Richad

Dear members, visitors, supporters, casual observers, I have to confess something, I have not been as active on the forums and the website as I should have been. You see I have a severe illness. I cant divulge what it is but it will be with me for the rest of my life. Nobody knows how long that is. Its been tough juggling life and the internet at the same time. So this is my apology, I am sorry I have not given each and every one of you the attention you deserve. I will do my very best to not let this happen again. Feel free to abuse me in this post or let your displeasure known but as I said, I will make sure that I give attention to this website and its members - as I should have continued doing as in the past. One last thing, thank you for stick around and still being there, visiting, checking out my content and listening to my stream. Thank you! Richad out! -------------------------------------------- AUTO MERGE Asshole hehe

All fixed, sorry for the trouble I caused you!

All fixed.

Good question flash.... There is an echo in here its so empty. I am about to make some major site upgrades. This includes new software but also new content. Heres hoping that this will revive Scanner Australia. Would be a shame for it to disappear. Ive invested countless hours on this site - all the way back to 2006. I cant believe that we are now 12 years old!

Can anyone guess what happened between the 25/11/14 and 25/12/14 for the listener number to peak like this? Hint: It happened in Sydney and was highly unpleasant......

If you ever wanted to know what powers the broadcasts, read on. I unfortunately did not have time to go into too much detail, but you can always open a support ticket if you would like to find out more information. On first read, you may think that the hardware is overkill but there is more going on in the background than just the NSW GRN Stream. This is what I host: NSW/ACT Government Radio Network [Public] South West Sydney Analog Police Network [Private/Under Development] ADS-B ground station processor [Private] NSW/ACT Government Radio Network Unrestricted [Private] Historical Audio Library of Analog Police/Analog GRN/Digital GRN - 10,000 Hours so far [Private/Under Development] All of this combined requires quite a bit of grunt. Anything that is private will probably remain so simply because I do not have the money to sustain the bandwidth or to buy more external hosting. Everything under development will be released sooner or later - when I have the money and time to finish the services. But lets first dive right into the hardware specifications: 2 x Intel Xeon CPUs running at 2.5GHz each with 4 x Physical and Logical Cores each 16gb RAM at 333MHz each - Type DDR2 FB-DIMM - those are EEC modules made for servers. GPU is powered by a NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700 with 512Mb RAM on-board 4 x 256Gb SSD SATA 6Gb/s storage drives plus 1 x 512Gb SSD SATA 6gb/s Server OS Drive plus slow access storage 1 x 1Tb HDD 25 Sensors that monitor the temperatures throughout the casing 4 x Gigabit Ethernet Ports (2 x 2 NIC Teaming which run directly to the CISCO switch) 1 x Atheros AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter only used for emergency up-link to 4g modem in case of router loss 2 x 600Watt Hot swap power supplies iLO access for remote restarts, shutdown and power on Shadow BIOS in case of failure or virus corruption BIOS can be switched easily 1 X Intel 631x/6321 ESB2 - High Definition Audio [A-1] 2 x Prolific USB-to-Serial Comm Port adaptor to connect Digital Scanners 3 x LCD Monitor 24" APC UPS to power equipment for 25 minutes after power loss. Also protects against spikes and brownouts. Not against lightning though! Several Analog and digital scanners from Uniden with 1 x roof mounted antenna for each Additionally: 2 x Raspberry Pi boards for various tasks such as encoding sound and hosting files 2 x Switches (HP/Cisco) 1 x Cisco Router/Modem with 4g fallback 1 x WSUS and PXE Deployment Server 2 Separate networks that operate link a VLAN Network All of this is kept inside a standard server rack to keep dust out. Software Windows Server 2012 R2 VMWare - Windows 10 ENT, Windows 7 ENT, Windows 8.1 ENT ProScan - Broadcast/Scanner Database Management Software QoS Management Software Load Balancing Software BUTT - Mirror of Main Broadcast and instance two for private broadcast* Kasperski Internet Security Visual Studio 2016 for Scanner Australia software development *You probably ask why there is a separate private broadcast. The answer is pretty simple, there are many channels which cannot be broadcast via the internet - either due to sensitive nature or due to request of suppression. Those channels are L/O (locked out) on the public broadcast but open on the private broadcast. Sorry I cannot give access to this - its basically for myself and friends/family if they are interested.

Obviously way too early to celebrate yet - You may have noticed and outage today on the Broadcast. What happened? All I can say is that some SSDs have been installed alongside other "secret" hardware. I have been wracking my brains for years now on how the stream can be more useful - I am shying away from calling it entertainment. After all you are listening to other peoples' misery and sometimes even loss. To me it is a tool that used correctly can be quite powerful. Back to Doppler though. Project has officially started on the drawing board (literally on paper). That being said, the project folders have already been created just waiting to be filled (many are): (Sorry I blanked out some important parts - some shareholders wouldn't like to be named here.) Very Short FAQ How Long will it take to completion? Hopefully second quarter of 2016 What is it? Cant tell. Think along the same lines of this website though Will it be free? I was asked that by friends and family since telling them the details. There will be a free version with restrictions and a paid version restriction free. Money doesn't grow on servers. Stay tuned for the unavoidable need for lab rats - I mean.... Alpha and Beta testers.....cough*

I thought I`d write a bit about the ongoing trend towards the usage of mobile devices to visit and conduct business on a range of websites. Obviously if a website is not compatible with mobile devices, it would be safe to say that most users would move on and find a site that is. While about 75% of my time had been spent over the last year developing content optimized for the notebook and desktop, I have been spending about 20% on making sure that users get an above average experience while visiting Scanner Australia on their mobile or other devices. Current User Experience This is what Scanner Australia looks like on the average mobile device: User experience via mobile devices is at the moment. Which means that: The site is easy to use with the little available screen real-estate. It is accessible to those with vision impairment. Bandwidth usage is being kept to a bare minimum. Upcoming Projects An iPhone and Apple Watch app will be released over the next 6 - 12 months. This will incorporate the Live Broadcasts, facilitate information sharing and hopefully increase community engagement. I will release some interesting Analytics stats in my next blog post.

Mark, can you contact me on admin@scanneraustralia.com? I`d like to find out more about that event. I also have a suggestion. regards, Richad

What happened to the pager feed? Maybe someone should bring this back.

Well not enough votes received - which I have to admit is very disappointing to say the least. This means that no changes will be made. We missed out on some interesting channels such as NSW Police etc.