CastLan - Broadcast

Automate the broadcast of your multi-channel advertisement campaigns

CastLan is a professional audio broadcast solution based on redundant modules which aims to ensure the broadcast of multi-channel playlists, from one or more studios to several dynamically configurable destinations, while providing users with complete and effective control in real-time.

The purpose of this multi-station solution is the broadcast of predefined content continuously supplied — by third-party systems like DigiPlan — in the form of time-based playlists.

Originally dedicated to advertisements, CastLan is now designed to air any type of sound, from ad breaks to local news or any other sequence.
Multiple schedules can be broadcast in parallel on different logical broadcast channels of one station or across multiple stations.

The solution makes it possible to launch broadcasts at the explicit request of either a user, a trigger from an external system, or even automatically, depending on the chosen configuration.

The internal modules communicate with each other continuously and interact with multiple external elements making CastLan an integrated solution.

Multi-channel playlists for multiple stations

Main interfaces and services

Studio(s)

The CastLan Studio, main interface for the end-users.

From this one, manual or automatic triggers launch the different breaks of the loaded playlist.

Furthermore, it allows taking control over some or all the Transmitters of a dedicated station, such that they are linked to the appropriate studio at the right time.

The main display shows the schedule of upcoming broadcasts, with a bunch of useful information concerning the delays, the duration, or even the nature of the breaks.

Controllers

Each radio is represented by a pair of CastLan Controllers.

To provide redundancy, these two Controllers centralize communications between all the modules in the system and ensure continuous consistency and stability of the solution.

At any time, the second Controller knows the entire system status and is ready to take over if necessary. The other CastLan modules never directly communicate with each other, so each piece of information systematically passes through both Controllers.

Similarly, only the Controllers access the database containing all the configuration information.

Players

The CastLan Players that actually play the sounds.

At the end of the broadcast chain, the CastLan Player’s role is to broadcast the complete content of a scheduled playlist, triggered by one of the Controllers the Player is constantly connected to.

For redundancy, it is essential that each physical Transmitter is represented by at least two Players that will each broadcast the same content in perfect synchronization.

Another independent, redundant and dedicated service ensures that the sounds files are broadcast and the planning information files are always available and up-to-date.

Control center

The CastLan Control center, an elaborate dashboard for advanced users.

This more technical interface is dedicated to the administrators to provide any time total control of the CastLan modules.

In addition to the main interface showing a multi-radios dashboard and the overall status of system processes, they can consult detailed schedules and logs.

They can also force the shutdown or the restart of processes and services remotely, force the reload of the schedules or even the last-minute replacement of sound files, and of course adapt on the fly to the various configurations.