David Moisan's Blog: SATV

SATV Cablecast Renovation about to get underway

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:09:16 GMT

Starting tomorrow, SATV will go off the air for an upgrade. We will get shiny new equipment, and I'm blogging the whole thing! Our first step is to demolish the old console. I expect we'll find surprises like this:

This cable formerly powered one of the PC's in Cablecast. It went down one day, and this is what I found!

Monitoring SATV with the SuperGoose

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:00:54 GMT

One thing that is very important to any IT shop is environmental monitoring. There are too many instances of overheated or soggy servers these days, especially as more servers are outside traditional datacenter spaces as in them. We wanted our cablecast area, and other critical areas like our server room to be monitored for temperature and water detection.

We went with an inexpensive box from ITWatchdogs.com:

This is the SuperGoose. It can accept 16 digital sensors and three analog inputs. In practice, we use digital temperature sensors and analog water sensors. It is web-based and allows alerts to be sent based on conditions. As you can see, it also has a digital display and an alarm.

To avoid running more wire throughout the building, I built some breakout boxes from common network components from Home Depot and Radio Shack so I could use an unused network drop to run both the digital and analog sensors to remote locations and permit expansion in the future.

This is the master breakout box that goes to remote sensors in the Control Room and Engineering. I’ve made the wiring diagram available [PDF].

One thing you need to know if you do your own sensor wiring with this system: The documentation is wrong! Documents on the ITWatchdogs site give two different pinouts for the digital sensors. Neither one is correct.

The digital sensors need conductors 2, 3 and 4 passed straight-through to the Goose—no crossover cables! You’ll probably run into this when you reuse old RJ11 phone cables for your sensors; almost all of them are crossed. MilesTek sells straight-through RJ11 cables cheap—use them!

The analog sensors are straightforward; just one contact and ground.

The SuperGoose works fine; the only thing I wish for is a web page on the Goose that indicated active alarms at a glance. The Goose makes the data and log available so it’s possible I could write an app or a Vista gadget to indicate alarms.

It’s an inexpensive solution that I highly recommend for small shops.

Moving forward: Changes at SATV

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:22:39 GMT

We’ve been talking for years about upgrading our cablecast plant. I’ve described it in an earlier post, Information Technology and Coping with the Second Energy Crisis. You may also remember the problems I had in there a few months ago, mentioned in passing, Why Johnny is not a Tech, and also our problems ensuring access for the visually impaired, Future of SATV's Audible Bulletin Board on my other blog.

We’re purchasing a system from Tightrope Media Systems, our current vendor. I’m sure their tech support staff (Hi, Jeremy!) will be so happy!

The installation will start around August 20th, and I will blog the whole process with pictures.

Webcasts and SATV

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 19:54:40 GMT

[SATV studios, before the Haunted Happenings Parade]

SATV gets a mention in a Boston Globe article in the North local section of Sunday's paper:

Salem Access Television is currently offering some limited on-demand programming on its website, said its executive director, Sal Russo.
The organization plans to expand that feature next year, when it has completed computerizing its cablecast playback operation, and to eventually offer Web streaming, he said.
"The initial reason to do it is to make your programming more available to your community members who cannot watch it when it's on the channels," because of their schedules, Russo said. "But the ultimate benefit is that anyone can see it once it's available on the Web, which is a good thing."

I've written about our cablecast operation before. We've done experiments with live streaming, the most recent being the Haunted Happenings parade, but we've never been able to offer this full-time.

There is a lot of material we could air over the web if we had the means to do so. Right now, we're using Ustream.tv for live programming, after looking all over for a streaming provider we could afford. I want to put the Salem Commission on Disabliities meetings online and am trying to move things forward with the city on that goal.

We have Windows Media Services on our SBS box. It works great. We just don't have the bandwidth to self-host our operations. (Per usual best practices, our web site is hosted at a third party.)

For us, and most other access facilities, we can only move in baby steps as our funding permits. I'm not comfortable relying on a Web 2.0 provider like Ustream, but that's the best we can do. The facility in Newburyport uses blip.tv so we're not alone.

Our engineer is supposed to arrive to start construction on the new cablecast in January. I have promised to be the first to take a sledgehammer to the old, and fervently hated, wooden cabinets.

Original article: Webcasts bring local access cable TV shows to the world - The Boston Globe

[Crossposted to A Salem Blog]