Scanner Equipment
The Computer:
The computer used to provide all audio feeds is an HP EliteDesk 800 Mini. Intel 4 cores i5-6500T CPU @ 2.50 GHz with 16 Gb memory running Windows 10. The computer runs 24 hrs a day and its only function is to run the software that permits the feeds to operate.
Scanners:
There are five Uniden scanners and one usb SDR (Software Defined Radio) dongle RTL2832U from RTL-SDR.com
OPP police scanner: BCD996T
EMS: BCT15X
Control Tower 1: BCT15X
Control Tower 2: BC350C
Toronto Centre: BCT15
Fire Department, Grand River Transit and Waterloo Airport: RTL2832U
Audio Software:
Six instances of BUTT audio streamer
SDRTrunk handles the RTL2832U dongle
Audio Cards/Devices
Four USB audio adapter external sound cards (similar to this)
The computer ‘Mic In’ jack connection
Multicoupler:
This powered antenna splitter is plugged into a household outlet, and lets me split a single antenna feed to the five scanners and the RTL2832U. At the time it cost me 25 cents, but shipping was $17.00. Reception quality actually increased after splitting.
The System:
The Five scanners and RTL2832U dongle are connected to the same antenna in my attic through the Antenna Multicoupler. The multicoupler has four output connections, but by using a couple of regular TV cable splitters, I was able to split the splitter so to speak, and reception is still outstanding.
When a desired frequency becomes active in a scanner, audio is sent to one of the audio input/USB audio devices. The audio from the devices is processed by BUTT to an MP3 format and sent to Icecast for delivery to the internet.
The software sdrtrunk uses the VB virtual audio cable to stream the Fire department to a copy of BUTT. This same copy of sdrtrunk has the ability to simultaneously send an MP3 stream directly to icecast without the need for BUTT or an audio device. Two different streams are handled this way.
This all ends up creating eight independant MP3 audio streams. An MP3 audio player available on various pages of this website has access to Icecast on my computer and you hear the audio after pressing ‘Play’.