[icecast] DTCR Project

Shaun Mcmanus
Fri, 06 Aug 2004 14:23:14 -0000

Disturbed Transmitter Community Radio Project

The Need:
Where I live there is only one open channel in our FM band. The one major
company that owns 13 of the local stations plus 8 more that bleed over from
the next biggest city, has lobbied the FCC so that the last FM license will
never be given out. So my friends run a little 10 watt, Max. allowed by FCC
for a non-commercial non-licensed station, station and only broadcast on
Thursday and Friday nights.

We were discussing building them a more powerful transmitter but with the
current state of affairs (Homeland Security Act and the fact that there are
6 military bases and 4 airports in our city) putting out more power would be
a bad idea. So we thought about it for a well and came up with this idea.

The Idea:
We have people in each community put up an antenna and hook up a small
computer to their internet connection. The computer would grab a stream off
the internet, output though a sound card to the transmitter. Most content
would be streamed from single sources to all clients but the clients would
have the ability to connect to a Community Server to pick up a community
based news and information stream and other sources. Plus the system will
have an emergency broadcast capabilities, possible by listening for a packet
on a certain port and switching over to that stream.

The Plan

Phase I
Gather up used hardware for client computers, design and build transmitters,
and put together Phase I software package.

Phase II
Install first transmission clients and studio servers. Start testing
software.

Phase III
Run system full time. Install more systems, both clients and servers.

Phase IV
Design custom software suite.

We are expecting this project to take 3-5 years on an all volunteer effort.
None of us have much experience with software design or coding but willing
to learn.

Client systems:
Phase I: Small used computer, decodes stream and outputs to transmitter.
Phase ?: SBC systems, decodes streams, manages multiple streams, listens for
emergency broadcast 	packets, outputs to transmitter.

Server systems:
Studio: Encodes live broadcasts and streams them out.
Community: Generators community based news and information stream.

Custom Software Suite:
Clients: Would manage multiple streams, listen for emergency packets. Will
have an easy to use graphical 	scheduling system.
Server: Easy to use GUI, one button record, etc.

I know allot of the stuff we want to do has been done already but we just
need to put it all together.

Thank you if read this and could give me some feed back.