies to go encrypted don't realize that criminals already use scanners for criminal activity and will use whatever means necessary to carryout their objective. If online scanning either by way of Broadcastify or other means was of such concern, Broadcastify would not re-broadcast scanner communications. Those who chose to use the internet for criminal activity do so at their own peril.
Also, with one wide band receiver, the system is recording communications from every talkgroup in the system and posting it to a web site with meta data containing the date, time, frequency, talk group, radio id and has the ability to add the call sign of the radio user and the specific talk group/frequency information.
You are also able to stop on a specific talk group you are interested in listening to which blocks out everything else, same as the manual button on a physical scanner.
This system also has a time specific archive which allows you to go back in to a specific time/date and listen to what you have missed by talk group or radio id.
Allows you to setup bookmarks of systems/talk groups and be able to bring up those bookmarks at the click of a mouse and booya, you have what you want to listen to instantly. Similar to the pre-programmed radio stations you have in your car.
Works well on a computer as well as ios and android devices.
As "Fourtyfive" indicated earlier, it's still a work in progress but it has come a long way since it first evolved.
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