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Is anyone using Raspberry Pi for any portion of their Part 15 stations? I did a search for a thread on the Pi and saw nothing. Just curious what successes there are, if any. Most of the software I see for Part 15 use is Windows based, and I’m not sure a Pi would run Windows very well.
Centinal,
I purchased an R PI a couple of years ago just to play with. It does have audio and video capabilities but being a Windows experienced user with not much Linux experience I can only comment on what “canned” programs I found.
The platform supports Kobe which is an extensive player/server application which can import and play multimedia. As far as using this for a Part 15 radio application, all I can say is it probably would take a bit of research and imagination.
For me, it has been a “fun toy” but not useful for day to day life. Those more talented than I can probably make it work.
The most I would use it for would be a studio clock (https://www.broadcastradio.com/smartsign#Navigator)
Definitely not for music or airplay, because the PWM audio output sounds horrible. But mostly because I would not want to trust my on-air signal to a $35 computer.
I’m looking at reviving my part-15 station and this is one of the changes I’m looking at making: putting the playout system on the pole along with the transmitter, then all I need to run is power out there. The RPi has onboard wifi so I can just have it on wifi for remote-access (in a headless setup of course). I’ve used a large number of RPi’s for a different projects and it’s hard to beat the price point for a network-enabled compute platform. Running headless where the RPi is tucked away in a closet is not hard, since Linux is the OS nearly anything you need to do can be done remotely with SSH or in a pinch you can do a remote X-session for windowed apps.
There are some challenges to putting my playout system on the pole of course. While I loved running Zara I’ll have to switch automation/playout platforms. By random chance I found myself chatting with with a local commercial broadcast engineer and was surprised to find that he uses Rivendell for Linux to run all of the stations he maintains. I had heard of it before but didn’t realize it was already that solid.
The next challenge is the air-chain of course, it will have to be completely virtual. I’m familiar with Pulse Audio and the like but I’ve never attempted to do anything quite as complex as what one needs to do for air-chain duties with it. Assuming I can get what I need out of it then I can ditch whats left of my tired audio gear. I love my old audio hardware but times are a changing I guess.
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