tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-129749672012-01-25T00:58:14.519-06:00A public radio engineering blogJohn McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07646434903168071106noreply@blogger.comBlogger461100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-15663731474263917252010-03-11T09:21:00.001-06:002010-03-11T09:22:35.803-06:00

I just got a Jira project enabled from Computer Services. I wanted to try the XMLRPC interface for this software, which is much like it is for Confluence. After a little experimentation, I was successful creating an issue from a Python script. The trickiness comes from the fact that CS requires some extra fields to be filled in, and figuring out the format was a pain. But the code is prety

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15065223059436916448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-52743074980123196982010-02-04T17:10:00.003-06:002010-02-04T17:14:38.044-06:00

I was successful in creating a new page and in posting to the blog in my personal space thanks to some info here. Python comes with everything needed to use the interface. An example script consists of these parts: from xmlrpclib import Server s = Server("https://server/rpc/xmlrpc") token = s.confluence1.login("user", "password") Now you can use many of the API functions. For instance you can

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15065223059436916448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-38805120836536455612010-01-15T14:32:00.001-06:002010-01-15T14:32:08.554-06:00

I fixed some broken download links in the blog posts for SPLAT Win32 and some other software. I had retired a server that the files were hosted on and forgot to migrate them until someone pointed out the links didn't work.

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15065223059436916448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-6225205737763144282010-01-14T17:10:00.000-06:002010-01-14T17:10:14.255-06:00

Austin Wright (VE3NCQ) has been working on a new graphical interface for the Windows port of SPLAT v1.3. The new interface lets you specify the command line parameters in a more friendly way for those of you who don't like typing. You can check it out on his site. You can find the creator of SPLAT, John Magliacane,  here.

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15065223059436916448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-6148818654001436152009-07-22T16:39:00.002-05:002009-07-22T16:47:55.133-05:00

I haven't been able to keep up with the SPLAT development for a while now. Fortunately, another ham (VE3NCQ) has been working on it too. I would like to thank Austin Wright for helping to keep this valuable tool available for as many as possible. Ain't Open Source great!

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15065223059436916448noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-38529364872551458902008-08-26T10:20:00.002-05:002010-06-14T16:44:10.058-05:00

Sorry I haven't gotten this out the door sooner. SPLAT! 1.2.3 from John Magliacane has some bug fixes and accuracy improvements. More info is in the documentation. One feature that someone on the blog requested was the ability to save the GnuPlot temp files for post processing (re-scaling, etc.). This is the new -gpsav option. Please let me know if you have any problems. If you are wondering

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15065223059436916448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-25970226503510622662008-06-05T14:48:00.002-05:002010-06-14T16:44:55.596-05:00

I ran into some problems caused by the compiler trying to "optimize" some of the math routines, so after a lot of troubleshooting, I lowered the optimization level to -O1. Version 1.2.2 for Windows is ready to use. Please let me know if you have any problems. If you are wondering what SPLAT! is, see this previous post. http://people.missouristate.edu/jmcmellen/software/splat-1.2.2-win32.zip

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15065223059436916448noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-29905486905175929752008-04-11T11:45:00.001-05:002008-04-11T11:56:31.522-05:00

Orban announced today a public beta of a software Loudness Meter for Windows. The free download can be found here.Here is an excerpt from the press release:ORBAN INTRODUCES FREE LOUDNESS/LEVEL METERING SOFTWARESan Leandro, CA, April 10, 2008 Orban todayannounced that the first public beta of OrbanLoudness Meter software for Windows XP and Vistais now available for free download from www.orban.com

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15065223059436916448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-189827827960685412008-03-28T16:06:00.005-05:002010-06-14T16:45:28.346-05:00

We had been using a Sine Systems CTI-2 temperature interface to get the outdoor temperature into our automation system. We recently developed a cable problem between the probe and the interface which prevented accurate readings. After some thought, I wrote this little program to simulate the response of the unit while getting temperature data from the National Weather Service. We have been using

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15065223059436916448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-5980959187327916792008-02-07T09:52:00.000-06:002008-02-07T10:03:29.977-06:00

Doug Lung, a columnist for TV Technology magazine, recently featured the Windows version of Splat! in his RF Technology column. The article provides a good overview of how to use Splat! in Windows for generating Longley-Rice coverage data and maps.

