Category → Feed and Site News
Channels Added for First Night
Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
In preparation of Boston’s First Night celebration, we have added Boston PD Channel 1 and 12 to the feed. We anticipate traffic on both channels in support of the First Night celebration. We will be monitoring the feed throughout the night, and if traffic on the regular district channels become more interesting we will remove them from the feed.
Possible Streaming Issue
Due to a large scale power outage in the entire Southwestern United States, the data center that provides our Icecast server (stream.bostonpdlive.com) is currently operating on generator power. The shift to generators was seamless, and they expect to be able to remain operational during the outage. We will continue to monitor the situation, and will make alternate arrangements should there be long term downtime.
Note, this does note effect our feed at RadioReference.
We will post updates in the comments section as we receive them.
Help Us Improve
We are looking for ways to improve this feed, and this site. Please send us your feed back through the Contact Us page on the website and let us know how you think we could make this even better for everyone who is listening.
Feed Down (Resolved)
Issue resolved, see below
The feed is currently down due to an unknow issue at the feed site. We are currently looking into the issue, however have no estimation about a return. As soon as possible the issue will be resolved. Follow our Twitter for up to the minute updates.
Update- 8:00pm
The feeds are currently back operational and appear to be stable. The issue may have stemmed from a power outage in the area the feed computer is located in. We do not currently anticipate any additional downtime due to this issue.
Feed change for 4th of July
In preparation for the large celebration along the Charles River with the Boston Pops, we will be adding in Channel 1 to the scan list. The addition will take place around 6pm, and will be set as the priority. We will do our best to monitor the traffic and adjust as needed.
Should a listener hear anything or experience issues, please contact us through the Contact page above or on Twitter @BPDLive.
BPDLive on Facebook
We have added a page for Boston PD Live on Facebook. You can “like” our page by going to http://www.facebook.com/pages/BostonPDLive/242020195811150 or clicking the link in the side bar of this website. Our Twitter account (@BPDLive) will also post updates as we add them to the Facebook wall.
Recent changes to feed structure
As a result of the issues that Radio Reference experienced with their servers last night we have significantly changed how this feed is provided. These changes were made today, and if you follow our Twitter (@BPDLive) you would have seen what we were doing in live time.
Prior to today we have provided the feed solely through Radio Reference using the software they recommended (ScannerCast). This was a quick and light set up, however posed some limitations, mainly we could only serve text tags to the Radio Reference server. That was never an issue, and we had not expected any major issues as Radio Reference appeared to be a very stable platform. However, when their server went off line for 6+ hours without help we decided to change our set up to be more flexible and allow us to provide the feed with tags on our own Icecast server.
We are now providing the feed to both Radio Reference and our Icecast server (at stream.bostonpdlive.com) using software called RadioFeed from the same author as ProScan. RadioFeed allows us to stream text tags in real time to both Radio Reference and Icecast, which allows us to keep going even if one of the two goes down. Both are currently up and running without issues at this time. This set up will also allow us to control the scanner without losing text tags should we need to.
Currently our Icecast server is limited to 10 connections. We are monitoring the traffic that the server receives and if needed with upgrade the server to allow more connections. It also appears that the Icecast server is slightly closer to “real time” than the Radio Reference server. While we were working on the feed computer we also made some minor adjustments to improve the audio quality.
We will add the information on how to connect to the Icecast server to the “Listen” page in the near future.
Feed Issues (Resolved)
UPDATE: As of 12:00 the feed is back online at Radio Reference. The connection information below will still work for the time being.
Tonight we were informed that the server for our feed at Radio Reference was going to be down indefinitely. We have set up the following for temporary access to the feed.
First, you can access our Icecast server at stream.bostonpdlive.com. Use mount point /BPD. Click this link to connect directly in your favorite media player.
Currently, we are streaming the text tags to this server. If your player supports them, they should be working.
We are aggravated with this issue, and have been informed that Radio Reference has no plans to fix the issue until the morning at the earliest. This is a frustrating turn of events, however we are doing our best to keep the feed available. Please stay with us as this matter is in the hands of Radio Reference, and not BPDLive. See THIS POST at Radio Reference for more on what is going on.
Note: The Icecast server is currently limited to 10 connections. Should this become popular, we will monitor the usage and increase the size as needed.
Antenna Change
Today we switched over to a new antenna system, and it appears to have resolved all of the reception issues with channels 3 and 4.
