Top 5 Free Android Apps for Broadcast Engineers

This small flashlight app has come in handy when the flashlight is still in the truck or the battery goes dead on your old trusty Maglight. It has a strobe feature too with a simple on/off switch. It uses your phone cameras flash to light the way.

Several streams and feeds to login to and scour through everyday seems daunting. This app helps me see all my social networking sites at a glance like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. It also is easy to compose and send to specific accounts, schedule posts and keep up to date with what's going on.

It's recently been useful for me to monitor Twitter feeds during severe weather, such as @SWEPCoNews and @NWSShreveport. It also gives me a direct link to folks I might not have the opportunity to pick up the phone and call directly, like Shreveport's @MayorGlover.

For a larger list of the folks I follow on Twitter (@mrtroyjjones), go here.

Sometimes you've got to go all electrical on something. Calculate Volts, mAmps, Ohms and mWatts with this easy calculator.

Our modern broadcast facility is very dependent on satellite signal feeds for programming. This app helps you make sure you're pointing in the right direction -- literally.

Just pick your satellite out of the list and it can use your camera to show you where in the sky to point your dish.

Ever wonder what channel you're Wi-Fi is broadcasting on and who's on the other ones near you? This app can show you, plus display the signal strength and even trace to a Wi-Fi source. It even graphs and lists all Wi-Fi sources around you.