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15065223059436916448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-76854225290852332172008-01-12T09:57:00.000-06:002008-01-12T10:12:31.221-06:00

An engineer at public radio station KPLU, Lowell Kiesow, has shared a modification to the Comstream ABR700 demods that are now in use for the Squawk channel. This mod implements an EbNo Threshold Alarm contact that is listed in the manual, but was not installed by the PRSS. It is useful to set this as a way of getting notified of satellite system problems, most often as a "snow in the dish" alarm

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15065223059436916448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-27933020010347172972007-11-15T11:21:00.000-06:002007-11-15T16:16:37.050-06:00

The analog FM program audio and the main digital audio are supposed to be synchronized very closely to produce a clean blend between analog and digital when necessary at the receiver. With some work, you can synchronize these down to within a few samples. The problem now, depending on your installation, is keeping it synchronized. A lot of stations are finding that their digital signal drifts in

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15065223059436916448noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-59853933652734093802007-11-05T13:33:00.000-06:002007-11-13T11:02:13.013-06:00

A thread on Pubtech about SNMP management prompted me to do a little searching on IT infrastructure monitoring and notification. Intermapper has been around for a while, but I didn't feel like hassling with trial serial numbers to try it out since it is commercial software. I did find a great project called OpenNMS. This is open source, free software, and it does a lot. It has been under

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15065223059436916448noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-17436190576641159462007-09-13T16:05:00.006-05:002010-06-14T16:46:26.597-05:00

Many are probably familiar with John Magliacane's RF Signal Propagation, Loss, And Terrain analysis software (SPLAT!). This software is useful for visualizing terrain and performing Longley-Rice path loss and coverage prediction using the Irregular Terrain Model. It had been only available for the Linux OS. I was able to compile it for Windows with a few minor modifications. This is a command

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15065223059436916448noreply@blogger.com69tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-21770600942397074762007-06-30T11:13:00.000-05:002007-06-30T11:18:31.557-05:00

Moseley has released a tech bulletin about a problem with a batch of their Starlink RF STL's. The modem cards develop a significant jitter problem in the oscillators made by Greenray, which causes high BER and audio problems. More information is in the tech bulletin.http://www.moseleysb.com/mb/service_bulletin/starlink_9003q_service_bulletin_ocxo.pdf

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15065223059436916448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-23611410199381771472007-05-23T09:02:00.000-05:002007-11-06T11:09:26.950-06:00

One of the big obstacles to me of getting an idea off the ground is being able to try it out, prototype it, play around with it, before you try to explain the idea to others. I have read about all the great things people are doing with web 2.0 technologies like blogs and wiki's, but it is not always easy to get some space on the web server to try these kinds of things out, nor do you always want

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15065223059436916448noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-61928250880565800622007-04-19T09:52:00.000-05:002007-05-23T09:02:16.362-05:00

What a great conference this year! I attended the PREC in 2005, and I feel like this year was even better than the first. As soon as I get some time, I want to try to summarize some of the things I learned here and at the NAB Broadcast Engineering Conference. Also, keep watching the APRE site as they will be posting many of the presentations and other material from the conference (I think even

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15065223059436916448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-29002002738602584872007-03-22T11:38:00.000-05:002007-10-08T17:59:40.914-05:00

http://www.nprlabs.org/apre/

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15065223059436916448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-82714808854522263492007-02-20T15:38:00.002-06:002010-06-14T16:47:06.177-05:00

As I mentioned in part 1, the WSH and some VBScript can be used to do more than move files around. Another use is in parsing the data in files. Parsing text files is very easy to do, but there are no built-in functions for accessing binary data. You will find, however, that others have made up for this shortcoming by implementing their own classes for manipulating binary files. See for example

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15065223059436916448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-64332813991577349082007-01-30T14:01:00.002-06:002010-06-14T16:47:32.970-05:00

Several recent projects converged on a single need to automate basic server tasks, such as synchronizing folder contents, media conversion, etc. My first priority was to pull special "promo" audio files off of our Content Depot storage receiver and put them in another safe location so that our staff could edit them or otherwise use them in their spot production without having to navigate the

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07646434903168071106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-1165949573555358572006-12-12T12:52:00.000-06:002006-12-12T16:34:11.643-06:00

Here are some resources on syncing computers to Content Depot with NTP.Microsoft pages showing how to configure Windows Time service to use the Content Depot receiver as an NTP source.Windows XPhttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/314054/Windows 2000http://support.microsoft.com/kb/216734/I posted previously about using the Meinberg NTP software to monitor the Content Depot devices NTP servers to

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07646434903168071106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-1156387090192688362006-08-23T21:27:00.000-05:002006-09-08T10:33:29.616-05:00

I wrote this in an email to a colleague who asked how I tested our network connection over our Starlink STL. I wanted to save it for future reference.----------------------------------------------------------Ah, I have not tried using NetCat on Win98. Thanks for the tip. I just pinged myself over UDP on my XP box. On one command prompt, I ran the program like this:nc.exe -u -L -p 5002On a second

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07646434903168071106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-1155931874060262432006-08-18T14:55:00.000-05:002006-08-18T15:14:39.783-05:00

