AB5ID
Member
Is there a technical reason for Broadcastify Calls playlist bring limited to 20 talk groups? It's a little reminiscent of having a 20 channel scanner. 
Not complaining just curious.
Not complaining just curious.
Why is Broadcastify Calls playlist limited to 20 talk groups?
- Thread starter AB5ID
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Is there a technical reason for Broadcastify Calls playlist bring limited to 20 talk groups? It's a little reminiscent of having a 20 channel scanner.
I picked two at random, neither are mine, and both are showing more TGs than 20. Where are you seeing they are limited?
n0esc
Feed Provider
@RaleighGuy I believe OP is referring to creating individual playlists for listening to talkgroups, vs what each node or system is actually uploading.
There probably isn't so much of a technical limit other than the system resources needed if everyone created playlists with dozens or hundreds of talkgroups in them to monitor everything they possibly could. Guessing the server load would end up costing more than would be feasible to maintain. Limiting it forces you to be more selective in the playlist creation and switch between them.
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n0esc
Feed Provider
Of note, the other end of the extreme is you can opt to listen to every single call fed into a particular system, with no filters at all. For some smaller systems this works ok, but for the bigger statewide systems with dozens of nodes broadcasting, it can end up being literally hundreds of calls a minute at peak. And the other negative side effect is you're getting an entire region or state with a lot of traffic you may not be interested in at all.
www.broadcastify.com
Missouri Statewide Wireless Interoperable Network (MOSWIN) - All Calls Live
Trunked System: Missouri Statewide Wireless Interoperable Network (MOSWIN) - All Received Calls
www.broadcastify.com
AB5ID
Member
At another stream provider you can listen to everything, listen to groups (fd, pd, etc.) or listen to as many talkgroups as you select. Really wish all the steam providers would standardize their features and then someone could or would build a client that worked with any streams from any platforms.
You can create an unlimited amount of playlists.
we are going to be completely rearchitecting calls in 2024 for much more advanced features and functionality, but we’re being very deliberate in how we approach this due to the complexity of the platform.
if you have a need to do a lot of more advanced calls monitoring setup a bunch of playlists. There are literally newsrooms all over the country using calls for this exact way/purpose
we are going to be completely rearchitecting calls in 2024 for much more advanced features and functionality, but we’re being very deliberate in how we approach this due to the complexity of the platform.
if you have a need to do a lot of more advanced calls monitoring setup a bunch of playlists. There are literally newsrooms all over the country using calls for this exact way/purpose
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And to answer your question, yes, there are technical reasons. The calls architecture isn’t something that anyone else is doing (multiple nodes covering the same systems and sites etc)Is there a technical reason for Broadcastify Calls playlist bring limited to 20 talk groups? It's a little reminiscent of having a 20 channel scanner.
The “other” stream provider is architected differently. You’re basically limited to what an individual node is picking up.
We‘re using a much more complex architecture that gathers from multiple nodes, dedpulicates etc, and can present all of that in the same playlist. We have a lot of work to do to make this system ”run” better but we’re getting there. There are a ton of technical challenges to solve, but we’re getting there slowly.
Given the fact we have over 650 nodes broadcasting tells you that we’re on the right track.
Thanks Lindsay, I am looking forward to seeing the calls platform evolve.
egftechman
Member
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I think the calls platform is the way to do this right (except for the NOAA streams). Nothing scales better than static files through a CDN (why HLS and MPEG-DASH are so commonly used for video streaming) and survives network changes gracefully and traverses through NAT and Proxy servers easily. Splitting every talkgroup (whether an actual trunk talkgroup or "virtual" talkgroup from a conventional channel) into its own feed with an audio file per transmission allows for maximum flexibility for the listener to decide who they want to listen to (you could have stuff from all over the world in one playlist), allows for multiple donors to contribute the same feed (to reduced missed calls and cover downtime), more easily allows for archiving and reviewing of calls. Not sure of the underlying architecture of Broadcastify's calls platform, but I suspect the most complicated parts are the pub-sub for the listeners (I'm guessing that's where the 20 TG limit is per playlist), and dupe checking of the submissions.
you're right on target here.
This week we also rolled out a new algorithm for the back end calls components where we build a table for every talkgroup sent to us of contributing nodes, we continuously rank each node for quality, and assign a node to a specific talkgroup, and then continuously reevaluate that assignment.
So far we've seen a drastic improvement in how we're handling duplicates, and I gotta tell you the calls system usability is much more improved.
A quick analysis shows that we have better than 40% coverage of every single Law Dispatch and Fire Dispatch talkgroup in the entire RR database on Broadcastify Calls. That is extraordinary.
We're really going to be pressing forward with enhancements and focus on Broadcastify Calls this year, and I'm hoping to get to a network that has about 1000 nodes, which will be fantastic coverage. This will get us to a network that is super resilient, and is less susceptible to poor quality due to the volunteer aspect of standard dedicated feeds.
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