It's alive!

Today ended on a satisfying note: the first "production" phone coupler I'm building worked right on the first try, so now I get to build up eight more.

What's the big deal? Well, one of the things I do is design stuff: studio facilities, transmission systems, some software, and sometimes the hardware itself. It's not that I couldn't have gone out and bought nine phone couplers; a number of companies make them. But the corporate reality is that to do so would require going through an agonizing capital expense proposal process, at the end of which I would probably get approval for only five of something similar to but different from what we need. On the other hand, nobody blinks at buying parts (especially when the parts cost less than a fifth of what ready-made equipment costs). And we happen to need them... fast.

As it happens, our Syracuse TV station does an awful lot of live news from the field... and the folks standing in front of the camera have to hear what's on the air, plus cues from the control room. They have two microwave trucks, two satellite trucks, plus fiberoptic connections to our sister stations in the region and CNN. So during any given newscast, we can easily have half a dozen different remotes coming in, each of which needs to dial into a separate number for IFB (that's what the talent earpiece feed is called -- short for "Interrupted FoldBack"). We're about to head into May Sweeps, one of a handful of ratings periods throughout the year, during which every news department goes all out to attract and maintain viewers. We tend to do more live remotes than usual, and it is critical that everything works properly.

Of course, even if it weren't sweeps, it's a busy week; we're shorthanded, what with folks at the National Association of Broadcaster's big annual event in Las Vegas. Worse, it's been hectic around town, with lots of breaking news. Tomorrow is the funeral for a state trooper who was killed pursuing some bozo doing 100 miles an hour on a motorcycle, and we're covering that live. It's been that kind of week, and it's only Wednesday.

Which brings me back to why I'm designing and building all these phone couplers. We have a bunch that have been working fairly faithfully for about 12 years -- or so I thought. It turns out that they are acting pretty much like an average 12 year old kid: quick to answer the phone, slow to hang up. In fact, sometimes the only way to get them to get off the line is to tap them sharply on the side (the couplers, not the kid). Apparently the reed relays like to stick, which is funny: I assumed that being sealed, they would be extremely reliable. Live and learn. So... we need something reliable... NOW!

The newly designed coupler does away with the mechanical relay, and is pretty bulletproof. It uses two optical relays by Clare, one to handle ring detect and the other to check for end-of-call. Sometime I'll go into the process of making the printed circuit boards, but the bottom line is that the first board does its thing... and tomorrow, another eight will follow.

Unless tomorrow runs true to form and I get pulled away to solve some other crisis.