Boca Box channel tags

Bote's Boca Box upgraded: now you can see who is talking with channel tags!

Thanks to Gordon of ScanAmerica, I installed his Talkgroup Monitor last night on the Boca Box feed to include the talkgroup or channel tags in the stream. You will see the name of the current channel while listening on WinAmp. I am not sure about iTunes or other players and clients.

If you go to the Shoutcast DNAS page that lists statistics about the feed and look at the Song History page, ignore the time of day listed next to each channel in the history list. The server's clock has never kept accurate time, varying by as much as several MINUTES each hour. Sorry about that.

Next up, I hope to try this on my Mixer Board feed out of Fort Lauderdale, but that uses a BC780 which might not work with Gordon's add-on. Stay tuned.

Boca Box lineup change

A small change to the system lineup on Bote's Boca Box: Deerfield Beach fire is out, Boynton Beach public safety is in.

The indoor antenna simply can not hear Deerfield Beach's system very well, so I'll try it with Boynton Beach fire and see how it goes.

So now the lineup is:
Boca Raton public safety
Delray Beach public safety
Boynton Beach public safety
[ maybe FEC railway if there is something to hear, but lots of computer noise and poor reception make this unlikely ]

At least I have the 3 digital public safety trunked systems in there, so those of you who don't have digital scanners can partake.

Enjoy!

Boca Box downgraded

Bote's Boca Box has been downgraded.

It will no longer have an antenna up on the roof, but it still hears Deerfield Beach surprisingly well. The railroad stuff has been greatly scaled back, leaving only the FEC road channel open; CSX road channel and FEC uplink to the dispatcher are both hit with computer birdies, so those are gone. This is with a crap antenna inside a 1st floor window, but it's better than nuttin.

Lemme know if weird stuff happens. At least I can put my hands on the equipment readily if something goes awry.

FTL stream audio restored

I could not figure out where the audio was disappearing from the Fort Lauderdale stream, but it magically came back while I was juggling cables around. Then I could not get it to fail.

Don't argue with success, right?

I have no idea how long it was down because I listen to the scanner locally here, not the feed. I wish someone had alerted me. It never gets THAT quiet on the scanner here. :-)

Boca Box back up

The prodigal son has returned and reset the piece-of-crap Terk VR-1 volume regulator which apparently was the stopping point of the scanner audio all this time.

It does the job well enough when it is working, but it is ultra sensitive to power glitches. Even on the APC UPS it still found a way to fritz out. Nothing is ever trouble-free.

All is well now, though.

Enjoy!

Bote

Boca Box no audio

Bote's Boca Box has decided to stop emitting audio from the scanner. I have tried everything I know to fix it remotely, now I will have to get access to the radio room and see what happened up close and personal. This might not be until next week sometime.

Sorry.

Bote's Mixer Board back online

DOH! I killed all systems here as Fort Lauderdale was rocked mightily by a nasty thunderstorm the other day. Unfortunately, I forgot to turn on the streaming machine after things settled down.

Sorry about that, Chief!

Hurricane Fay action

Bote's Mixer Board
The focus remains on Fort Lauderdale public safety while Tropical Storm Fay approaches the southern tip of Florida.

I'm watching the RADAR image over the last couple hours and it sure looks like Fay is tilting towards us more than previously.

The current line-up includes Fort Lauderdale fire, police districts 1 and 3 (north side, south side, and beach side), Pompano Beach fire, BSO Oakland Park (district 12), Broward fire, and the Broward interoperability talkgroups.

If any other talkgroups of interest come alive I will open those up, as well.

My DSL connection is still flaky, no repair on that yet, so if you lose the feed just try back a short time later. It will be up and down throughout the storm.

Bote's Boca Box
No change, same programming as usual.

The worst should occur here through tomorrow morning, then rapidly clearing.

Happy monitoring!

Public safety, mostly

Both Bote's Mixer Board and Bote's Boca Box will focus on public safety communications over the holiday weekend of July 4th, Friday-Sunday.

The railroads have annulled a number of trains for the holiday, plus public safety typically has its hands full between drunk drivers wrecking their cars to boaters in distress to other creative incidents.

Bote's Mixer Board will be exclusively public safety for Fort Lauderdale and Broward County West fire districts, while Bote's Boca Box will have public safety from the 3 cities of Boca, Boynton, and Delray with the railroad channels open as well. If the trains talk, you'll hear them, but don't expect much over the holiday weekend.

FTL back to rails

Now that FEC has decided to call signals (!!!) I am switching the Fort Lauderdale feed back to FEC Railway exclusively for the time being.

I have been traveling and have not checked the logs, but offhand I'd say that public safety was more popular among my massive listener base. I'll see what I can do, but for now I want to hear as much FEC as possible from work.

Cheers!