all- this is tangentially related to some of the discussions that have taken place here in the past, but i figured i'd float it by folks here as well. lately, my curiousity has been piqued in community radio and community media. however, there's a shortage of options available to folks in this domain. loosely related to the notion of creating a wireless data network within the twin cities metro area is the notion of microcasting content onto the FM spectrum in support of a larger community effort. i've attached some musings in this regard, with the hopes of searching out likeminded/interested folks who might be interested in such a project. for those of you who've secretly longed to be a DJ or host a talk show, or just admire pirate radio operators, this might be just the thing for you. -- steve ulrich sulrich at botwerks.org PGP: 8D0B 0EE9 E700 A6CF ABA7 AE5F 4FD4 07C9 133B FAFC -------------- next part -------------- microcasting in the twin cities metropolitan area Introduction ---------------------------------------------------------------------- recently the walker art center[1] conducted a series of workshops themed "radio re-volt".[2] this was an entertaining and thought provoking series of workshops. personally, i've been quite dissatisfied with the state of local and community radio in the twin cities and this got me to thinking that there might be considerable interst in the community relative to internet based coordinated microcasting. the goals of the walker program were quite noble and the information that they provided was well done. however, in my opinion there wasn't much in the way of coordination after the workshops and practically speaking, there is little satisfaction in broadcasting to yourself. which is all the transmitters provided by the walker program really afforded. what i'm proposing here is a bit grander in scale and perhaps more satisfying from a listeners reached perspective. i'm proposing a network of micro-transmitters which comply with the FCC PAR 15 guidelines, which are fed content from the internet in a coordinated fashion, effectively creating a metro-localized radio network with many, many small transmitters, vs. centralized radio transmission system. allow me to elaborate some of the coarse elements. the challenge ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FCC PAR 15 provides joe/jane american with the ability to run their own transmitter as long as they conform to certain guidelines, primarily focused on the power that they radiate and keeping them from interfering with other transmissions. some time ago the FCC made a series of recommendations to facilitate the use of unused (3rd adjacent frequency) FM spectrum to enhance locally focused community-oriented radio broadcasting. actual action upon these recommendationshas been a tad slow in coming. the establishment and operation of these low power FM (LPFM) stations is a fairly complex process and the barrier of the average joe getting programming content onto them is still fairly challenging. how does a community effectively bootstrap a new radio station without the expenditure of considerable capital in hardware as well as effectively manage the creation of programming content? the RF network ---------------------------------------------------------------------- current commercial transmitters are large high-wattage affairs which are capable of amply blanketing their respective geographic area with their programming. coordinated microcasting, on the other hand, will need to rely on a network of low power transmitters simultaneously broadcasting the same content. by the very nature of the coverage technique in use, coverage will not necessarily be as consistent. small, inexpensive stereo FM transmitters are readily available in kit and assembled form that comply with the specifications of PAR 15. by providing workshops for the assembly and operation of these transmitters, the barrier for involvement in a grassroots microcasting effort can be very effectively lowered. giving people the ability to transmit content is no trivial feat, it will require educating participants in the basics of radio operation. to maximize the effective potential of each node, participants must be armed with a basic diagnostic toolkit and a means of mapping their coverage. this is by no means a comprehensive listing of the challenges associated with deploying a network of microtransmitters for such an application, but merely serve as an outline to stimulate some thinking in this domain regarding the concepts. the content distribution network ---------------------------------------------------------------------- getting transmitters online to broadcoast content is only one part of the challenge, and one not to be minimized. the delivery of this content to the participating transmitters is another sizable challenge. fortunately, we have the internet at our disposal and a host of new p2p content distribution technologies, which can be leveraged. by centrally managing the the scheduling of content via a web based interface the microcasting network can provide fairness and provides a straightforward means for participants to submit their content. to prevent centralized, well connected servers from having to distributed all the content and in turn suck down a large bandwidth bill, the actual distribution of audio content can be handled via p2p file sharing systems. the centralized servers are