📢 Emergency Alerts for Indigenous Communities

Swans in Tagish Yukon

Record-high bird count at Yukon’s Swan Haven over weekend. 3,000 birds make an awful lot of noise.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/yukon-swan-haven-record-count

Indigenous Alerts

Within Canada, there are approximately 635 FNs and 50+ Inuit communities with numerous spoken languages and dialects. Canadian policy related to CAP alerting specifies support for Indigenous languages, but this has not yet been realized.

OpenBroadcaster CAP-CP Emergency Alert Player works by augmenting and compiling key phrases recorded in Indigenous languages by community members. Artificial intelligence is then applied to associate the message in the CAP alert with the available recorded phrases. The result is an open source framework available, not just for Canada’s Indigenous communities, but for any country or any language\dialect to incorporate.

Tsilhqot’in National Government Makerspace

Like the CJUC makerspace in Whitehorse, YT, this makerspace in downtown Williams Lake, BC boasts re-purposed hardware, including more than a dozen previously enjoyed workstations, courtesy of the Federal Government. In addition to providing broadcast training and indigenous language revitalization, the radio station housed in the makerspace is a template for several others, each to be housed in their own maker spaces located in smaller communities; and, ultimately, to be replicated in other First Nations communities across Canada, all capable of sharing best practices and content between them.

https://www.wltribune.com/news/video-tng-radio-opens-station-in-downtown-williams-lake/

Logging and Advertising Affidavits

How are your logging systems working? A radio station in Quebec is under fire for collecting revenue and not airing paid ads and psa. All of our systems for radio independently…

1) Log metadata into a DB what, where and when media played searchable at the server

2) Create an audio log of what played out on the player

3) Monitor the broadcast station and record the over the air transmission using a SDR (software defined radio) USB dongle

It’s estimated that at least 30% of Canadian radio stations that still do hand written paper logs. Expect a CRTC review and audit of logging practices if you’re one of them.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/rafale-fm-labrador-francophone-radio-advertising

Satellite Alerting Project

CJUC uses Ku band as a back-up when the internet goes down in the Yukon because of frequent fibre optic cable cuts between Whitehorse and Grand Prairie. Our open source player box is capable of monitoring multiple feeds: TCP/IP Socket, C band and Ku band satellite transponders. Ku band dishes can be easily installed with a bracket and lag bolts, while C band dishes are large, and typically need a concrete base. Up north, we use bigger dishes, C band 3m and Ku band 1.2 m.

We undertook a Ku band redundancy emergency alerting project for off grid alerting in rural remote communities as part of of

We used recycled Hughes HX50L and HN7700 Satellite modem boards with a regular consumer grade 1.2m satellite TV antennae “mini dish” from Shaw Direct, and sourced outside LNB electronics at the local recycling centre.

Thanks go out to Cold Climate Innovation and Computers for Schools Yukon

Welcome Vincent Maggard – EAS Indigenous Alerts

Vincent has always loved technology of all things Linux and phone systems. He started learning tech and coding at the precocious age of seven, and developed some really cool weather alert processing software. When not programming python apps, he can be found driving an ATV through the mountains of eastern Kentucky, USA.

Vincent Maggard

Featured Modules – Task Tracker

Assign and track status of user and group tasks to work on media or playlists in management server. When an assigned task (such as update playlists) is completed, assignee reports back with built-in note and commenting system.

Streaming – Send to All Stations

From the Live Assist window or player’s dashboard, one click LIVE streaming of the station’s audio including source from line in, Send to All Stations. This is scalable for network operators to support hundreds of nodes in remote markets. Allows setting the priority so central station can act as master and not be overridden. Localized CAP Emergency alerting always takes priority.

JAM Live 100th Episode

JAM live! is a passion project spearheaded by Dieter Gade. Over the years he’s used his expertise to record 100 concerts and counting, all for free and available for airplay. Keep your ears out for this episode on your local radio station. *** Congrats to Dieter *** and all the volunteers who’ve made this possible. And thanks for the countless hours you’ve invested in these recordings and all you do to keep JAM sounding incredible! This 100th episode was recorded on Feb 7, 2019 at Jazz in the Hall with Mr. Lonnie Powell & Friends.

http://junctionjam.ca/jam-live/jam-live-episode-100/