Bote's Mixer Board improved

I have eradicated that gawd-awful SimpleCast in favor of the new RadioFeed software by the same folks who wrote ProScan.

Most of the scanner packages out there won't talk to the Uniden BC780 scanner so I was stuck with SimpleCast to get the channel tags into the stream. The problem is that SimpleCast would crash every few days, requiring a reboot which would also interrupt the Wild Feed which is hosted on the same machine.

Now I get my channel tags and hopefully some reliability, too.

I now have to clean up the channel tags in the BC780 scanner because RadioFeed reads them directly out of the scanner. With SimpleCast I had to use Talkgroup Monitor which pulled channel tags from a text file database. This allowed me to get by with tags that mean something to me, but not to the listener. I'll take care of that over the coming days.

Bote's Mobile Feed testing in one place

I purchased a Griffin iMic for my laptop since its built-in audio subsystem is fried. This allows me to uplink my scanner feed from wherever my laptop and scanner are.

As a fun test I'm going to be using my Mobile Feed mount point to stream whatever is interesting at the moment. If you listen with WinAmp you can view the channel tags to determine what you are hearing at any given time. Since the scanner is limited to 16 character channel names, I have to be creative with my abbreviations, but I think you'll be able to figure them out. Unless I specifically state it, the radio systems monitored will be somewhere in the southeast Florida area.

Today I figured I would stream Sunrise, Pembroke Pines, Miramar, and Coconut Creek since I never listen to those zones. If they become annoying I'll shut them off and scan something else. You never know what you'll hear.

Key West feed audio trouble

UPDATE 2011.02.26 16:49 - The Key West scanner feed has been repaired. I took the opportunity to organize the equipment better so that it's easier to work on and make it more reliable. I replaced the audio cable with a new one so the audio should be rock solid now.

The feed was offline for about an hour while I moved everything around, but it should stay up for the foreseeable future now.

***

Sorry, there was some work done around the Key West feed computer and it must have moved the audio cable to a bad position. The audio is weak and garbled right now.

I know how to fix it, I just have to get over there and do it. Sorry for the inconvenience. You can still listen to it, but it aint pretty.

Android streaming players

So I guess Android doesn't work with the blog site created by its authors? Curious.

I see Android listeners on my statistic logs from time to time.

What Android streaming player are you using to listen to Bote's feeds? I would really like to find one and have not yet.

Thanks!

Dania Fire merges with Broward County

Dania Beach Fire Department became part of Broward Sheriff Office's Department of Fire and Rescue on January 29, 2011.

The Dania Beach department, Broward's oldest, will become the seventh municipality with BSO Fire Rescue. The others are: Cooper City, Lauderdale Lakes, Pembroke Park, Southwest Ranches, West Park and Weston. BSO Fire Rescue also serves Port Everglades, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and the unincorporated areas of the county.

It is unclear on what final radio channels Dania fire will operate. Since the switch:

• Broward Joint Ops 1 (formerly 12A) has been used as an intercom between Broward and Hollywood fire main dispatch for automatic aid (mutual aid) calls;
• Broward JOps 2 (12B) has been patched with Hollywood fire dispatch, although the dispatcher's transmissions do not always come through reliably on 12B;
• Broward JOps 3 (12C) has been patched with Broward Dispatch 2 (formerly Fire North channel) for Hollywood units running mutual aid into Dania;
• Broward JOps 4 (12D) is patched to Hollywood fire tac 1 N for Dania units running mutual aid into Hollywood.

This sounds more confusing than it needs to be, but the situation is fluid and there will likely be changes in the future. Up until this switch Broward would assign any of 12B, 12C, or 12D for fire units to conduct training drills, but these same channels were also used on working incidents for interoperability communications which was confusing. Now when you see JOps 1, 2, 3, or 4 you can assume it has something to do with Dania or Hollywood fire calls.

Dania fire and Hollywood police and fire used to operate on their own separate system that is also a site hung off the Broward trunking zone controller. Since the switch Dania units must be operating on the Joint Ops talkgroups, presumably until they get their radios programmed to add the usual line-up of Broward fire channels.

Hollywood police and fire radio channels remain unchanged, only Dania has moved over to the Broward core system for daily operations.

Tornado watch

South Florida is under a tornado watch and the strong cold front is barreling through now. Strong gusty winds are knocking out power around the area so the feeds might go down. They'll be back up when FP&L restores power should that happen.

Key West air radio gone

I locked out the aircraft comms group on the Southernmost Feed. It was talking just a bit too much and most of the traffic was the same: routing via Boca Chica departure, then BAITZ, then CARNU, then direct blah, blah, blah. Sometimes some interesting stuff, but not enough to have it stopping there instead of real interesting stuff on police or fire channels.

We still have Key West police and fire, Monroe County, FLA police and fire, and most marine channels (when they're not being totally obnoxious, that is).

Host down

The host where our server sits in Dallas is down. No reason nor e.t.r. published.

They posted a note on their Twitter feed about a maintenance window last night, but this unexpected outage started after midnight this morning. It's not just colostreaming.com that is down, I mean the host's own support and main sales web site is kaput! So it's safe to assume that they know about it and are running around like crazy trying to put out the fires to get things back up and running, no need to tell them the obvious.

All of my feeds will return when the host comes back up. Stay warm out there!

UPDATE: VirtBiz had a power main that supplies electricity to part of their colo facility fail on them overnight. It was restored by that afternoon and all our feeds came back up normally. I think they need to give Emerson Liebert a call about a big-ass u.p.s. for their facility; this keeps happening too frequently it seems.

Winterfest Boat Parade

Fort Lauderdale hosts the annual Winterfest Boat Parade of Lights this evening starting at 18:30 E.S.T. It's a pretty big deal with viewers lining the shore of the IntraCoastal Waterway from Lauderdale up to Pompano Beach.

I have restricted Bote's Wild Feed to SEARCH on the Fort Lauderdale trunked system in case any new talkgroups pop up. You will hear traffic that is not normally heard on that feed for the duration of this special event.

Fantasy Fest Begins

Fantasy Fest begins in Key West, Florida this week. Expect the EMS and police to be extra busy this week and into next weekend as partyers from all around converge on Key West for body painting, dancing, and assorted drunken travails.

The Key West online scanner stream should be rocking and rolling as next weekend approaches. I have still not solved the problem of the random dropouts, so if the stream stops or goes to the intermission music just start your player again.

Enjoy!