# Communication from Backstage to the Booth



## Brendan (Jun 23, 2015)

At my private high school, we have a large gymnasium style theater with minimal electronics, decent lighting and sound, but poor communication. For years, we have been using walkie-talkies along with the Yo! App between backstage and the technical booth so that we know when to run light cues and sound, etc. As I mentioned before we have a poorly designed theater that lacks real communication. What is the best way to go about communicating, either wired or wireless at a cheap cost. We have almost no budget (approximately $100 per show dedicated to tech) and are fine with DIY solutions, such as running things between the places through the ceiling if needed. We can't afford anything such as Clear Com, etc. What is the best way to replace the walkies.


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## MNicolai (Jun 23, 2015)

Baby monitors. Not much of an improvement over walkie talkies but at least you can find some that are full-duplex for not a lot of money.

A wired intercom solution will have a base station. Wire may be cheap if you have the pathway to run it, but base stations don't come cheap nor do professional grade beltpacks and headsets. Professional grade wireless intercom solutions cost a magnitude more than wired systems.

Walkie talkies may very well may be your best option if funding is limited, or you can learn to live without backstage communication by putting your SM, sound operator, and lighting operator at FOH, and leaving the on-stage calls to an ASM backstage who operates autonomous of the SM calling lighting/sound cues.

Alternatively, you can try to identify who in your school's administration has the sway and the commitment to your program to try to get funding approved for a small intercom system. Usually the drama or music teacher doesn't have that authority or budget, but a principal will. At that point, it depends if you can convince them there's enough value and necessity in forking over the dough to buy an intercom system. Sometimes there are also grant foundations in a community that specifically offer grants to select education projects. You could see if there's anything like that in your community and see if your group is a viable candidate for a grant.


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## Brendan (Jun 23, 2015)

MNicolai said:


> Baby monitors. Not much of an improvement over walkie talkies but at least you can find some that are full-duplex for not a lot of money.
> 
> A wired intercom solution will have a base station. Wire may be cheap if you have the pathway to run it, but base stations don't come cheap nor do professional grade beltpacks and headsets. Professional grade wireless intercom solutions cost a magnitude more than wired systems.
> 
> ...



Thanks for the ideas. Out of these options we probably will choose to stick with our use of the Yo! App for our phones or walkie talkies. I don't feel that for the extra cost purchasing baby monitors would be worth it. In the past we have tried to communicate with our head of school in regards to purchasing upgrades but the school currently does not have any additional funds in general, never mind for the theater. Thanks again!


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## petercav17 (Jun 24, 2015)

Even if you're going to use the Yo app I'd still use walkies as well. The Yo app works fine for a "go" but you still need to give stand-by's and have some way of communication if something goes wrong.


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## NickVon (Jun 24, 2015)

Setup a wifi network in the room. and skype from phones. I've had geat luck with "Zello" a mulitiplatform app for 2way radio via cell phone. There was a thread on here to about how to set up essentially a Teamspeak Server for full duplex with phones and earbuds.


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## Amiers (Jun 24, 2015)

Mumble is another alternative. It is free for phones versus TS3.


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## Timothy A. Samuelson (Jul 7, 2015)

Just this weekend at the big Independence Day Bash, the city didn't provide the radios they were supposed to for open communication between, the stage, pyro (over 1000' away), booth, and other various places. The easiest solution for us was a heavily populated group phone call and bluetooth headsets.


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## masterelectrician2112 (Jul 7, 2015)

I have not built this, nor have I priced out this system, but I did find this that looked interesting. http://www.rcrowley.com/ComClone/Project.htm


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## n1ist (Jul 7, 2015)

BlueClone is a project which is an improvement over the ComClone:
http://www.blue-room.org.uk/index.php?showtopic=57825

I built the ComClone ones; they work but have issues with gain and balance. One of these days I will build a set of BlueClones...

/mike


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## Sarabande11 (Jul 7, 2015)

The Voxer app is another great "walkie talkie" style app, although if you have one that works for you, I can't foresee it would be necessarily better than what you have now. Skype, Mumble or TS3 also could be good, if you can get non-stop assured connectivity using phones with headphones/earbuds in one ear for everyone, because then everyone could be on the same "channel". Beyond that, my only suggestion would be, if you don't have them already, to perhaps spec out some cheap earpieces or headsets that would plug into the walkies you have now. I've worked several places where they use walkies instead of true headset systems, and it's not pleasant, but it's more workable than straight up walkies. I know you have no budget but maybe a bake sale or car wash would be in order so you could get a few things to make life easier ... A used clear com base station by itself would be $200+, but you could get a cheap walkie talkie headset for $7 on eBay.


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## rhedgehog (Aug 27, 2015)

A few options I have seen/used/heard of in the past:

Running clear-com (or similar) beltpacks without a base station. Technically, these packs only need a power source, and a with a simple homemade adapter, and a good quality wall-wart, you can get solid one-channel communication without any of the frills a base station would provide. While my school does have a base station and cabling throughout our space, we use this solution for weird events that happen elsewhere (e.g. graduation, assemblies, etc).

If you really have no budget, stringing multiple telephones together can create a basic intercom system, especially when used with cordless phones. Never used it personally, but apparently it works.
A step up from walkie talkies: popular with outdoorsy people, using portable HAM HTs (handheld transceivers) as walkie talkies provides much better range, clarity, and reliability than their consumer counterparts. These radios also have the benefits of being able to utilize the MURS frequencies, which generally have absolutely no traffic on them. HOWEVER, doing this will put you in a legal grey-area, as it's technically forbidden to use such devices on the FRS/GMRS (walkie talkie) or MURS (multi use radio service) frequencies. That being said, the likelihood of someone noticing, them reporting you to the FCC, and the FCC caring enough to follow up with you are practically nil. If you go this route, you can get good radios starting at about $17 a pop. Check out the Baofeng BF-888s for a good option. Do note that these radios have to be programmed to operate on the frequencies you want, and improper programming could result in you accidentally transmitting on restricted frequencies, which would most definitely get the FCC involved.

If cue timing is all you really need, then a simple cue light to backstage could solve you problems. For this, you literally only need a switch, some cable, a lamp of some sort, and a power supply. If you wanted to get fancy, you could even do a double light system with different colors for standby and go. Some commercial systems use dual color, while others do on for standby, and off for go.


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## Russell Reed (Apr 27, 2016)

What i helped make was a DIY com system which took a lot of work but it cost like $150 and it works great. It consists of a cheap mixer that we got for free some headsets with 1/4 in connectors one for the headphone and one for the mic we ended up taking off the 1/4 in connector and soldering on xlr. Then we hook the mic out into one of the inputs of the mixer and we hook up the headphone in into one of the outputs of the mixer that goes to a headphone amplifier. Then all you got to run is stereo xlr to every "station" back to the com mixer. This works great and costs minimal money. Just be sure to be knowledgeable before starting something like this.


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## Aaron Becker (Apr 27, 2016)

One location I've been into many times has a very archaic two wire system using telephones (as several other posters have mentioned above) and it works great for a single party line system. You don't get the ability to listen without talking (unless you get a receiver only phone I suppose). You could also adapt the system (literally, using XLR to bare wire terminals or whatever system you're using to connect it) into an XLR-compatible system so you could use preexisting XLR cables to run the long distance you might already have. This would probably be the most expensive part, as the phones you could probably get some cheap on ebay, or ask the school if they have any old ones laying around you can borrow or donate to the program. It's not professional, but it'll certainly work, and on the same grounds. 

Party line is a must, and walkie talkies are difficult because you can't do full-duplex communication, or listen only for that matter.


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