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Many people own and use radio scanners for a variety of reasons. They listen in on police and fire department transmissions to mobilize volunteer emergency responders, to check current traffic conditions, as a news gathering tool, or just for the sake of curiosity. Also, more and more people these days are using their computers and the Internet to watch television programs or listen to radio stations from around the country or around the world. Now, these two technologies are combined.
A radio scanner works by monitoring many frequencies at once. Whenever a transmission comes over one of these frequencies, the scanner locks onto that frequency so that the user may monitor the broadcast. Then, a transmission may occur on another frequency, and the scanner locks onto that frequency, and so on. The user can keep track of many developing situations at once. However, only local transmissions are accessible, limited by the strength of the radio signal.Advances in Internet streaming technology and broadband connectivity now allows television and radio broadcasters to send their signals not only over the airwaves for local consumption, but may be accessed online via the broadcaster’s website, using any one of a number of software programs. This allows Internet users to monitor these stations by accessing the appropriate web page and activating the necessary software controls. An increasing number of radio antennas are now connected to computers, with Internet accessibility. Using controls recently developed, individual users may now tap in to those antennas the same way they access a remote television or radio broadcast. Imagine being able to monitor police broadcasts in another city, or keep abreast of the latest developments with a natural disaster halfway across the globe. The possibilities are endless. The computer radio scanner control package patented in 2002 by George Switlyk incorporates radio scanner hardware into a circuit board, or card, to be installed into an open port in the user’s computer and attached to an antenna. This acts as a server, to which remote users may access via the Internet, monitoring those local broadcasts. As more and more of these receiving stations are set up, it becomes possible for users to monitor broadcasts all over the world. |
