Current Projects

Revision as of 23:27, 11 May 2012 by Sam.nicholson (talk | contribs) (Wrote up current projects listing)
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This should be a listing of current, ongoing Technical and Computing projects that aren't yet complete enough to merit real documentation. Be warned, this is liable to be outdated and should be used for some idea of what's going on. Also worth a look is the Techie Todo List and the Trac Listings for some of the other ongoing projects.

External IMAP

Responsible: Alex Williams

Status: Probably a week or so short on completion.

Negotiate with IT Services for an external firewall hole, so that YSTV mailboxes can be read using regular clients or phones from off-campus. At present on-campus works, with this running to completion it's probably worth documenting how to set up external YSTV mail.

DNS Delegation

Responsible: Alex Williams

Status: Awaiting a meeting with IT Services

In theory YSTV could administer our own DNS server, and delegate the zone IT Services manage for us to be managed directly, potentially with access to LanDB for updating our own machines.

Continuous Channel/Scheduling Engine

Responsible: Sam Nicholson

Status: Being written (slowly!)

Write a scheduling and automation tool to allow the Scheduler to come up with shows, and autofill idents, trailers and graphical overlays to make us more like a "real" TV channel. Known as Tarantula.

Easter Refurb

Responsible: John Caine and the Station Director

Status: Waiting on Estates Services

Still known as the Easter Refurb, despite that holiday being long gone, the plan was to repaint both studio and control room, re-carpet both and generally make the place look nicer. Sort of a tech project.

Currently Chris Teeling (ZFM) has provisionally agreed to fix our blinds but put the floor etc on hold for a little while due to the potential to move into a new space. It should be noted this is a very early stage, the idea to move was mooted but nobody has said yes in any way shape or form.

OB Stream/Receive

Responsible: Sam Nicholson/John Caine

Status: Sender works, receiver needs to be more robust

A computer, labelled YSTVOBSTRM is sent out on OBs. When started up it runs a hidden stream back to YSTV, which is "watched" by YSTVOBSTRMRE inside the control room. This is then fed into the Technical:Vision_Path to either be sent directly to the main stream or inserted into a show. The main advantage is the director/Tarantula can switch to the OB source at the right time rather than taking down the stream, enabling a continuous channel, along with allowing OBs to insert into live shows.

Currently the receiver needs to detect if a stream is there or not and keep trying, so as soon as one comes up it starts receiving. This may also fix the Live Link Laptop's problems

Live Link Laptop

Responsible: Sam Nicholson

Status: Needs more stability testing

Fit up a laptop with a capture device and some cabling, and mount in a rucksack. Then, a camera op fires up the laptop, plugs in a camera and mic and we can live insert from anywhere with wifi!

Greg notes we may have significant issues with cooling, may need to customize a spare rucksack supplied by John.

At present it works with the new YSTV laptop, but roaming between wireless APs causes it to go a bit wrong.

New Muxes

Responsible: Michael Chislett

Status: Power supplies need finishing

Build a pair of chainable 8x8 video matrixes,as prototyped for NaSTA 2011. See the history wiki for more.

Jack/Jaque

Responsible: Michael Chislett

Status: Development hell

A system capable of taking simple instructions, such as "route patch port 92 as camera 2" and setting all the crosspoints to route that input to the vision mixer, and reconfigure tally correctly as well.

Document All The Things!

Responsible: Greg Ebdon

Status: In Progress

Basically, write up documentation on everything YSTV does on here. Big project!