Skycaster
OB2 (Skycaster) is the second of our wheeled outside broadcast units. Brother (ish) to OB1 Kenobi and built around the same principals to the same end.
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History
On Wednesday 14th 2018, Tom Lee and other resident techies of the time built the internals of what would become OB2. This was ahead of the 2018 Unibrass event which necessitated the increasing of the number of OB units available to YSTV. The choice was made that, as a permanent studio setup was already in place in a rack, simply removing that infrastructure and transplanting it into another large flight case of the type used to create Kenobi, would work fine.
The new unit was first used on Unibrass 2018 and would go on to become the new first use OB unit as of the following year. Sometime after the 2018 freshers event, OB2 had it's graphics and stream computers upgraded. Finally, during a later complete rebuild, it was part swapped with Kenobi for the sake of the better plug patching and other conveniences of the OB2 design. At this point it became our main used OB unit.
Iterations
Mark I (February 2018 - Late 2018)
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The original designed OB2 was built in February 2018 for Unibrass 2018 (Nicknamed Ubibrass). It was built primarily by Tom Lee using the old ATEM which had been superseded for use in Kenobi in 2015 following the Greg Dyke donation. Since then, it had been residing in the control room racks as part of a permanent studio broadcast rig. ]] The original version would also include some more... bodged ... components. The first of which was the umbilical power distribution system, which came from what remained of a 2 way 16 feed distro built by Rob Walker. This was removed after the event because it was realllllly dodgy and likely lethal. The second bodged component came courtesy of the renowned Peter Eskdale. This was OB2s PSU. All was going well until, at 1am, the whole thing blew up.
After a less explody PSU was located, OB2 went on to function well.
Mark II (Late 2018 - current)
Once the original design was proven, it had a minor upgrade later that year, to the graphics and stream PCs including the addition of a network card around Christmas 2018. This proved a critical asset for the stability of going live on OBs as mice and men is forever a pain in our arses.
At the same time, the patching was renewed and cleaned up a bit since it had grown rather messy over its use.
Around the same time, the internal equipment was updated from bits of Kenobi since OB2 was now our main use unit. The infrastructure then stood at;
- ATEM production STUDIO 4K
- Netgear 24-port switch
- Graphics PC
- Stream PC
- IEC distro
- KVM switcher
- VideoHub
There is a future plan to bring this unit into line with safety and upgrade it's power system with a 16A main distro unit to allow for more daisy chaining (yay) from the unit.