To maximize participation, my team meets at the school’s workshop to watch the Kickoff stream and conduct our Kickoff day activities.
Over the past few years, the stream has been hosted on Twitch, however the school’s network blocks Twitch. As a result, we’ve tried to find ways to get around the block:
By requesting the platform get whitelisted by the school, which was ignored
By using a VPN to connect to the stream (not possible, since the school network also blocks all VPN services that I know of)
By connecting our computer to a cellular hotspot, but the shop is in a data dead zone and this connection is poor
By using a remote desktop app (Teamviewer) and watching the stream as it’s played on a remote computer. This is what we used last year, but results in poor quality and audio synchronization issues
Does anyone else have an approach they’ve used to successfully watch the kickoff stream? Will (or can) the stream be mirrored to another service such as Youtube, which isn’t blocked, so it can be viewed?
Attending a “local” kickoff somewhere else in the region isn’t possible, because the team doesn’t have transportation available for all students to attend
One of my mentors has a portable Wi-Fi router, I don’t fully know where it gets the internet, but if it gets it from the cell service you can try putting it somewhere where there is not a dead zone in internet.
the other thing we have done is going into the library or auditorium and having a giant projector screen (in our school we get good internet in those areas).
Ah yes, we looked at hosting at another location on campus as well, but because it’s still winter break, this is also not allowed (normally we could pay to “rent” a space like an auditorium at the school, the payment actually goes towards hiring a custodian to be on site during that time, but not available during winter break).
The wifi router router idea is what I tried 2 years ago but due to the poor connection quality, the stream wasn’t viewable. I imagine it could be placed somewhere outside and then run a bunch of repeaters or a very long ethernet cable to the shop? Dunno, I will have to try to find a “single day use” wifi router to rent or something.
You could rehost it to YT fairly easily (all you need is a computer elsewhere with a good internet connection and enough compute power to run OBS), but FIRST (at least historically) doesn’t and is contractually obligated not to. Legally speaking, you probably shouldn’t rehost it either.
You could (more legally) Wifi hotspot using someone’s phone with an unlimited data plan. The hotspot datacap is usually lower (mines iirc 2gb/month?) but id be surprised if you went through that just from a FRCFIRST Robotics Competition stream (and you can always lower the quality down to 720p)
I’d probably go off-campus. Have everyone watch it at home, and convene at the school to discuss later. But that’s my option, and probably won’t work for everyone.
I dont know, which is why i used the “historically” qualifier. That said, FIRST has made no mention of non-twitch streaming sources in all kickoff material thus far, so im not holding my breath.
This is what we tried 2 years ago (on my own phone’s data plan) but we got no data signal in the shop. I managed to get 1 bar by putting the phone outside, but then the signal from phone to computer running the stream was poor. The result was every 10 seconds or so, the stream would re-buffer and then eventually just “skip” so we’d miss a good amount of the stream.
I contacted my local library who lets members check out free hot spots, but they currently have a 50-person wait list that won’t clear out until late January, so that’s not an option at the moment.
This will work! Just tested streaming a twitch channel on my computer at home then using OBS to mirror to an unlisted Youtube stream, which we can view on the school’s network. I think this will be the best solution this year!
How much of the event is even really live these days, versus pre-recorded? YouTube has an option for “premiere” videos where the video is pre-uploaded but it otherwise feels like a live event, e.g. there is a countdown to a set air time and “live”-like viewing/chat experience; this feels like it might be perfect for kickoff.
This may or may not work, but if the school only blocks DNS lookups, use the twitch IP to get to the stream. Just run cmd and tell it to ping the twitch link, then put the ip from that into the computer at school.
Works well to bypass DNS blocks.
Speaking of Kickoff: The primary Kickoff broadcast will be on Twitch, and we recommend that you view on that platform if possible. We are also piloting simultaneously broadcasting on YouTube. If you absolutely cannot watch via Twitch, YouTube may be available as an option.