Broadcasting via Discord

To allow shows to continue during the Coronavirus pandemic, a Discord server has been set up. The server allows shows to broadcast from home.

Getting Started

Join the Discord server.
Pick an available time slot from the Doodle poll. Make sure you use your full Discord tag (for example, @Star#1234) as the name when filling out the poll so we know who you are. You can see this at the bottom left of the Discord window on a computer, or in the Profile tab on the mobile app.
In the #registration channel, tell us what you would like your show to be called and that you've picked a time on the Doodle poll.
Read the rest of this guide so you know how the system works.

Server Channels

A channel is like a chat room, and a server is a group of channels.

Our text chat channels are:

#info: guidance and help.
#just-chatting: general chit chat.
#help-me: for technical help during your show. Mention @Tech Team in your message!
#broadcasting-guide: guidance for going live.
#control-room: chatting with co-presenters during your show, and controlling the music bot.

Our voice channels are:

#the-studio: audio in this channel will go live on air. This is where the music bot plays music, and where you and your co-presenters should talk to broadcast.

Voice channels are for audio only, and chat channels are for text messages only. So, to control access to #the-studio and to control the music bot, send your command messages into #control-room. Any non-command messages in #control-room are ignored by our bots, so you can also use this text channel to talk to your co-presenters during your show.

Going Live

At the time of your show, one of your presenters (probably whoever posted in #registration) will be given access to the studio. You can't access any of the broadcast channels until your show time.

Once you're in, send !invite @co-presenter-username into the control room chat to give your co-presenters access. To remove someone, use !uninvite @co-presenter-username. Be careful! If you kick yourself out and get locked out of the studio, there might not always be someone available to let you back in immediately.

Commands to control the music bot and invite your co-presenters to the studio should all be sent in #control-room. Make sure you're connected to #the-studio voice channel. You can then listen to what's happening on STAR by "undeafening" yourself, and turn your mic on or off with the mute button.

Every hour Gorilla Joe will enter the studio and play some music if nobody is present. If there's already music playing when you came in, or you arrived a bit late to the studio, these commands might help you out:

_remove all: This will remove every song that is currently playing from the queue. When the currently playing song has finished, no more songs will be played which is a good time for you to get on air!
_nowplaying: When you begin your show, you might want to let people know whatever song was just playing. If so, this command will show whatever song is currently playing and will also give you a link to the source of the song if you fancy sharing it.

At your show's end time, you will all be automatically removed from the studio.

Controlling Music

The music is controlled by sending commands to the #control-room channel. Different commands take different parameters (bits of extra info) after them - the music bot will tell you what to add if you don't provide it first time.

Some key commands are:

_play: Plays music in a voice channel
_pause: Pause or resume the music player.
_stop: Stop and clear the music player.
_skip: Skip the current music track.
_remove: Remove a song from the queue.
_move: Move the bot to another channel.
_shuffle: Shuffle the music queue.
_nowplaying: Shows what's currently playing.
_queue: Shows the music that's currently queued.
_volume: Set the volume of the music player.
_jump: Set the time marker of the music playback.
_youtube: Search and see YouTube results.
_soundcloud: Search and see SoundCloud results.

You can see all music commands by sending _help to #control-room.

Technical Implementation

This section is intended for STAR Tech Team's reference.

The Discord server is powered by:

starbot-admin, a custom-developed bot for managing the station in Discord.
starbot-forwarder, a custom-developed bot to send a Discord voice channel to our streaming server.
Octave, for music.
Carl, for announcements etc.