where listeners can tune into by connecting to the server using a music software package (e.g. Winamp or iTunes). Given the expectation that most of the listeners were based in Europe, VotF hired a SHOUTcast server in Sweden that relayed the audio signal to international listeners. The two most popular events were the Sprint, where a maximum of 145 listeners were connected for 50 minutes on average and the Relay, where a maximum of 167 listeners were connected, averaging 60 minutes per visit. All the interactions of the team with the Internet, i.e. live audio, text commentary, radio controls and results upload, as well as the public forum interaction, were possible thanks to a special variety of broadband internet. Due to the remote nature of the competition areas, and the high tech requirements of the coverage, a fast, reliable and cheap connection to the internet was required. The conventional forms of broadband (e.g. ADSL, Cable) are not available outside metropolitan areas, and Wireless technology depends on area coverage in the same fashion that mobile phones do. Therefore, the best solution was to use Satellite broadband internet. Colin Price, from the JWOC2007 marketing and sponsoring committee, acquired a sponsorship agreement with Clear Networks, which is a growing provider of Satellite Broadband for rural and remote areas, as well as regional centres. Clear Networks not only lent the required equipment, which included a satellite dish and broadband modem, but also the relocation and adjustment of the dish, after each day’s event, and an internet connection that suited our requirements free of charge. Once the system was set up (which only took about 20 minutes) it worked with consistent reliability. A busy moment in the tower. Photo: Richard Talbot
Sportident, Radio controls, Networks, EMMA & Information Overload Bill Jones & Dane Cavanagh
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HE program used to run the events at JWOC, and most other larger events, is OE2003. OESpeaker is an add-on program to extract competitor details from OE and give event commentators organised information to broadcast. Until a competitor has finished and downloaded, the commentator has to make do with little fact and a lot of speculation. Enter the radio control.
A SportIdent control station on a course is connected to a radio link back into the OESpeaker program. When a competitor punches the control, the control number, the SIcard number and the time are instantly relayed to the commentator. The information can have two purposes. One may simply be to warn the commentator of a runner approaching a spectator control. The other is to give the commentator an accurate split time of a runner’s progress to that control. OESpeaker also calculates the runner’s time to that point and sorts the runners/times in order, giving the commentator accurate information to broadcast to the audience.
(For the techo heads: The radios operate in the VHF band at 151.3MHz, with a transmitter power of 100mW and a data transmission rate of up to 2400 bauds. They have a listen-beforetransmit capability to avoid collision with other units. They are also fitted with a modem to convert the digital input signals for radio transmission. Data input speed to the modem can be up to 115200 baud. The modem checks for clear-to transmit and message acknowledgement. It will also retry a preset number of times if the sent message is not acknowledged. The radio modems do require some reasonably simple programming initially. The radios at JWOC were programmed before the event and never changed throughout. The radios can also be easily utilised with one laptop to check if a selected radio link path is viable by using the “ping” function. The radios come with short, flexible whip antennas that are only suitable for short distances, about 200-300 metres. Distance can be increased to about 2 –3 km with a more efficient 1/4 wave antenna mounted well off the ground, or one of the radios can be configured as a repeater, although this requires more comprehensive programming of the radio network). While radio signals were received directly to the tower, we also needed a connection to the finish tent (and networking between all of our computers). We decided very early on to go for a wireless network as opposed to a wired network – this option had fewer cables and no long cable to connect to the finish tent (avoiding the risk of a clumsy spectator taking out the entire network). There were many computers in the finish tent but we only needed to communicate with two of them. One was the backup results and the other was the main results computer. Both these computers were running copies of OE2003 (standard event administration software) for all the individual days and OS2003 for the Relay day. We were using the backup computer for our radio controls so that we could tie in the SportIdent number punched with an entered runner and therefore know their name. The commentary network was set up with an Apple Airport Extreme base station at its centre. We were using WEP protocol for security as some computers would not support the WPA SEPTEMBER 2007 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 11
