Question for you smartphone users

[John Connor]

I'm thinking about getting a smartphone. Right now I just use an old flip phone. My main purpose with the smartphone will be Teamviewer, and running audio into my Team speak server from my police scanner and using the Team speak App to listen to my scanner wherever I go. This would be great since I don't have to lug around the scanner and look shady to people all the while having a bluetooth earpiece in my ear.

So as you can imagine this might uses a lot of data streaming. I'm going to run Wireshark and experiment with different voice quality settings to see what uses less bandwidth between two PCs.


Now my question: When they say you get 1 GB of data/month. Does that mean both upload and download combined? So I actually would have 500 MBs?

The current plan I'm looking at is just 1 GB/month. I have a network monitor widget on my computer and I don't hardly reach that in a month on this laptop. So I'm thinking this might be all I need. I won't be playing games. Will be checking into Twitter, Facebook, my websites and some Google searches. That's about it. I'm wondering if I should pay the extra $5/month and get another Gig? The service I'll be using is Virgin Mobile.

TIA!

 

[Ichinisan]

There are apps that let you listen to police scanners from various cities.

Typically upload and download count toward your data limit.

Get a plan with 5-10GB or more.

[edit]
If it's $5 for another gig, just do it. A smartphone isn't all that useful without data. More data gives you greater flexibility.

 

[OutHouse]

1gb might not be enough

 

[John Connor]

There are apps that let you listen to police scanners from various cities.

I know that and have been a member of a forum for ten years that started that revolution. Now called Broadcastify. But no one feeds my town and I have my own team Speak server.

 

[John Connor]

1gb might not be enough

Since I will just use the data when I'm out and about it might, I'm not sure.

 

[Carson Dyle]

Now my question: When they say you get 1 GB of data/month. Does that mean both upload and download combined? So I actually would have 500 MBs?

Yes, it's upload plus download, but what's your logic behind "actually would have" only half of the subscribed data? From the description of your applications, you'd mostly be pulling data to to the phone, with little upload.

 

[lxskllr]

Wonder if you could listen over the phone line? Have the home phone autoanswer, and listen to your box over that connection.

For using data, looking at Virgin's website, it looks like data is unlimited. I'd use opus at the lowest setting. That would probably be enough to work over slow data.

 

[sdifox]

Get an unlimited data plan.

 

[Mai72]

Use wifi as much as possible?

I have Comcast so I can use their wifi hotspots scattered throughout my neighborhood.

 

[Triumph]

I downloaded a police scanner app, and many places are not covered. Nothing is broadcast. So not really a replacement for an actual police scanner.

 

[Carson Dyle]

I had a quick look at both the TeamViewer and TeamSpeak web sites. Are you sure these are the best applications for your purpose?

TeamViewer is a remote control application (like VNC or Microsoft's Remote Desktop), so it will also be streaming video. If the video is static, though, that might not entail much additional data. Do you actually have any need for the remote control aspect?

TeamSpeak is a conferencing and communication application. Again, I wonder if it's the best fit, since your only need is to listen.

I'm thinking something more along the lines of SHOUTcast might be what you want.

 

[Carson Dyle]

If you were only streaming audio, then it wouldn't be difficult to figure out your bandwidth needs at a given bitrate for X hours of listening. Something like a scanner feed, which is mono and only voice would have very low bandwidth needs compared to music.

 

[John Connor]

There are people that use shoutcast for this purpose, but I already have a Team Speak server so It's a no brainier. I don't know anything about shoutcast.

I use Team Viewer all the time.

 

[Zaap]

I'm not understanding the need for TeamViewer in this setup, unless it's just to every now and then remote manage the PC server.

Basically you're just feeding the scanner audio into Teamspeak, and monitoring just the audio via the native smartphone app, right?

If so, my guess is 1GB is still going to cut it pretty close, but it depends on your usage. If I were you, I'd guesstimate your usage in a month and multiply by the predicted bitrate to rough-figure how much data you'll likely use. If even close to the limit, then opt for more data.

 

[John Connor]

I'm not understanding the need for TeamViewer in this setup...

Scanners now a days connect to a computer and you can tune, change channels and program along with other things.

 

[Carson Dyle]

Seems like an odd approach to take when you're concerned about bandwidth and its costs. Just because these tools are familiar... You could still use TeamViewer to do your tuning/whatever when necessary, but you're going to take a bandwidth hit by using it just to listen to an audio stream.