Hardware for a Low-Powered Talk Radio Stations?

stevenso asks: "I would like to set up a low power radio station (on the cheap) that people could call up and discuss topics. To make it mostly hands-off (ie. I don't have to be there to pick up the phone) I was thinking of using a few voice modems and send the discussion via a sound card to a transmitter. Does anyone know if there is a software package that can handle multiple voice modems, setup a teleconference (mix the signals), and send it out as audio? Can you think of any other solution like using some sort of auto-answering/auto-conferencing system or VOIP or a way to conference cell phone signals? Please keep in mind this is a technical question not a question about FCC regulations."

Comments

Ooh wells lets see ...

[smallfries]

... is there anybody else out there doing this? Err, no, not as far as I know. So will there be any software available to do it ....

come on, join the dots, 2+2=...

Avoiding the whole point of useless Ask Slashdot questions, I'm sure there will be lots of posts that pick that apart. What you want isn't something that alot of other people would do so you'll have to roll your own (BTW the pot growing question above is quality). You need a SoftSwitch architecture that can accept the calls (which needs an SCTP stack running MU3A ontop, very fuzzy memory of this so that might be the wrong protocol). That will take care of call setup / cleardown, on top of which you need to write something similar to an IVR system. The audio comes across VoIP networks in a fairly clear format, the compression used is G729 which gives about an 8:1 compression ratio but is easy to decode. If you can't work out how to mix the raw audio streams together by yourself then give up now (and don't try anything that complex in real life eg walking and chewing gum).

Now, in the above paragraph are names, sometimes we call these keywords, if you put them into this piece of technology called a 'Search Engine' then you will seek what you find grasshopper.

I'm not sure whats worse, the people posting questions along the line of 'I really want to pick my own arse but my finger seems to get really smelly, are there any tools out there that will do this for me?' or the people who ok the submissions...