Start here and work backwards.A lot of really good points are made. What I benefitted from is a reminder that the real thing thing that listeners are interested in is content. The project really has just begun when the digital transmitter is installed. The biggest investment of effort will inevitably be in developing more content or perhaps new features that will make consumption easier. Also,

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07646434903168071106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-1155759704079530982006-08-16T15:15:00.000-05:002006-08-16T15:30:43.903-05:00

I read this article in the Wall Street Journal (mentioned here) about a potential financial crisis facing satellite radio companies. It seemed to highlight to me that terrestrial broadcasting's strength continues to be that it is free and hopefully stations will use their HD Radio multicast capability to offer interesting new content instead of more of what is already available in their

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07646434903168071106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-1155071339879803002006-08-08T15:48:00.000-05:002006-08-08T16:15:49.830-05:00

I had a very interesting meeting today about how we would plan to use the new technologies that are emerging to offer new services. I have been thinking a lot lately about what radio can do well in this new world we live in. Google and other search engines have dramatically changed how we are informed. In the old days, if you wanted to know about something, you would tune in and find out. Or if

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07646434903168071106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-1152122112153555632006-07-05T12:54:00.000-05:002006-08-18T15:12:06.880-05:00

A fellow engineer asked today about how to ping from one side of a one-way network connection to the other to make sure it worked. I thought I would post some ideas that I had found when I was trying to do the same thing.The ping command would work, but only if you had some network monitoring software on the device on the other end that you were pinging because the ICMP echo replies can't get

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07646434903168071106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-1150918353977125932006-06-21T14:03:00.000-05:002006-06-27T11:09:04.893-05:00

I have posted before about using ticket creation software to track repairs, changes and other tasks done by engineering. A couple of months ago an engineer on Pubtech posted a link to the RequestTracker homepage in reference to how his shop keeps records and organizes these support tasks using a ticket based process. Once I got a chance to install and configure this package I was amazed at how

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07646434903168071106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-1145652624704717782006-04-21T15:47:00.000-05:002006-04-21T15:50:25.010-05:00

I found this utility while researching the NTP service that will be available on our new PRSS Content Depot receivers. It can monitor a local NTP service or external ones, and can email you if they are not functioning. This might be useful for knowing if our Content Depot devices develop any problems and warning us.

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07646434903168071106noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-1142536548552949942006-03-16T13:07:00.000-06:002006-03-16T13:15:48.563-06:00

Actually, it is a security feature. I am talking about the extensions of files downloaded from the Internet. The reason it is a good thing is that if the MIME type is an audio file and the extension is exe, then guess what happens when your browser gets the file? It may likely just go ahead an run an executable program that you thought was an audio file. However, Windows does make some stupid

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07646434903168071106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-1139329344623379502006-02-07T10:20:00.000-06:002006-02-07T10:22:24.656-06:00

This free utility claims to be able to dynamically adjust the priority of processes based on how much CPU is in use. Sounds useful, but maybe a little dangerous. I would like to try it.http://www.bitsum.com/ProSuper.asp

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07646434903168071106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-1138121522783871712006-01-24T10:47:00.000-06:002006-01-24T10:52:02.783-06:00

Our Grad Assistant has been working on our content management system. This homegrown application has become more and more important in our operation. It is a new idea for radio. What we used to think of as a content management system was our automation system and all it did was put audio on the air. But now, you have web streaming, podcasting, online archives, RSS, and more in the works. The next

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07646434903168071106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-1138121236917666612006-01-24T10:37:00.000-06:002006-01-24T10:47:16.980-06:00

Broadcasters are beginning to see the value of building Ethernet networks into their physical plant. In the past these networks were used for file based audio playout and automation, but now more streaming audio is being delivered over the network. Appliances such as the Axia Livewire system and Audioscience Cobranet do this in hardware. I have found that for quick setup of audio streaming across

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07646434903168071106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-1130357160588629922005-10-26T14:58:00.000-05:002005-10-26T15:06:00.596-05:00

There are more options available now when it comes to purchasing an Importer for HD Radio transmission. Prophet Systems has an Importer installation that integrates into their NexGen software and allows multiple streams and will send PAD to both Main and Secondary Audio services. This will be helpful to us in planning our upcoming digital radio project.

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07646434903168071106noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-1126628435268042942005-09-13T11:13:00.000-05:002005-09-13T11:42:46.903-05:00

For the first time, I am seriously using IM. It all started when I installed the Google Talk client and messaged some of my family that I had sent Gmail invitations to. After reading about the client and network, I found that it uses the Jabber protocol for the IM portion. I had heard of Jabber before, but never got around to using it. My first thought was: Could I use this open-standards based

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07646434903168071106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-1126626793634483332005-09-13T10:46:00.001-05:002005-09-13T10:53:14.560-05:00

We are beta testing a new podcast module for our automation system. The software is called "Pod XLR8R". It looks like it will make it very easy for radio stations to generate podcasts using the same production processes as they use for normal operations. I am looking forward to using the software to podcast some of our locally produced programs.

