Archive
Happy Holidays from Eisenhamer Engineering!
What an interesting year. I hope everyone has survived. I hope next year will bring a bit more prosperity to everyone as I must say these last couple of years, shall I say, sucked.
Hope to catch you in 2011! Enjoy the posts as they arrive. I’ll continue to fight the spam filter and reply to comments as they come in.
Last, but not least, I was able to get my Harris transmitter to make mask! Hope you were sitting down.
Cheers!
VPN, VNC, & the iPAD
By digging up some spare parts and unused hardware, my assistant honed his skills on rebuilding a computer that will access our transmitter network via VPN and various applications via VNC. He done good.
I have to say it is cool and our IT dude accessed the computer, opened the browser, and we connected to the Nautel AUI. Very nice. I now others have done this with their iPhones and such, but I still find all the “steps” to access something very annoying. First do this. Then do that. What I would like is for companies, like Nautel, to create a native application for the iPad, iPhone, and Android that can be called up once a secure VPN connection has been made. I wish I could code and create one, but that is not my forte.
Some day, maybe. I am teaching myself Visual Basic, but I am not wired to be a coder. Anyone out there doing such work? I’m curious to know what you have and how well it works.
4G, LTE, WTF
Verizon announces 4G rollout, but are any of these US systems really 4G? | ZDNet
So, is there really 4G networks? I saw a Verizon presentation and they call it LTE. Long-term. That is a good cover-up to “we will be expanding and this is expandable”. I look forward to it as the speeds advertised are compelling, but I remain skeptical until the system is rolled out. I really like this article as it references the ITU-R: “According to the ITU-R standard none of these current LTE, HSPA+, or WiMAX network technologies are truly 4G systems”. So, does 4G really exist? I am still not sure. “4G systems are supposed to support data transfer speeds on the order of
100 Mbps and the areas where we are just starting to see this is in
Japan and parts of Europe.” Have you seen 100Mbps on your cellular data network?
I look forward to the day of speed. I know the kids are too so they can get their music, videos, and send their pix and videos faster.
Genelec Speakers for Everyone
I have put off discussing an item that we installed in every room that has been remodeled. Monitor speakers. Early on in our search we looked at various solutions to the monitor situation. Should we go traditional? Should we go quality? Where should we go? We actually had demonstrations on a couple of types and we finally made a decision: Amplified monitors by Genelec.
I have installed 8020, 8030, and 8040 series speakers by Genelec in the rooms based on needs. The 8030 was the standard for the control rooms. In one control room and the large production room we actually went with the 8040. In our small production room and recently built Studio M we went with the 8020 series. All do what they are intended to do and the sound quality is fantastic, even with the small 8020 monitors. The main need was maintaining line of site. Second was sound quality. And, of course, for the rocker station they like loud.
When you think about control room monitoring how far do you have to go before you have gone overboard? How much quality do you need in the monitor speakers when the talent is mainly focused on air monitoring (are we on the air) and segue ways. The rest of the time the talent is talking on the phone or other preparations, or actually watching t.v. Then they take their break and wear headphones for that. Of course you do not want to cheapen the sound, so a compromise was necessary. After a few listening tests and that question, “how much do you really listen to the monitors?” the decision to go with Genelec was made. We received quality sound in a small package for a reasonable price.
For the FM949 control room, the 8040. The rock station wanted a bit more for rocking, so the 8040s were installed. Still maintaining the low profile they got the big sound they were looking for.
For Studio C, the 8020. Set next to the SAS Rubicon SL-8 console, these little guys pack a big punch. This little room is a production and voice tracking work-horse.
And yes, we did consider a subwoofer or two, but opted out. If we wanted we could install subs, so even if you are considering an Urban AC station, consider the Genelec. See the links on the right to the Genelec web site.
What a start to the day!
Yeah, I tweeted this, but I just have to write it out. How often does one get kicked in the head by a bum!
We go to Starbucks pretty much every morning downstairs outside of work. We see the Mission Valley bum population on a regular basis. We even give some of them nicknames: Sea Captain, Token, etc. Well, there is this one bum we nickname Obie Bum. He usually has a pale, drab green blanket draped over his head and bows and fiddles with his fingers. Beard. Sometimes it is a dirty, light brown blanket. He appears to be harmless and ignores most people. Today he wandered up and asked for some money. JR and I refuse, politely. Obie Bum moves behind us and starts babbling weirdness. We both lean over and say, “what?” We go back to our conversation when all of a sudden I get popped in the head! I jump up and JR says, “He just kicked you!”
Obie Bum slides into the Starbucks where JR constrains him and we get someone to call 911. The store manager and employees get nervous and start telling us not to break anything. JR releases the dude. We watch as he slides out of the store and wanders off. I spot him back on the other side watching us, and then he slinks away. 30 minutes later the cops arrive. We tell the story and they tell us there is not much to do. JR realizes he did get a scratch on the hand. They would just take the bum to mental health upon which they would release him 4 hours later. No serious injuries, so the DA would let it slide.
This bum has become more aggressive from what we hear, so we let the Starbucks manager know before we split.
It is a shame that these people are out, yet, I do not see why we cannot do something to “fix” the issue. All I can say is beware that neighborhood bum. Keep your guard up. Do not give them money as it encourages them to continue harassing folks. Now it is on to business!
