[grc] Public-Domain EAS station cost?

[al davis]

On Fri, 21 Oct 2016 18:24:33 -0400
Paul Bame via grc <grc at maillist.peak.org> wrote:
> I believe Al Davis pitched this idea a while back, and I have some
> questions as I began to research it myself.

I looked into it back around 2010, when cap was going to be required,
as many stations would need to replace their system or buy an upgrade
box to stay compliant.  I made a proposal that if I could get
sufficient funding I would develop one and release it under GPL.
The proposal was that if 20 stations could pledge $500 each, total
$20000, I would commit to developing first an open-source CAP, then
a full EAS.  The deadline for conversion was over a year off, so I
thought I had plenty of time to develop it.  In the initial show of
hands, not enough hands went up, so I didn't go any farther on this,
but I stuck with the bigger goal.

This is really only a little about EAS.  On a much bigger scale, it's
about taking control of our technology, all of it.  It's about bringing
all of the people who can do it together, and supporting them both
financially and emotionally.  By "all" of the people, I mean all types,
the researchers, developers, installers, administrators, workers,
writers, and users.  On a more personal level, I want to something
meaningful and challenging to do in my "retirement".

I didn't give up on the bigger mission, still looking for ways to
improve the tech situation faced by community radio, and also how to
finance it.  That's my effort in it, and also others involved with the
movement.  How do we finance activism?  How do we finance open-source
development?  Asking for donations doesn't cut it.

This time, the target was a product, something than can be sold, that
provides something we need at a price significantly lower than
existing products from traditional companies.  This becomes possible
by offering it as a kit and a co-op rather than traditional business
model.  I would make the first, and hopefully get others from the
movement to join in, both with their own products and also as
kit-builders.  There are others who are better connected than I am,
maybe not really tech people who can learn to build a kit, so they
could build the kit, and be paid the difference between the kit price
and the assembled price, which is 2:1.

The start was a modular audio console designed specifically for
community radio.  http://kaatskit.com   It's modular so you can start
small and upgrade later.  I thought this would be a good one because I
thought all of the others for less than $5000 were inadequate,
inappropriate, unserviceable, or poor quality.  Also, I have experience
in this, on the very high end, so I know how to do it, what can be
done, and the reality of offering products for a small market.  The kits
are priced at half the assembled units, starting at $600.  The
assembled units start at $1200. Depending on size and options, they go
up from there.  A 16 fader board, fairly well loaded, the kit goes for
$1500, assembled for $3000.  This is a lot less than anything
comparable.  You pick what modules you want, and what size frame, so
you can customize.  If you need to keep the cost down, you can get what
you can afford now, and expand later.  Even the lowest cost unit has
an upgrade path to the highest model.

I really expected them to be better received, but getting the word out
in a proper way is difficult.  I didn't want to be a spammer.  Mostly,
it's word of mouth, and a small group of people building stations make
the recommendations.  Outreach was by contacting some builders I know
directly, and by showing at NFCB and GRC conferences, and sponsoring
the LFPM summits.  I paid for the table, and paid to sponsor the lunch
for the summits.  I think this is an important part of the goal, that
these projects should help to sponsor the important events.

The most devastating setback was that Prometheus did not support this at
all.  The group buys excluded the project entirely, and no Prometheus
builds used it, even though they did know about it.  They promoted
other products, the same ones that I thought were inadequate,
inappropriate, unserviceable, poor quality, or at least more expensive
for what you get, in such a way that I could not counter it.  I
expected support for the project and for the concept, but instead it
seemed more like a boycott.

We need to stick together.  First, we techies need to support each
other.  But it is not just the techies.  It won't work with just the
techies.  Everyone needs to get involved, including   We need to take
control of our infrastructure, all of it.




Back to the original question. ..  The system is well documented.  The
old EAS is simple FSK to text codes.  CAP is XML based.  On first look,
the hard part looks like decoding the FSK, but looking around, remember
this is open-source, it soon becomes apparent that most of what is
needed already exists, in projects like minimodem, sox, and jack.

That knocks it down to some very simple programming to get it sort of
working.

Then the big deal is turning that into something people would actually
want to use, something that a lot of stations could use as a real
alternative to the big-bucks proprietary boxes.  That's a lot more
work.  A good analogy would be to compare the "contour" seed code that
I wrote to do FCC contour analysis, that I gave to Prometheus as the
seed to what became RFree to the actual RFree that many of us use.

Then it needs hardware to go with it, to turn it into an appliance that
anyone can use, that can be submitted for approval.

Then it needs to be marketed.  Even just in our own circle, without
good marketing it will go nowhere.  I learned that the hard way.

With all that, if we stick together, and think of it as a part of the
total system, and put the people first, we can do it, and should.  What
are we waiting for?