Maintaining two, 24 hour radio services takes a fair bit of technology and configuration to deliver. In order to ensure our stations remain on the air for the patients we’ve got a fairly impressive setup, most of which depends on technology. Below is some of the technology we’ve invested in to make Auckland Hospital Radio work and sound the way it does.

Mixing Desk
The heart of any studio is the mixing desk. We have a Sonfiex S2 mixer in our studio with 15 channels. All of these allow multiple inputs of varying types so it is incredible flexible for our needs. The current config takes 3 microphones, telephone, 4 inputs from the Myriad system, 2 CDs, 2 Minidisc, 4 Satellite channels, automation and a selection of other inputs from temporary sources.

Telephone System

We take a lot of calls at Auckland Hospital Radio. In fact we have 5 incoming lines. 2 Trust extensions, 1 direct line from Hospedia, a private line for volunteers and an IP line. To handle all these line we have our own internal PBX. Our Siemens HICOM PBX manages our calls and allows calls from any of our lines to be presented on a single queue via a digital telephone. Calls can be picked up in the studio or production area and sent directly to the desk for broadcast if required. All callers get our station output as their music on hold whilst waiting.

Servers

We have 5 servers which maintain the service. Our primary file servers store all the music and files for the playout systems. These are replicated in real time so if we have a failure on one we can immediately switch to the other. Other servers include remote access systems, intranet, web filtering and streaming servers.

Uninterruptible Power

Being in a hospital environment there are always things which can affect our power supply, generator tests or pre planned maintenance for example. All essential equipment is maintained by two large UPS’s. These can keep the station running for at least 30 minutes with no power at all or until the main power is restored. Our UPS’s are fed by the generator which means the equipment stays online the whole time.

Automatic Playout

Being a small charity we can’t provide live programming 24 hours a day so when we’re not around we let the computer do it for us. We invested in software from Psquared called Myriad. Myriad allows our programmes to go out when we’re not there. We can tell the system exactly what we want to play or it’s even smart enough to pick the music for us based on rules we set.

Silence Detection

Sometimes things go wrong and if they do the station can fall silent. We use software to detect if there is silence for more than two minutes. If that happens an automated failsafe service will start playing and an email alert will be sent to various people to alert them of the fault. The email also contains screen shots of the automation playout system showing the last thing it was doing before it went silent.

Live Assist

We don’t use records at Auckland Hospital Radio, in fact we rarely use CD’s or Minidiscs. Our Myriad system provides us with what we call the ‘Audiowall’. This is a huge database of music, categorised by decade and searchable by numerous fields. If a patients phones the studio for a request, we can tell them if we have the song whilst they’re on the phone and it can be next song to come on the air.

News On The Hour

Listeners to Auckland Hospital Radio can keep up to date with national and international news courtesy the Sky News service which we subscribe to. IRN provide a 2 minute news bulletin on the hour, every hour. This is delivered to our studio live from London via a special satellite receiver and the automated system can bring the news in automatically when we’re not around.

Listen Online

Our service is primarily for the patients, staff and visitors of Bishop Auckland Hospital. Various trials of online broadcasting had taken place between 2000 and 2009, but due to cost or licence implications we were unable to maintain it. We were delighted to open up our service to listeners online permanently in July 2009. The reason for making our programmes available online is that patients of the hospital, some who had been in hospital for a long time would enjoy our service but never had the opportunity to listen after they left the hospital. We now offer listeners the chance to ‘Take Auckland Hospital Radio Home’ via a free media stream right here on our website. Of course, anyone else is very welcome to tune in and enjoy the service.

Listen on PC (staff)

Hospital staff form a large part of our audience on a daily basis. Since 2000 we’ve offered staff working in the hospital the opportunity to listen to our service via their computer on an internal stream. Using the Trust’s internal network anyone inside the hospital with a set of speakers and a windows computer can tune into Auckland Hospital Radio – and they do in their masses.

Video Feed

Auckland Hospital Radio is the only station in the UK to transmit live video pictures to the wards via the Hospedia system. When we’re on the air, patients can see a live feed of the studio. To achieve this we send a standard video signal down the local CAT5 cabling within the hospital and bring it out in the Hospedia rack room. The signal quality is superb and patients can gain a real insight into what we’re doing while we’re on the air. When there’s no one in the studio we send a series of screens telling the patients what’s currently playing and what programmes are coming soon.

Webcams

There are 2 webcams watching Auckland Hospital Radio 24 hours a day. We have one in the studio and the other in the production office. The cameras take a snapshot every 30 seconds and upload to our external web server.

Live Outside Broadcasts

Auckland Hospital Radio have done outside broadcasts for literally years. We used to use BT Landlines when they were very cheap but as prices rose that option became less attractive, plus the fact the lines needed to be in place at the location of the outside broadcast. Between 1999 and 2005 we used 56k modems for outside broadcasts, the quality wasn’t great, but with some powerful PCs it could be compensated for. With the advent of mobile broadband that all changed. We now use 3G data cards for our outside broadcasts. Connected to the mobile carrier with the best coverage we establish a secure connection back to the studio via our VPN (Virtual Private Network). Using Windows Media Encoder and then establish a connection from the studio to the outside broadcasting laptop. The 11 second buffer allows enough of a failsafe for any minor blips on the 3G network. We encode our outside broadcasts at a quality of at least 128Kbps full stereo which is as high as the patients can receive our service via Hospedia.

VPN (Virtual Private Network)

To allow our volunteers access to our internal network and for outside broadcasts to work we have a fully secure VPN. This means that once dialled in, volunteer’s home computers appear as part of our internal network. They can then use our intranet, take remote control of our computers or perform other functions such as remote voice tracking without having to physically come to the studio.