Cheers!
Some NRSC Stuff Regarding HD Power Levels
OK here is the NRSC-G202 FM IBOC Total Digital Sideband Power. I have not read the document as of yet, but I will shortly. Figure it is better to get the information out. 😉
I also hit the power calculator at the NRSC site. Power Calculator>
Would it be helpful to run links in my Pages? I think I will!
iPad in Action
I was able to see an iPad in action in the real world during a brief demonstration. I like the concept. The VPN worked. You need to purchase the VNC app. The think worked as advertised. I just cannot justify the price, nor is it handy if you need to do any amount of typing.
Price: $600 for the 32GB Wi-Fi only version. Holy Cow! $729 if you want the Wi-Fi + 3G, and the service plan is sold separately. I am a fan of convenience, but at what price?
Typing. Like the iPod, typing is a pain. If there is any amount of note taking or “administrating” that is necessary, you must be a “hunt & peck” master. I’m old school in that I know how to type, using all ten fingers (or 8 fingers and 2 thumbs). Apps that let you poke at icons and shows results is nice. I just need to learn how to write apps. Maybe if I learn I can earn some money.
Anyways, I like it. I just need to justify the cost and with the lack of budget at our location we won’t be getting one or two any time soon.
Cheers!
NV20 Modification
As we have the first NVs here, we did a modification yesterday on the NV20s which will allow for a quick reset of the embedded AUI computer. We found that on occasion we need to reboot the AUI due to some quirk of nature. It is a PC after all. NO, this does NOT effect the operation of the transmitter. Don’t be scared. We added a toggle switch! Basically this switch will turn power off to the AUI. We chose to switch power instead of doing a reset because you never know when you need to shut her down without turning the transmitter off.
We mounted the switch to the cover. Yes, that means we need to be careful when removing the cover for service, but how often would we need to do this. The only time we ever remove the cover is to reset the AUI! You can find a picture of the mod here: NV-Switch Modification
The installation was simple. We have also considered connecting a switch to our remote control for the super rare case that we cannot access the AUI remotely. We have never had this situation, so we tossed the idea.
Happy modifications!
Keeping Busy
Why title it a “weekly update” when it has been more than a week? Shoot, it’s been a couple. Since my last post when Wide Orbit visited, all my updates have been tweeted. I had some family time, along with our travel group, at Disneyland! My kid loves the place, as does the wife. So what happened since? If you follow them tweets, then you know about AT&T. Well, we also worked on some HD2 preparations for one station, caught up on some EAS news, a UPS failure, and pretty much had busy work to do.
AT&T does not make me happy. That control circuit for our Burk went down in an interesting way this week which meant a little late night work to stay legal. It was not a complete circuit failure. There was two way continuity, sort of. The interesting and most tell-tale sign that the issue was at the CO (central office) was the echo sound I heard with my trusty TS-22A test set. The studio unit actually should a circuit was there and some of the channels reported readings, but no all. Some channels just showed dashes (—-) for the reading. When studio and transmitter units were placed back-to-back, they worked great. When AT&T finally reported back the issue was resolved the message was quite vague with an admission to a card replacement at the CO. I have since followed up with this question, “Why does the repair of this circuit always come down a card replacement at the CO?” No response as of yet.
As we push to air an HD2 channel, the question of EAS came up. I am still looking for any ruling regarding the necessity, but we are going to cover it anyways. Better safe than sorry. As we prepared, we discovered the old MSRP (multi-station relay panel) of our Sage Endec was not working. After serial data checks and a quick call to Sage to verify how it is supposed to work (we have never used it), I found the problem. The electrolytic capacitors had small holes and leaked. Not obvious until the circuit board was removed. Once replaced, the MSRP worked flawlessly. Usually the wall-wart power transformers are to blame, but this time we did the rare component level troubleshooting.
Why the MSRP? We wired the contact closure in conjunction with our SAS frame to create a “priority” interrupt and cross point to feed the EAS to the HD2 channel whenever the mother station (main channel) ran a test or relayed one. Who knows what other fine thinking we will come up with next.
We installed the new UPS’s after the failure of a couple weeks ago. We did both racks as the two that were in there were of the same age and type. As this was on our radar, when we visited our pee-shooter site, we did a simulated power outage on the UPS there. All worked well. This begs the question, “how often do you check on your critical UPS installations?” I have another question: What type of UPS installation do you have? Why did you choose the way you did?
That’s all for now! The little one is calling for me. Enjoy your day!
Cheers!
Wide Orbit Automation
I wish to quickly thank Wide Orbit for the visit yesterday. I must say I am quite impressed with the work they have done with the Radio Automation system. If you have not looked at this system, you should. Now if I can only convince the company of our “need” for this.
A couple of years ago a colleague and I visited Google to see what the system could do. We spent the whole day there discussing what the system does and what is planned and what we would like to see. Yesterday, as Wide Orbit, we got to see what they have done and what they have incorporated into the system. I must say, very nice job.
If I have a chance to evaluate the system, I will. It would not do the system justice to evaluate just on a demonstration. I really believe, now, that I would prefer this “streamlined” and efficient system over any other product out there today. Nice work.
Tech Notes from the Field 
