[Thursday : 3.5 miles; today: 6.6 miles]
I worked some more on the notification device. I had an aluminum box; I had to make a cover for it and put some holes in it for the power supply and network port. Today I got everything installed, tested, then took it out to the radio transmitter shed.
For the moment it has two temperature sensors and a serial port connection to the transmitter. I need to do the email configuration yet again (the third time I think). Then I can write up some scripts to watch for error conditions and send myself an alert email.
I still need to figure out how to determine dead air. I have an FM receiver chip. I should be able to tune in and demodulate the signal. I will have a signal strength indication and the audio output. Single strength probably won’t do any good because a quite FM signal is as “strong” as a noisy one. So I’m thinking I may need to run the audio output into an ADC and look for activity on the audio. I’ll work that out here in the office then install the modifications once I know what I need to do.
I’m really happy with my progress on this. I have been thinking about it for a long time.