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07646434903168071106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-1124124628260772992005-08-15T11:49:00.000-05:002005-08-15T11:50:28.266-05:00

Reminder to self: work in some time to update the blog.

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07646434903168071106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-1119878549939731552005-06-27T08:21:00.000-05:002005-07-08T17:34:21.846-05:00

An interesting research project sponsored by a major car manufacturer that has been talked about in the blog world.http://www.roadcasting.org/finalDesign.htmlIt would take a long time to match the market share of broadcast radio, but it is still a neat idea.

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07646434903168071106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-1119639391571708152005-06-24T13:39:00.000-05:002005-06-24T13:56:31.576-05:00

After doing a lot of research about various digital multichannel formats, I found that there are a few MPEG standards already for multichannel audio files. The most intriguing to me from a practical standpoint is the MPEG2 standard. NPR uses MPEG1 Layer2 for audio files delivered over Content Depot at 256 kbps. The MPEG2 Layer2 audio stream is backwards compatible with the MPEG1 Layer2 stream but

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07646434903168071106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-1119623568776739412005-06-24T09:13:00.000-05:002005-06-24T09:40:05.796-05:00

A good read -- a three part series about solving IT problems and implementing new systems.http://www.computerworld.com/q?53370http://www.computerworld.com/q?53699http://www.computerworld.com/q?54800The author demonstrates that the principles apply to other disciplines, like architecture. I like the "define, design, build" approach. I know this stuff goes without saying, but sometimes I like to

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07646434903168071106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-1119471901193362572005-06-22T19:04:00.000-05:002005-06-24T08:45:01.023-05:00

A series of presentations at the 2005 NAB show about IT in broadcasting (Radio World 6/8/2005 p. 34) got me to thinking. Why can't I apply some of the principles of software development and IT management to our station's operation? For my own benefit, if no one else's, I looked around for a lightweight trouble-tracking software package. I found a free personal version of Issueview, which allows

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07646434903168071106noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-1119237129881049842005-06-20T08:37:00.000-05:002005-06-20T08:40:37.290-05:00

GIS is all about mapping stuff. I found some links to free GIS software. The US Census Tiger database is also available for download. Now all I have to do is think of things to map. Like our stations coverage in analog and digital transmission. Use your imagination.http://spatialnews.geocomm.com/features/viewers2002/http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/index.htmlAlso, the coverage contour maps

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07646434903168071106noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-1118944286268595672005-06-16T16:50:00.000-05:002005-06-16T14:54:41.266-05:00

A recent issue of Network Computing led me to a suite of free or low cost utilities intended for providing syslog function in Windows at http://www.kiwisyslog.com/products.htm. Among these are a utility that can pull text input from a serial port and send it to a syslog server over the network. It may be possible to pull EAS log messages from our EAS encoders and send them over the network,

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07646434903168071106noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-1118952471176199042005-06-16T15:04:00.000-05:002005-06-16T15:07:51.180-05:00

A brief but good overview of best practices for equipment rack wiring at Network Computing.http://www.nwc.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=163104981

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07646434903168071106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-1117373850522152922005-05-29T08:13:00.000-05:002005-05-29T08:39:14.936-05:00

I read an article in Network World about the car of the future and the networking technology that will improve things like navigation and mobile entertainment. What bothered me is that nowhere was there any mention of terrestrial FM or AM radio. In this particular article, satellite radio provides the delivery of mobile data and content services, while WiFi is used to download even more data from

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07646434903168071106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-1116855674655736632005-05-23T08:34:00.000-05:002005-05-23T08:41:14.660-05:00

I found some information and free software for network testing at http://dast.nlanr.net/Projects/Iperf/. The Iperf program is also available for handheld computers running Familiar Linux. Gives me an idea for testing network bandwidth and other parameters, especially important since more and more stuff is getting transported over IP these days.

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07646434903168071106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12974967.post-1116357872660913332005-05-17T14:14:00.000-05:002005-05-17T15:44:15.876-05:00

While researching ways to create surround content, I came across a very useful program called BeSweet which allows you to encode multiple sound files into a variety of multichannel formats. I can't wait to tinker with it. Combine multichannel audio files with a technology like Axia Livewire and you can send discrete uncompressed multichannel sound all over the place.Free test audio files

John McMellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07646434903168071106noreply@blogger.com0