Dave and Brian's Excellent Adventures

Black Sea 2007, Day 23

This is Doc Mike Durbin. This Earth station is his home for the month. He is our satellite guru. Now that more people have been watching the show, the most frequent question I get is how we’re communicating and broadcasting to the world. For those that aren’t technical, I’ll try my best to explain this appropriately, and the rest, I’ll try not to screw this up.

We have two types of viewers, those who watch at home through the different web sites (Internet 1) and consoles at universities, colleges, and government facilities with Internet 2. We generate three video feeds; typically Hercules main camera, Argus main camera, and either a display of all the cameras or our navigational display. The three feeds are combined with three Tandbergs into one metadata stream with our phone modem and Internet connection. Metadata is a generic term for a stream of data filled with copious amount of different information combined together.

The Metadata is streamed over a 2.4 meter Off-set Elliptical C-Band auto-tracking satellite dish. Our satellite is at 224 degree heading and is 28 degrees above the horizon. This is such a shallow angle above the horizon, the dish is actually turned upside down to give more room to follow the satellite. It’s operating around 4.6 GHz.

The stream hits a satellite and turns the stream to the mushroom farm (an area filled with many dishes) in Andover, Maine. The stream is transmitted to URI in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island by a DS3 stream. DS3 is a type of metadata stream that can be transmitted over fiber. In the URI campus, three things happen: The metadata is stripped of the phone modem and Internet information. This is why the IP addresses we use are based out of URI and the four phone lines we have onboard ship show up as a Rhode Island area code. Secondly, the metadata is rebroadcast to all of the consoles around the US where they can view all three feeds. Currently there are 11 sites. Lastly, the metadata is broken up, and video feed number one is rebroadcast to the internet feeds viewed on the different web sites.

In the past, the shows are produced in URI and rebroadcast to many sites. Not only are the web sites receiving the broadcast, but there was another Ku-Band satellite truck at URI to broadcast the feed to the Boy’s & Girl’s Clubs around America and all of the Jason sites. This time the show is produced on board ship.

posted by DaveandBrian @ 3:11 AM