TuneTracker™ QuickTip   
Engineering Your Own Remote Broadcast

At smaller radio stations, going out to do a remote broadcast often means bringing in extra staff to either do the broadcast, or engineer the broadcast back at the radio station; taking the breaks, putting the remote on the air and taking it off, etc. Now, using TuneTracker Command Center™, our TT Anywhere™ program, and an available Internet connection at both ends, you can handle the whole thing yourself!

It's always best to scope out a remote site and make sure all will work as expected before attempting this for real, so to start with, we advise you to do some quick footwork/homework.
  1. Assure you have reliable Internet, preferably wireless Internet so you can easily connect with a laptop, at the remote location.
  2. Assure the audio you are feeding back via Marti or phone line is safely reaching the station and is at a good level going into your TuneTracker computer
  3. If you're using a portable transmitter, make sure it doesn't interfere with your Internet connection and if you're using wireless Internet, that that signal doesn't mess up your Marti transmission
  4. If you're using a telephone, assure you have a reliable phone coupler with an auto-pickup feature at the station, assigned to a number that others aren't going to accidentally call.
  5. Run TT Anywhere on your Command Center computer.
  6. Run RealVNC (free Windows VNC client) on your remote computer
  7. Log in and confirm that you are able to bring up and control the TuneTracker computer on the laptop. If you have properly set up your router to pass port 5900 through, it should work just fine.
  8. Assure that you can safely monitor your station on a portable radio. Wireless transmissions and computers placed too close to a radio can cause RF interference, so having a good, long headphone cable extender to allow your radio to be well-away from your laptop and Marti is advisable.
Ok, if everything's looking good, you're ready for your remote broadcast!
  1. On the day of your remote, make certain, before leaving the station, that TT Anywhere is running and you've clicked its Start button so it is monitoring for your remote connection.
  2. When you get to the remote location, set up your transmitter, wireless or wired Internet connection, mic, etc., and then run RealVNC and log into your TuneTracker computer. You're ready for action!
Remotely control Command Center normally using the mouse and keyboard as if you were sitting in front of it. You can click LIVE to ON to put yourself on the air, click LIVE again to take yourself off, start events, even fade volumes for ramp talkovers if you like. Need to walk away for awhile? Put Command Center in auto and go do some interviews!

Next time, more about doing live, self-engineered remotes using Command Center and TT Anywhere.


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