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Consider this popular mobile app that lets you tune into local police radio chatter.

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How exactly do these applications work? They aren't using any built-in radio receiver in the phone, since you can also choose to listen to the radio stations of far away cities.

Is the operator of this application literally going out and setting up transmission arrays in each city before piping the collected data into the cloud? This seems rather expensive and highly unlikely in such a small operation. Alternatively, are these apps just using some API service that I am not aware of?

Where are they obtaining all this streaming audio data? Does anyone have any idea?

Jonas
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AlanSTACK
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1 Answers1

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Without internet they must be using a radio receiver chip in the phone.

With internet. Just google for some live radio broadcast sites. For example this site on first search result.

Then simply stream the audio.

Viatcheslav Ehrmann
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    You understand that my question is regarding where those sites get their data from, right? As opposed to "how to stream the audio" from one of these sites. – AlanSTACK Jul 17 '20 at 20:53
  • Your question suggest that you want to know how it works on your phone. Not why random people go out and stream local radio signals for free to the internet – Viatcheslav Ehrmann Jul 17 '20 at 21:01
  • So how does the application work? I was looking for a more detailed answer. Preferably involving a direct radio streaming API source, as opposed to just "simply stream the audio". – AlanSTACK Jul 17 '20 at 21:05
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    https://www.programmableweb.com/category/music/apis?category=19990&keyword=radio%20api has a list of API's for radio. Best is to google something and find what suits you the most. – Viatcheslav Ehrmann Jul 17 '20 at 21:44
  • I've looked through the entire list of offerings and none of them seem to offer Police/Emergency response data. Do you happen to know of any that do? – AlanSTACK Jul 17 '20 at 22:38
  • @AlanSTACK did you ever figure out where to get the data radio scanner data? – DIRTY DAVE Jun 19 '21 at 22:55
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    @DIRTYDAVE Unfortunately not. I never got a conclusive answer for this question. I just marked it as solved because it was obvious I wasn't going to get a better answer. I personally came to the conclusion that they probably just manually set up a bunch of ham radios by themselves. – AlanSTACK Jun 20 '21 at 00:52