Internal Radio Station

[bossman]

Has anybody set up the above and linked it in with the curriculum as part of music qualifications?

If so how? what hardware and software costs (Cannot fund huge amount) and what success have they had, both with the Students and the Staff?

 

Thanks

[Geoff]

Linux box, running ICECast. LAMP based front end to run it all. Spits out MP3 streams that any media player can cope with.

[bossman]

Thanks Geoff will give it a try have a good weekend m8

[TechMonkey]

Sounds an interesting project but what would its ultimate use be? Just streaming kids work or having a constant 'safe' radio system available to the kids?

[FN-GM]

how did you get on with this?

[bossman]

apologies to all for not replying sooner but have been doing major projects throughout the school and as this radio station was just my idea to the school it needed backing and as the music teacher has been off i could not move on this even though the HT thought it was a good idea.

I don't just want to stream media but want to empower the kids to create their own radio station via their music lessons and use it as part of their curriculum.

have scheduled it in for next april with the music teacher who is now back and thinks it would be very good for the kid's.

So if anyone has ideas as to how we can develop it i am all ears as i havn't had much time. All ideas will be taken seriously.

[comedydave]

Sorry to pipe up here,

But I am pretty sure that to pipe music to a captive audience you will need and MCPS/PRS licence for Internet radio. Even if it is purely internal, you are still distributing music to an audience.

 

With the legal bit now covered.

 

I used to be part of an internet radio station (before the PRS's ludicrous fees made it unviable)

But they had some interesting software that allowed users from all over the world connect to it in pre arranged time slots and present thier own shows.

This could be useful for the kids interested in media production at GCSE/6th Form

 

http://www.cmpradio.co.uk

[Guest Guest]

As above id check licences etc.

 

But heres something which might be able to be adapted to your needs.

 

http://streamline.sourceforge.net/

 

Allows you to stream and/or download any single track, full cd/directory or make a custom playlist which will then play in mediaplayer.

 

It organises the tracks straight from your directory structure so nice and easy to manage many many files. Even supports thumbnails/

[dhicks]

> I don't just want to stream media but want to empower the kids to create

> their own radio station via their music lessons and use it as part of their

> curriculum. have scheduled it in for next april

 

I've had a few thoughts similar to this myself. I had a bit on an investigate about equipment needed. Cunning plan: buy a bunch of those PC-to-FM-radio adapters (£5-ish each?) that take a stereo input and transmit very low-powered FM signal. Tune these all to the same frequency, distribute them throughout the school and you have a school-wide radio network that doesn't stretch beyond the grounds.

 

I'm not quite sure how exactly to go about getting the signal to the wireless adapters in the first place, though. Could run a bunch of stereo cables around the school, much like cat5, but I'm not sure what the signal loss would be like. Could transmit the signal over cat5 somehow (solder together some stereo-cat5 / cat5-stereo adapter plugs?). Could stream the audio over a network connection to a small PC for transmission, but that's starting to get expensive.

 

What we could do with is a Power Over Ethernet-cable combined audio stream receiver and FM transmiter...

 

--

David Hicks

[SpuffMonkey]

We had a demo of a mobile radio station last week - very nice if you've around £15k spare. He glossed over my question about the legality of mp3 tracks saying that although technically illegal, no one would get prosecuted....hmmmm....

[TechSupp]

We (primary school) ended up going down the route of pre-recording the shows(they are only news broadcasts at the moment) and now post them on an internal website to be played back through media player embedded in the web page. I know its not true radio broadcasts but its a start and when will the kids listen to a broadcast show anyway, playtime they are out and lunch time they can't hear it. At least this way they can play the shgows back during class time for the kids to listen to. Software wise we (well OK just me at the moment) just use Audacity, does multitracking and mps creation and all for free :-)

Don't know if your LEA subscribes to AudioNetwork but ours does and we get to use quite a range of music free under their license.

[Guest kerrymoralee9280]

The year 1 teacher asked me the other day - to get a quote on some equipment.

 

She wants the studio to have everything needed (i.e. amp, microphone, cd player etc etc) and then each classroom and corridor to have ceiling speakers. Each room has it's own volume control so they can turn it up/off/on etc.

 

Thing is her husband is an electricial so I think we'll be getting it done cheaper than usual.

