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Transmitter alarm texts for off-air, dead air and hot rooms

Dead air at 2 a.m. costs you listeners, and the transmitter site may be an hour up a snowy access road. Welco texts the alarm your remote control or silence sensor already emails to the engineer on call, with the site and the reading. Nothing new goes in at the studio or the tower.

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  • Works from your remote control's alarm email
  • No phone line or modem at the site
  • No per-engineer fees

Works by email with

  • Any system that emails
  • Generator & power
  • HVAC & rooftop units
  • Ping & uptime monitors

A broadcast chain for Main FM: program audio at the transmitter goes flat, the silence timer reaches 30 seconds and the remote control raises the SILENCE alarm. The email reaches Welco and the phone shows: “Welco: [Main FM] Silence detected on program audio, 30 sec at 11:26 PM. Reply STOP to opt out.”

Animation: alerts arrive through the night and each goes to the right person. 11:26 p.m., to On-call engineer: "Welco: [Main FM] Silence detected on program audio, 30 sec at 11:26 PM. Reply STOP to opt out." 2:41 a.m., to Contract engineer: "Welco: [Tower Site] Transmitter room is HOT, 36C. Possible A/C failure at 2:41 AM. Reply STOP to opt out." 4:57 a.m., to Chief engineer: "Welco: [Tower Site] Commercial power lost, generator carrying load at 4:57 AM. Reply STOP to opt out."

What changes for the engineer on call

The engineer on call gets each transmitter, silence and site alarm as a text with the site and the reading. It comes from the email your remote control already sends.

  • The site and the reading, not a status dump

    One-text alerts cut a many-channel remote control email down to the channel that fired and its value.

  • Each tower to the engineer nearest it

    An alert rule matches the call sign or site name. The contract engineer near a far site gets that site's alarms.

  • A flapping silence sensor stays quiet

    Restored messages can stay in email overnight, and flood control caps a run of repeats. A short dropout doesn't wake the chief three times.

  • The chief sees the whole night

    Off-air alarms can reach the chief and the contract engineer with several phones per alert. Morning delivery reports show who got what.

A hot transmitter room before morning drive

A small station group in the BC Interior shares one chief engineer and a contract engineer who lives near the tower. Automation runs the board alone after midnight.

  1. Overnight rules take over

    Off-air, silence and site alarms text the engineer on call. The program director is on the dead air rule only.

  2. The remote control emails a room temperature alarm

    ALARM Tower Site CH 7 XMTR ROOM TEMP HIGH 34 C (limit 32 C) RC-1

  3. The contract engineer near the site gets it

    Welco: [Tower Site] Transmitter room temp HIGH, 34 C, A/C suspect at 2:41 AM. Reply STOP to opt out.

  4. The engineer replies on the way to the truck

    Driving up now. Switching to the aux transmitter from the remote control

  5. The reply reaches the engineering mailbox

    A reply is emailed to the alarm's sender. When the remote control mails from the engineering account, the chief reads the plan over coffee.

    Reply from the on-call phone: Driving up now. Switching to the aux transmitter from the remote control

  6. Full power for morning drive

    A portable A/C is running and the main transmitter is back on air. The delivery report shows which engineer got each text.

Times are an example, and each text moves at the pace of the mobile networks. Replying changes nothing on the remote control or the transmitter.

How to set up transmitter alarm texts from the studio

The chief or a contract engineer can do this. The remote control gets one new email recipient.

  1. Sign up and verify your station group

    Tell us which alarms you plan to send. Each business is verified before its alert number goes live.

  2. Invite your engineers

    Each engineer joins from their own invite with their own cellphone and replies YES once. Board operators can join the same way.

  3. Add Welco to the alarm email and trip a channel

    Add your Welco address in the remote control or silence sensor, approve the sender, then trip a test channel. Test mode shows the text before it sends.

Send your next dead air alarm to the engineer on call

Verify your station group and add one alarm email recipient.

7-day free trial, 15 message creditsCard required for verificationNo charge for 7 daysEmail reminder before billing

Text me my transmitter alarmsBook a demo

Which broadcast systems can send transmitter alarm texts?

Most remote controls, silence sensors and automation systems can send email, and that is all Welco reads. Email to SMS for any system covers the general setup. Generator and power failure alarms cover the site's backup power.

Alarms a broadcast engineer acts on

Masked examples. Rooms with a logger use temperature data logger alarms, and A/C units send HVAC failure alerts. Racks send APC UPS alerts, and links use ping and uptime alerts. Wireless ISP tower crews and utility substation techs chase similar remote sites, as alarm texting across industries shows.

