Long time no chat guys! Best of everything to you all this new year! Question; Are Barix boxes the only way to connect my computers feed to another site for transmission? Looking for a less expensive option. Thanks.
I use the Barix boxes for our AM TIS station. They have run 24/7 for over 6 years and never miss a beat.
Prior to that I used ShoutCast at the studio player PC. At the transmitter site I had a laptop running a Winamp player. It worked ok, sounded ok but the PC's occasionally would reboot or lock-up. In either case it required going to the site to restart the process.
It was cheap but not very stable.
I am currently working on the same issue. We have a radio studio which transmits through a part 15 transmitter and streaming on-line using LIVE365. I've been using a $50 ROKU Box which picks up the internet stream from my wireless modem (LIVE365.com or SHOUTCAST.com) and rebroadcasts it from my house which is about 10 miles away from the studio. You do also need a small TV set to start the internet stream and control the audio signal level. For the record, LIVE365 works poorly, only working for a few hours before it needs to be manually reset. SHOUTCAST seems to be much more reliable, going 24 hours or more.
My title, "Results May Vary", applies to the practice of using a personal computer with a Shoutcast stream server.
My online radio station uses Version 1 of the Shoutcast server software and usually runs very reliably as long as needed.
On four day holiday weekends I run the system four days straight and it has never crashed.
But when I had an unreliable DSL service it was crashing all the time.
I'm thinking even the Barix would have a problem if the internet service was faulty.
If the electric service drops, does Barix reset by itself?
Yes, the Barix boxes I'm using will re-establish their connection without manual intervention.
They run on our City Intranet LAN, so they are not dependent on the Internet.
You can accomplish what you want with any MIPS or ARM based solution. These are low power and often tiny computers. Examples of these are the Sheevaplug, Pogoplug and others. More common these days is the Raspberry Pi. Think they all require an additional (but cheap) USB sound card dongle though.
To accomplish the endless playing of a set stream, use madplay. Good writeup here:
http://codeidol.com/unix/linux-multimedia/Broadcast-Media/Command-Line-Streaming-MP3-Player/
Similarly, you can accomplish this likely with an unused Android smartphone. One that has a bad ESN or even an older one that isn't activated. I pick these up from time to time on Ebay for $20. Nice thing about the phones is they do have a battery and thus a battery back up of sorts in addition to any other you have at the transmitter.
The Rasberry Pi seems like it has a whole world of yet to be discovered applications in Part 15 work.
http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs
If those with more knowledge or experience with the Raspberry Pi would give examples of possible uses, it would be very informative.
Censoredship touched on this, but it would be wonderful to hear fuller explanations of how it all works.
Raspberry Pi is an anemic CPU based on ARM (same as your "smartphone").
It does however have a very capable video processor capable of high definition. Thus, most folks use these for their video player to connect to newer high def television. XMBC is mainly what folks are using, I believe.
Beyond that, the most common distribution/OS for these is Raspbian, a Debian derivative customized with driver support for the Raspberry Pi.
With Raspbian, you can do almost anything you can with Debian on other machines. Ubuntu for instance is a very common OS these days and it is based on Debian.
The Raspberry Pi is fine for remote location installs. You will need to control it via a commandline and fine tools that work at such level.
Doing anything in GUI world might be possible but is always slow and problematic.
Unsure if the Raspberry Pi has audio support natively. Don't believe it does, so requires a USB soundcard.
Other costs for a Pi include, a compact flash card for the system, a power supply, case if you need one, ethernet cable. So rather cheap to cobble together.
If a Raspberry Pi could be used to downstream a studio-transmitter link it might be a poor man's Barix Box.
Also, I'm wondering if one of them could be turned into a dedicated Shoutcast Server.
Yep Carl, the Raspberry Pi, like the many ARM alternative CPU SoC (system on chip) can be used as a downstream link.
Yes, they can run Shoutcast server also. Although I haven't tried that. Have yet to pickup a Raspberry Pi myself. Noted that some folks claim compile time install type errors. Might require pre built binary or using earlier Shoutcast server version or other typical tweaks (hey Linux is like that).
This sounds interesting:
http://searchprivate.com/browse.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.openbroadcaster.com%2F&b=12
Just wanted to update a bit of misinformation about the Raspberry Pi.
The devices DO include built in audio card and have a 3.5mm standard headphone jack on the board.
The boards however lack an audio input connector. So if you require input from another source you are forced to go and add a USB sound card.
And to further my correction, buyer beware, check for the ports.
Raspberry Pi had several different pre release models. In production I think there are 2 or 3 boards. Unsure if they all are the same, aside from RAM differences.
The 512MB Rev B board has HDMI and the 3.5mm audio output. Assuming you can get audio out via the HDMI also.
No audio input on any of the models though.
So I am actually using the RPi's for all kinds of things. I use it as an stl over wifi, as a shout cast server (backup in case the network drops). I am building a USB midi controller for mixxx to go with the pi. once that's done, ill get to buildindispense audio card for it.
i love the RPi .. Also: supplies are no loNiger limited.
Be sure to go for rev b though.. 512mb makes a diff...
i use a rapsberrypi for my part15 setup. my transmitter/antenna setup is across the street from my studio. i use a shoutcast service to stream online and the RPI has a script setup to pickup the shoutcast stream off the internet and then feed it into my transmitter. the script checks if it is connected to the shoutcast stream every two minutes and will reconnect automatically if it is disconnected. the whole setup cost about $70 including the RPI, a wifi dongle, and an sdcard.
BARIX here. Running OTR never a problem. When using a laptop, always problems. 1 BARIX box is cheaper than a laptop.