[TechMonkey]

Depends on how much the teacher wants to take control. Personally I think the students need to submit their 'programme' for checking by someone & then it could be saved to a folder and Streamline mentioned before could just suck up that directory. Problem is that could be very time consuming having to listen to all those tracks to check suitability.

[Sylv3r]

We thought about doing something similar here, with the sudents running their own stations / PODcasts but it died pretty quickly after buying the PODCasting equipment. It may be something we seriously look at again in the future, its just having the time and finding a teacher responsible to work with the students on preparing material etc.

[PEO]

if its an internal radio, you wouldnt need a licence

[damienharrison]

Might be worth a read http://www.shoutcast.com/download/broadcast.phtml

 

We was looking at something similar at my school we are doing weekly pre recorded video broadcasts instead. Getting students to record, edit, direct and produce even staff get involved in the fun (teachers as well!!!)

[TechSupp]

Thats the next step for us as I see the kids getting more involved in creating a video production so they can report on an event in the school and share it with the others.

[bossman]

I would like to thank you all for the imput so far it's good to get impartial views and other peoples experiences.

 

It's given me food for thought and when i start the project I'm sure i will have some good moments to share with you all.

[chrbb]

@Techsupp

We (primary school) ended up going down the route of pre-recording the shows(they are only news broadcasts at the moment) and now post them on an internal website to be played back through media player embedded in the web page.

 

Any chance of further details on running an internal website with pre recorded shows, like the sound of this for a lunchtime club. Thanks

[maniac]

We used to do something similar about ten years ago when I was still at school on the last day of every term. Back then we used the tannoy system in the school to broadcast it using a crude system of a tape player wired into the line inputs on the tannoy amp to broadcast a radio show recorded earlier in the day. Takeover Tannoy it was called, always went down a hit!

 

Mike.

[SYNACK]

This site may be helpful especially if you plan to do any of it live: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/broadcast.aspx

 

All of the streaming broadcast stuff is free and included with Server 2003 and up as Windows Media Services. You simply encode the recording in a streaming format (asf) using WM9 Encoder and put it on the server. It can then be streamed rather than fully downloaded to all of the clients and you also have the option of doing live shows if you want to.

[AliG]

Wey Valley Radio - Homepage

 

I had some input in setting up Wey Valley Radio a few years back. I think they use shoutcast. They broadcast thru speakers in corridor and media player on pc's in school. I also think they broadcast on the net too!

[SteveBentley]

The year 1 teacher asked me the other day - to get a quote on some equipment.

 

She wants the studio to have everything needed (i.e. amp, microphone, cd player etc etc) and then each classroom and corridor to have ceiling speakers. Each room has it's own volume control so they can turn it up/off/on etc.

 

Thing is her husband is an electricial so I think we'll be getting it done cheaper than usual.

 

My old school had such a system since 1986! Not sure how they've done it now they've just moved into in their shiny new build though.

[Garacesh]

And with my powerful voodoo, I shall raise the dead! [/NECROBUMP]

 

One of our teachers, who is a DJ in his spare time, has asked for an internal radio for lunchtimes. He'll run it, he just wants us to set it up (meaning I don't have to worry about the legal bits)

We already have an existing PA system that can be used to section off parts of the school. This works well because we want it only in the dining hall, and the PA does have a dining hall subgroup. So preferably hooking it into that somehow would be glorious.

Since he have metric :censored:tonnes of Cat6 cable lay around, it would probably be a good idea to use that. We have plenty of spare PC's around, both Most are Win7 but I've set up 3 with Ubuntu, and we do possess the capability of splicing 3.5mm jacks onto the cables if required. (We can rebuild him! We have the technology!)

 

Thing is.. I have zero idea where to start with this xD I'm thinking about using the existing Cat6 runs to transfer the audio without bothering to use data packets. An RJ45-3.5mm jack in the dining hall (where the 'DJing' will take place) and one in reception (where the PA is), with a Cat6 cable running through the ceiling void and that should work fine... But we have a lot of fluorescent lights here, and from what I read up that'll cause interference with audio.. I don't think the Head's going to allocate enough funds to buy basic dj'ing equipment AND re-do the run in shielded cable.. So I'm a little stuck there.

Edited May 14, 2012 by Garacesh