396T + ScannerCast + Icecast

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criten
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396T + ScannerCast + Icecast

Post by criten » Thu Jan 07, 2010 2:52 pm

Well I fixed my 1.3m antenna a few weeks ago. Also just obtained the USB cable.

I get pretty reasonable range from the upper blue mountains area... until I get a discone some time in the future its good enough for now. I can scan RFS in the Hawkesbury, Hunter & Lithgow and often monitor the Kurrajong GRN site.

After installing the Uniden USB-1 driver I found ScannerCast was the most hassle free way to stream to Icecast and send channel labels in the ID3 tag. I'm streaming in Mono MP3 22050Hz Sample @ 32kbit. I can't see that you'd want any higher quality. Listening causes about 14MB to be downloaded per hour. Additionally since Icecast is a standards compliant HTTP streaming server - the devices you can play my stream on are endless, including mobile phones and other types of handheld computers.

http://audio.radioz.info:8000/stream1.mp3

citabria
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Re: 396T + ScannerCast + Icecast

Post by citabria » Thu Jan 07, 2010 3:09 pm

How are you doing the reflecting via Canada etc as per your other thread?

criten
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Re: 396T + ScannerCast + Icecast

Post by criten » Thu Jan 07, 2010 4:34 pm

Well I run Icecast at home and send my stream there. Icecast happens to run on a linux machine in my case. I then have port forwards setup on my adsl modem so Icecast is visible to the canada machine... then the canada machine is configured with an on-demand relay so it'll connect to my home as required. This way if nobody is listening I'm not uploading the stream.

If you were to use pure Windows (no icecast on linux)... you could just port forward to scannercast's builtin http streaming server and then configure the relays in Icecast.

If you require on-demand type icecast hosting gimme a bell with your IP and port you've forwarded to scannercast and I'll setup a relay on audio.radioz.info

cokebottle
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Re: 396T + ScannerCast + Icecast

Post by cokebottle » Fri Jan 08, 2010 9:54 am

criten wrote:Well I fixed my 1.3m antenna a few weeks ago. Also just obtained the USB cable.

I get pretty reasonable range from the upper blue mountains area... until I get a discone some time in the future its good enough for now. I can scan RFS in the Hawkesbury, Hunter & Lithgow and often monitor the Kurrajong GRN site.

After installing the Uniden USB-1 driver I found ScannerCast was the most hassle free way to stream to Icecast and send channel labels in the ID3 tag. I'm streaming in Mono MP3 22050Hz Sample @ 32kbit. I can't see that you'd want any higher quality. Listening causes about 14MB to be downloaded per hour. Additionally since Icecast is a standards compliant HTTP streaming server - the devices you can play my stream on are endless, including mobile phones and other types of handheld computers.

http://audio.radioz.info:8000/stream1.mp3
Thanks for putting that up, listening to it on my Nokia E63 using wifi at work & the details of what is being broadcast come up on the mobiles screen, very cool!

I tried using Windoz media player but the details don't come up on that, getting quite a delay via wifi when compared to the pc on lan :)

I will listen further when I get home tonight, I live in the mid mountains ;)

Keep up the good work criten!

Michael

criten
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Re: 396T + ScannerCast + Icecast

Post by criten » Fri Jan 08, 2010 1:03 pm

Yeah, I had that trouble with WMP as well - no tags visible. Winamp is where its at anyway.

The delay is actually caused by a setting in your player software. All players will store x seconds as a buffer, usually the software talks in kilobytes. A smaller buffer increases the chances of skipped/distorted playback however reduces the delay. Often you can determine the size of the buffer by measuring the time taken to connect to a stream. So it would appear your mobile phone has a bigger buffer than your PC.

The delays caused as the stream passes through multiple computers in reality is only about 5 seconds from realtime.

The NSWFB who always mention the time can be a reference.

I happen to be quite an icecast expert. :)

cokebottle
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Re: 396T + ScannerCast + Icecast

Post by cokebottle » Fri Jan 08, 2010 2:52 pm

criten wrote: I happen to be quite an icecast expert. :)
Good stuff, thanks for the info I knocked the wifi bit-rate down on the phone to standard (48kps) & is only about 3 secs difference to the pc, instead of about 10 secs.

I have played around a little bit with streaming at work using Windows media 9 encoder, I have been streaming broadcast FM radio on our LAN for about 3 years, this was to stop people listening to Internet radio stations & sucking our bandwidth, I think maybe I should check out Icecast ;)

Michael

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