Disturbing News at TSO Concert

[jim6918]

Last night there were 8 of us (family and friends) at the 8PM TSO concert in Colorado Springs. Around 915, one of my son's friends texted him and said that he was sitting in front of our house and all that was coming over the FM was static. We had departed well before the show started so I didn't have the opportunity to know if everything was working like I usually do at showtime. The FM transmitter is on a timer and comes on about an hour before showtime, and of course the show starts automatically at 530. Needless to say I wavered between thinking about the lack of audio and trying to convince myself that the kids FM radio was crap. It has worked flawless every night for two seasons now. It was kind of hard to concentrate, despite the hot blondes (and a new hot brunette this year) in the concert.

We didn't get home until after midnight, but I still fired up a quick show and checked the audio which was crystal clear.

Good thing the concert was 60 miles away or I might have been tempted to run home to check.

Got church tonight so can't be here all the time. Hope everything is OK since we have only one week to go. This would be the only major hiccup all year.

[garyfunk]

That makes me think I need to develop a way so that a show can be monitored and controlled from an Android phone. All the software is already available and open source, I just need to put all the pieces together and tie it into a single application.



Thanks for the idea Jim.



Gary

[jim6918]

I agree. Everybody and anybody who I could trust to get into the house and diagnose, reboot, etc., was with me at the concert. I really don't expect my nighbors to monitor the FM to make sure its working. I could potentially see an app that might notify you either through an e-mail or text message that the Show Player has crashed, but if the audio is out how could we ever tell it unless we were close enough to monitor.

Leaving for two days tomorrow, hope things are OK tonight. Still got a feeling either that the kid's radio was on the fritz or he had set the wrong freq.

Of course how could he possibly not know the right frequency?????

http://lightorama.mywowbb.com/forum79/24496.html

[garyfunk]

Monitoring the audio is the easy part. You tune a radio to your frequency and feed the output into a computer that acts as a web server. You can then stream the audio and check it via your Android phone.

[jim6918]

OK, now I'm really scaring myself. I really do understand what you are getting at. I host a small web server at work and it doesn't take much of a machine to run. I have a spare laptop here that could be turned into a web server.

Of course in last nights case, there still wasn't much I could have done from that distance, but knowing that it was working would have allowed me to focus more on the blondes.

I think I will be PM'ing you after the first of the year when things slow down.

[garyfunk]

That's great Jim. Maybe we should look at setting up a couple of workshops in 2011 just so we can all meet and work on display items.

[friskybri]

I sometimes call my neighbor and she turns on the audio. I did have one night where I raced home and fixed the problem. My neighbor is my biggest supporter of what I am doing.

[garyfunk]

I also use my Android to remote into my servers, which lets me remote into any workstation. I can then correct any problem that does not require hands-on to the equipment.