Setting up a stream yourself? (Page 4 of 5)

In search of the central mind...

A lot of small radios could merge in to one bigger entity where some kind of peer to peer relaying system would alloy a lot of people to listen to the same stream broadcasted from anypoint of the network according to a predetermined schedule governed by the central mind. I could perhaps contribute with some kind of freak show IF the technical stuff is solved and a central mind is established somewhere.

Hopefully internet radio will be available everywhere in the future. The reason I wasn't tuning into the CBS frequently: I was at work or in the car or simply not at home where it is easy to connect to internet radio.

@autobass:

An idea could be that the main server streams music from other radios... like, every hour it connects to another station, based on a scheduled rotation and so on..

Don't know, just my two cents...

That is exactly what i was thinking. I just read about peercast and then noticed your already using it for streaming. NICE!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeerCast

-With p2p networking and different stations involved we can have diverse coverage that could better serve all robot listeners.
-Also one off broadcasts from any location with broadband are possible without seting up servers or paying for more bandwidth.
-Ideally the more people are tuned in the better the "signal"...altho swarms aren't supported yet...other peoples disconnecting could cause more disconnects/buffering....it's all beta...hehe...we should go for it!

well I would say that the definition of genres can bring a lot of clashing between people... For me, for instance, I like electro and italo but I like
ambient and experimental as well...

I was thinking of a "free hour" where you can play whatever you like, even farting on the mic or discussing about how to cook insects...
and if the link to your station is not online, the system will play a recorded stream/general selection of tracks up to the next hour where somebody
else shall provide the stream, and so on...

More like a central aggregator of streams, who participates fill in the various slots that are arranged according to a schedule.

So for instance, let's say that it's me, autobass and mensch participating.

at 8 am the "master server" (MS from now on) picks Mensch stream, then at 9 am it drops Mensch's and picks mine... then at 10am it is the turn
of autobass streaming hour... then all over again (since it's just the three of us; with more people you can have more schedule).
Let's say that my stream is not available for whatever reason (line, app not running, sleeping Alex, etc). 5 minutes before the MS will check if the
link to my stream is up and running. If so, at 9 it will do the switch (either with a introductory jingle/raw cut/etc) and then I get my timeslot.
If 5 minutes before my hour my stream is not available, the MS will preload a 1 hour selection (either a mp3 file or a playlist) to be substituted to
my slot.... Then maybe another check at 1 minute before start to make it sure that I am really offline and then start with the substitute program
or my stream.

I hope it is clear what I have in mind, if not tell me and I will try to explain it in a more "graphical" way
Alex

no what i mean is a shared stream takes a little organisation but in my opinion it is better than 20 single streams by everybody

Sounds like a plan then

So you would still be able to connect to separate streams? The servers/users that would be transmitting wouldn't be relaying at the same time? So who or what would be relaying the signal? I'm sorry this is still a bit hazy to me but sounds like an exciting approach

Jingles definately, we can distribute those to the network to make it appear more of a community. Should we think up a name for the network, or would it be called just "Robots for Robots"? I think it backs up the p2p idea nicely... or should I say "R4R"?

@Robot Monster
You perfectly understood the mechanics... also, it looks that your line is very capable, so you could be the Master Server...
Through this PeerCast the stream distribution is not a big problem, what we have to tackle is how to acquire the various streams...
Personally I would prefer to have a "live slot" rather than sending in files, so that I can still have my radio running if I want to listen to my music
while I am not at home (and for other people as well).

Are you running a unix or a windows box? if you have Linux/BSD/any Unix I can try to set up some shell scripts that can handle the
check/switching if we are using shoutcast...

I have a small server at home and some around, I can make some testing, but it would be nice if you are available as well.

no problems, tell me if you need remote help as well with a *nix box, I eat 300 of them every day all around the world

R4R is nice - kinda aped from P2P and the forum name

I'll try the peercast thingy next weekend when I'm at home. Everything P2P related is thorougly blocked at work  I hope this is just an exception and being at work won't completeley prevent robots from tuning in.

sounds familiar. i think audioasyl implemented something like that. if need be i could see if we can learn from them somehow. there were robots from audioasyl on the cbs forum though, just not sure it any of the technical guys.