Yet again a multi day update, apologies all!

It has been like Christmas with lots of kit arriving this week including a couple of key components of the studio.

We are missing a couple of photos at the moment so please forgive the wall of text and I will update it when we take some more.

Actually scratch that here is a picture that tells a thousand words!

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So we have :

  • New electrics (replacing the state of the Ark stuff)
  • New curtains (Sarah has been hard at work)
  • Painting of the equipment rack/area.
  • Monitor stand arrived and fitted with re-enforced base as the counter isn’t solid.
  • First monitor mounted
  • Desk cut for mixer added,  re-enforcing frame made and side and top covers built and fitted.   Note the fancy brass screws with collars, we can do classy.
  • 3G/4G router arrived, tested and fitted onto custom shelf.
  • External antenna arrived, mounted, tested (it is very good).
  • UPS arrived and fitted using custom frame and mounting.
  • Keyboard and mouse arrived
  • VOIP phone tested over 3G connection.
  • All the bloody doors are no longer off… more frames do need painting…
  • Foam has been purchased and cut for the new bench seat.
  • More cabling has been ordered to connect up the main desk.
  • had to shoo out some curious chickens while we have been working 🙂
IMG_1404
Apologies for the mess, we are having a “tidy” day tomorrow 🙂 Well I say we, I mean Mark.

This beast is the Uninterruptible Power System,  or in plain English it is a clever box with some big batteries inside it.  It has two key functions :

  • It conditions the power coming in so we have stable electrics which is important for computers and audio equipment.  This is particularly important for when we are running on generator power.
  • It provides emergency runtime if the power is interrupted.   This means we can power down equipment safely so it isn’t damaged. Or if capacity allows, continue running while the generator is refuelled.

The downside to this awesomeness is that it is quite heavy and what you can’t see is a lot of very sturdy framework holding it in place but we are really pleased with how utterly rock solid the mountings are.

I will make a quick mention of the router we have purchased,  as we are an internet radio station the internet bit is rather important, without it we can’t broadcast from any event.  So the router we have purchased has a couple of key features including :

  • Dual SIM,  so if one network goes down or isn’t available we can fail over to the alternative.
  • 3G and 4G compatible, we can use whatever signal we can get and we are ready for 4G networks.
  • Can use external internet too, so if there is internet on a site we can connect up to it is suitable without any changes to the network (saves on mobile data costs, did we mention our fundraiser? 🙂 )
  • Lots of technical stuff including QOS, VPN stuff, VLANs and all sorts of other stuff that means we can do a lot of whizzy network magic stuff to make the best use of whatever we have.

Oh we also have a socking big full band 3G/4G antenna on a mast 🙂  Put it this way if we are not getting a signal, nobody is getting a signal 🙂  (Will post pictures later).

On a personal note I would like to put in that I am used to working to tight budgets but you wouldn’t believe the amount of time we have spent on trying to get the right equipment at the best possible price.  In other news I don’t want to ever look at a website about conduit/cable trunking ever again.

 

 

tig

Does "computery stuff", looks after the servers, audio processing and the Longside Radio Android App. Any problems with our technical stuff please let me know! If it is not broken I will fix it 🙂

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