2010-06-17

Mixer Board vigilance

While I am out of town I would appreciate notice if the Mixer Board feed goes down. I can not promise rapid response, but I'll do my best to get things back online as soon as I know it has crapped out again.

I have been procrastinating at regenerating the original machine that hosted that feed. Since the temporary machine hosts both the Mixer Board and the Wild Feed, something does not agree with SimpleCast which encodes the Mixer Board feed so it craps out every few days. I have covered this up by rebooting the machine when I feel that it needs it, but while I'm away it will likely fail when I have no Internet access. Murphy's Law and so forth.

Sorry about this, but you know how hobbies are. Of course, if somebody wants to donate a million bucks to the cause...

Look on the bright side, you can always listen to Key West action on the Southernmost Feed. WOO HOO!

2010-06-11

Wild Feed searching

Broward County is finally getting around to rebanding its trunked radio system Real Soon Now. Since the radios must be returned to the radio shop for reprogramming, they are taking the time to change the names and uses of some talkgroups.

Starting now and lasting through the weekend Bote's Wild Feed will be in SEARCH mode to pick up any random talkgroups that pop up. Over the weekend most of the traffic is public safety as the dog catcher and garbage man don't work then, so our ears will be spared.

I do have to program in all the hospital talkgroups in order to lock them out as that traffic is mundane, annoying, and sometimes contains private information that should not be broadcast.

2010-06-10

Server replaced

Well, that was certainly easier than I anticipated!

The failing server has been replaced with zero effort on my part. Much props to the co-location facility that hosts our streams, VirtBiz Internet Services who can be reached at +1 972-485-4125 or +1 866-485-4125 . They sure made it easy for me, as I did not at all relish the prospect of re-installing Icecast one little bit!

2010-06-08

Server failure

It never fails: as soon as I gussy up the Key West feed, the streaming server takes a dive.

We're told that the server hardware at the co-lo facility is an older box and has several failures creeping up on it. So, over the coming days I will be getting a new server ready. No adjustment to your set is necessary, it will just start working reliably again once the cutover is complete and the DNS entry is updated.

In the meantime, expect more downtime than uptime based on the fact that they got it running a few hours ago, but it's back down again.

2010-06-05

Key West feed new antenna

OH YEAH! Bote's Southernmost Feed from Key West, Florida now hears MUCH better.

It is running a 1/4 wavelength high band antenna up on the roof, so it hears the Key West and Stock Island sites of the Monroe County trunked system solid now.

It also hears the UHF fire repeaters for Monroe County which still have some interesting traffic.

I have also enabled the marine bank since Key West is an island, after all. If the Coast Guard encrypted transmissions become too obtrusive I shall lock them out. For now, everything is wide open on the marine bank.

This feed should be hopping now!

Enjoy!