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PVR-like Software for Audio Streams?

Posted by Cliff on from the manipulating-a-10-minute-buffer dept.

JonToycrafter asks: "I'm a dispatcher for a volunteer ambulance corps. We often get our calls by listening to the police scanner. Unfortunately, it's sometimes difficult to understand the street address that the police dispatcher is saying, or sometimes s/he mentions the address before giving an indication that EMS is needed. Does anyone know of a (preferably Free) Windows (or Linux) program that would allow me to connect my scanner to the mic jack on my PC and be able to pause/rewind the stream, a la Tivo?"

3 of 46 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Another approach here, simpler by TykeClone · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Could it be that he is an ambulance chaser instead of an ambulance dispatcher?
    I volunteer as an ambulance driver, and apparently the hardest skill known to 911 dispatchers is that they don't need to eat the microphone when sending a call out. Some are worse than others, but many times we do need to call in for address verification.

    --
    A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
  2. If they want you there, they'll call you... by ivi · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I find it odd that you guys have to "intercept"
    police radio calls to get your taskings...

    It's standard procedure - in most places - for
    emergency services to ring (a.k.a. "respond")
    EMS or ambulance(s) as required.

    They wouldn't, as a rule, expect the EMS or ambo's
    to spend all their time monitoring other services'
    radio frequencies.

    For one thing, it can increase your levels of
    fatigue (although - admit - it can feel exciting
    to follow incident progress along by radio...
    a bit like armchair quarterbacking, eh? ;-)

    If your service is well & truly needed & respected
    you should be able to get call-outs, just like
    police & firefighters.

    If not, well... raise your game. ;-)

  3. Super. by _aa_ · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Since there seems to be little interest in solving what appears to be a life threatening problem, I will issue a challenge to all developers to make one. This would not be a complex application. In fact the pausing could be done with a simple shell script. I'll start working on a perl one tonight. Please reply with code.

    Whoever replies with the best software Personal Audio Recorder gets a grand slam breakfast at Denny's on me.