The author is chief engineer of Thy Word Network.
With eight different signals on the air plus two internet streams, I was looking for a way to have a simple one-look snapshot of everything. Inovonics gave me a way to make it happen.
The project started with a conversation with my friend Ben Barber from Inovonics at a NRB convention in Dallas back in 2021. He was showing their INOmini FM/RDS Web-enabled FM receiver for remote signal monitoring.
It caught my attention because it would not only monitor the on-air signal but also stream that audio out over the internet. With our stations scattered around a three-state area, I began to think about a way to keep both an eye and an ear on all the stations from our main studio.
We have remote controls that we check daily and that contact us if anything goes wrong; but I wanted something that would give me a one-look check on them all.
My confidence monitor idea began to take shape.
I purchased an INOmni 635 for each of my seven FM stations. I already had an Inovonics 525N Modulation Monitor running at my AM station and two Inovonics 610 internet radio monitors watching our streaming signals. Then I set up a standalone PC running 16 GB of memory with a large monitor so I could run multiple instances of Mozilla browser at the same time.
The photos show the result. Each station has its own browser window; and the layout is saved so it automatically loads on startup. It sits in the hallway alongside our TOC racks, and at a glance we can see if all is well.
I have two stations that will need upgraded internet before they can be used reliably, so they are absent from the screen now (will probably go to dual monitors then, too).
A simple mouse click allows us to monitor the audio through a speakers running on the PC sound card, and alarms are available to text us if the audio is low or gone. We also have the PC online with remote desktop software so I can log in with my phone anytime I want to check the system overall health. It is much quicker than logging in to multiple stations!
Our confidence monitor has proven to be a great asset to our operation. While not inexpensive, when it is used in conjunction with our remote control systems, the redundancy factor is helpful … two is one and one is none!
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