then only responsible for providing a mechanism to verify the validity of the content (i.e.: verify a hash of the files to be transmitted) as well as provide the scheduling mechanism for the content. the use of a p2p filesharing network does require that content submissions be made available well in advance to give participants sufficient time to acquire the content as well as any alternative content that may be required to fill in programming gaps. additionally, if the microcasting network is to be of effective use as a news source in times of extraordinary events, some mechanism to provide flash override must be developed and built into the system. as i stated before, this is by no means a comprehensive discussion of the challenges and requirements associated with this particular aspect of a microcasting architecture. further research and concerted energies will be required to adequately address this problem. reciprocity (or share and share alike) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- now, the previous items in this discussion focused on some of the coarse technical challenges involved in such an undertaking. there are some corresponding "soft elements" which bear discussion. one of the appealing concepts behind radio is letting other people know what's on your mind or sharing your interests and tastes in a publicly accessible format. the radio re-volt project nicely provided folks with a simple toolkit for engaging in personal broadcasting. however, one quickly gets bored with broadcasting to ones self and neighbors, there is a desire to reach a larger audience and to get exposure to the creations of others. it's this itch, that my microcasting proposal attempts to scratch. when creating a larger construct from several disjoint elements, some mechanism for providing, and dare i say enforcing, fairness is required. the content scheduling tools must insure that all parties have equal and fair access to the available timeslots provided by the network. if someone wants to have broadcast time, they should be willing to devote equal broadcast time to others, for this is would be the very nature of microcasted community radio. things clearly missing from this discussion ---------------------------------------------------------------------- i'm painfully aware that this document doesn't address a whole host of topics and issues. here, i'll attempt to list a few that i'm obviously missing. several of these are social/legal in nature. o copyrights and music - i have no idea what's involved here, and what the legal challenges are with broadcasting music. clearly, if the music is in the public domain and/or licensed under something like the creative commons license then it's not an issue. but if someone wants to put commercially avaiable music onto a community network, what happens there? o decency and those george carlin words - another legal issue, i surmise that there'll be some sort of accountability required for folks that want to submit content to insure that they don't broadcast a couple hours of obscenities. o sources for inexpensive transmitters - to provide effective coverage in a city, you need lots of people w/transmitters and internet access. there are several kits available online from a variety of sources. perhaps bulk purchases can be arranged to drive down the cost, research as to what models and circuits provide the best cost/performance ratio would need to be explored by far better radio nerds than i. o educating folks on what they can transmit - what's appropriate, structuring your show, etc. o educating folks on what needs to be done to submit content. this includes such things as basic audio mixing and recording techniques as well as encoding to a format that can be distributed. o grassroots marketing - you have to have some plan to let people know what to tune into. o diagnostic toolkits - is my transmitter working, or overlapping with my neighbor? what kind of coverage am i getting? lots, lots more ... conclusion ---------------------------------------------------------------------- my purpose in putting this out, into the ether of the community, is to get folks thinking about the potential of microcasting in our metro area. as the members of the twin cities wireless users group[3] are well aware, there have been several stuttered attempts to create a community based city-wide wireless data network. however, this admittedly has limited appeal to folks that aren't tech savvy and has a fairly daunting barrier of entry to many people. on the other hand there seems to be considerable mainstream appeal to community radio and lots of citizens that would readily welcome the opportunity to provide content, support and resources to something that has wider appeal and utility than a wireless data network. next steps ---------------------------------------------------------------------- i'd be happy to establish a mailing list for interested parties that would like to discuss this further as well as host a meeting for folks that would be interested in participating in this. please contact me via email[4]. references ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] http://www.walkerart.org [2] http://projects.walkerart.org/radio/ [3] http://www.tcwug.org [4] <a href="mailto:sulrich at botwerks.org?subject=tc%20microcasting">sulrich at botwerks.org</a> -------------- next part -------------- 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