Tech Notes from the Field

Sitting here on the last working day of the year for me and reflecting on the busy year that just occurred and the upcoming year.  I hope the economy improves a bit for the radio industry.  Though we did good by corporate in terms of being able to clear some much needed projects, the operating side needs a bit of economic help as I suspect many of my peers may agree.  Anyways, let’s see what we did this year.

Recently Tweeted events was the RCS NexGen installation.  Not a huge installation, nor a small one.  Let’s say moderate in size at 18 computers and all the fun that goes with installing them.  We met our deadlines having all our stations on the system before the end of the year.  We will continue to work out the little bugs as they pop up.  The most recent bug, as that is the only term I can reference at this moment, is the Export data can only be assigned to a single network.  Our audio servers have 2 NICs (Network Interface Card) to keep NexGen traffic separate from other data and external sources.  Exported data such as RDS, HD PSD, and streaming must be sent out.  We happen to keep our transmitter network separate from house and streaming, and we keep streaming off the house and transmitter networks.  While configuring Export data for a station we are lead to believe you fill in the appropriate information and if TCP/IP one types in the port and IP address of the receive machines.  Well, this works pretty good for the data we send to the transmitter network (RDS and HD PSD), but not so good with the streaming network.  We find that the export data can only feed one NIC.  Ouch!  Next week we decide if we install a basic router or we press the issue with RCS.  Other than little things like this the system appears to be working as advertised.  Now if Programming and Traffic departments can play nice.  The last accomplishment of the RCS install is we are connected for console control and EAS (Sage ENDEC) control via IP.  No GPIO devices are used (for the time being).  Now that is cool.

We installed a new remote control system.  We decided on the Burk ARC Plus system along with various peripherals they provide.  I will say the overall project was a success.  I will also have to say I may want to rethink some of the work I did.  I also must say that 2 ARC Plus units had to be returned for factory repair due to memory corruption of which I updated 3 units to a new firmware version that should take care of this.  I am also going to help Nautel and Burk troubleshoot a SNMP error that is occurring with, between, or something the PlusConnect-NV and the Nautel AUI.  The PlusConnect-NV talks with the AUI (Advanced User Interface) via IP, so I have no more physical relay closures to the remote control, it is all done via IP.  These errors are not causing trouble, but it fills my Burk Event Logs, so it is annoying.  Also, no occasion I will receive a false alarm of an NV output power is below lower limit which is most likely due to the error and time-out of the SNMP request.  This will be interesting to troubleshoot because it is an area I do not normally get to play: SNMP, Agents and Traps.  Another fun time is the network between studio and transmitter sites.  All are slow connections in some way or another.  Part of two sites depend on the Moseley LanLink which I have noticed is not the most reliable, but works.

On the line of Burk and the remote controls, the series of devices help connect many items.  One site has the IIU (Integrated Input Unit) and ICRU (Integrated Command Relay Unit), all sites have at least one Plus-X 300 which is an input/metering/relay box, and a site with 2 PlusConnect-NVs and 2 PlusConnect-HZs.  The PlusConnect-HZ box connects to the Harris Z10 controller board via a serial connection and then talks to the ARC Plus via IP.  Pretty cool on both accounts.  In a way you may say that we are nearly all IP connected in some way or another.

We ran a firmware update of our SAS 32KD and RioLinks before the RCS installation.  We updated all the RioLinks to work via IP.  We also added the capability to change show configuration on the Rubicon consoles.  If that was not enough, the firmware allows us to add silence sense to outputs. With this I plan to wire some alarm statuses to the remote control for various silence events.  Another micro-management and troubleshooting tool.

Early in the year we upgraded our old Nortel PBX phone system to a new Avaya.  This phone system is capable of using digital phones (which made our transition easier) and VOIP.  We will be testing and implementing a bit of this here in the future.  We also took advantage of the Avaya and integrated it with our Telos 2101 Hub.  Now we have in-house extensions in the studios.

We continued to study and test various ways of doing live remote broadcasts.  Verizon 4G LTE has been a live saver in some cases and has been a defacto go-to for other broadcasts.  In all cases we had at least, if not better, a 98% success rate using this method.  We use Tieline Technology codecs and an external 4G router and 4G LTE USB modem.  I won’t mention that Tieline has developed an USB module which we plan on testing for them in the near future.  Speaking of Tieline we decided to purchase the Report-IT application for iPhones and iPads.  We have done a couple of successful long form broadcasts using just an iPad on WiFi.  We plan on future testing of the Mic Adapter and Genie.  Speaking of iPhones, we are using the iPush to get surf reports to our NexGen system.  No more calling in and recording.  Audio quality is much better and the reports are seamlessly inserted in the logs along with beds.

Lastly I want to mention that my Nautel NV20’s were delivered 12/24/2008.  They are 3 years old!

As we wrap up this year, I wish my readers a Happy and Prosperous New Year.