  • STL: Welco: [STL] Studio to site link DOWN, site on backup audio at 1:18 AM. Reply STOP to opt out.
  • Automation: Welco: [AM 1340] Automation stopped, no log events for 5 min at 3:33 AM. Reply STOP to opt out.
  • Off air: Welco: [Main TX] Transmitter OFF AIR, switched to aux TX at 4:06 AM. Reply STOP to opt out.

A phone showing these alert texts: STL, "Welco: [STL] Studio to site link DOWN, site on backup audio at 1:18 AM. Reply STOP to opt out."; Automation, "Welco: [AM 1340] Automation stopped, no log events for 5 min at 3:33 AM. Reply STOP to opt out."; Off air, "Welco: [Main TX] Transmitter OFF AIR, switched to aux TX at 4:06 AM. Reply STOP to opt out."

Which transmitter and studio alarms should text an engineer?

Text anything that puts you off the air, or soon will: silence, low power, a hot room or lost site power. Readings inside limits and routine logs can stay in email.

Worth a text overnight

  • Silence on program audio past your delay.
  • The main transmitter off air, or switched to the aux.
  • Forward power low or reflected power high.
  • A hot transmitter room, which usually means the A/C quit.
  • Commercial power lost, or a generator that fails to start.
  • The STL or stream link down, or automation stopped.
  • A tower light failure reported by the remote control.
  • A transmitter building heater that fails in winter, before the room drops below freezing.

Leave in email

Daily meter readings, routine automation logs and restored messages at night. The chief can read them with coffee.

Give the silence sensor a delay first

A sensor with no delay alarms on every quiet pause in a show. Set a delay that suits your format, then text the alarm and not the restore. See how to quiet repeating alarms for more.

A low power alarm from a transmitter remote control

Remote control emails list the site, the channel, the status and the value. Welco boils that down to the line an engineer needs before driving up the hill.

Alert email from remote@xmtr.example.com, subject “ALARM: Main TX Forward Power Low”. Welco trims it to one text of 90 characters: “Welco: [Tower Site] Main TX forward power LOW, 2.1 kW at 1:48 AM. Reply STOP to opt out.”

Text received: Welco: [Tower Site] Main TX forward power LOW, 2.1 kW at 1:48 AM. Reply STOP to opt out.

Characters161901 credit

Animation: the alert email "ALARM: Main TX Forward Power Low" is trimmed into one text: "Welco: [Tower Site] Main TX forward power LOW, 2.1 kW at 1:48 AM. Reply STOP to opt out."

You decide which lines stay in the text with an alert rule. The full email still reaches every address it went to before.

Overnight transmitter alarms, before and after Welco

The dial-out way

  • The remote control rings a phone and reads channel numbers aloud.
  • A missed call on the highway means the site sits off the air.
  • Alarm, restored, alarm: a short dropout rings three times.
  • Only the chief's number is on the dial-out list.

With Welco

  • Site, alarm and reading wait on the lock screen until the engineer looks.
  • The engineer decides to drive or fix it from the remote control.
  • Restored messages stay in email overnight.
  • Chief and contract engineers on one rule, each texted once.

Frequently asked questions

Our transmitter remote control can only send email. Is that enough?

Yes, email is all Welco needs. Set the alarm email to your Welco address and approve the address it sends from, since only approved senders can trigger a text. You don't need a text modem or a phone line at the site. Every recipient the remote control mails today keeps getting its email.

Our transmitter site has no internet. Can it still send alarms?

Only if the alarm reaches email somewhere. Many sites report back to the studio over the STL or a cell link, and the studio system sends the email. If an alarm only rings a phone line at the site, Welco can't see it.

Will a brief silence send texts all night?

Not if you set it up well. Give your silence sensor a short delay before it alarms, and drop the restored message at night with a Welco rule. Flood control also caps a run of repeated alarms. Alarms past the cap are not texted, so check the remote control log after a rough night.

Do engineers need an app, and can they reply to an alarm?

No app. The alarm is a normal text, and each engineer confirms their own cellphone with YES once. A reply goes back by email to the alarm's sender, so mail alarms from an account someone reads. Anyone can reply STOP to stop the texts.

Can each station in our group text a different engineer?

Yes. Alarm emails usually carry the call sign or site name, so write a rule for each one and pick the engineer. A chief who covers everything can sit on every rule and still get each alarm once. Board operators can sit on the off-air rule during live shows.

What does it cost, and should it replace our dial-out?

Welco has no per-engineer fees, hardware or setup charge, and alarms use message credits from a plan on plans and pricing, priced in US dollars. A 7-day trial with 15 credits lets you run texts beside the dial-out, then decide whether you still need it. If you want escalation chains, the PagerDuty comparison shows where a paging tool fits.

Hear about dead air from a text, not a listener

Point your remote control's alarm email at Welco and add your engineers.

Text me my transmitter alarmsBook a demo

7-day free trial, 15 message creditsCard required for verificationNo charge for 7 daysEmail reminder before billing