Ninux.org Wireless Community

The Ninux community, under the umbrella of Freifunk, developed four awesome open-source projects for the Google Summer of Code program 2011: a front-end for RadioMate, a new mapserver (called nodeshot), a video and chat extension to the social networking engine Diaspora* and a new tunneling tool.

In this post I will write about RadioMate, the project I was involved in. Then posts on the other projects will follow!

There are many web-radio projects that are closely involved in the world of Community Networks: in Rome Fusoradio and Radio Sonar are an active part of the community and relay on the ninux network for their streaming, in Leipzig Radio Blau (which transmits also in FM) gives big spaces to the Freifunk project, or RadioCona in Ljubljana, where the Wlan Slovenija project is based.

Often these web radios have to relay on closed-source software platforms as the available open-source solutions don’t fit their needs.

RadioMate is a free (as in freedom) community-wise Web-radio management system. Some of its features are:

• support of multiple users with different privileges (roles)
• easy radio schedule management
• handling of audio files and playlists
• extendable with new types of transmissions
• interface with the icecast server
• takeover of the radio streaming in case of “special editions”

While last year the RadioMate engine was developed, this year our efforts focused on a Web frontend. You can find a demo at radiomate.ninux.org. The username is “foobar” while the password is “secret”. Point also your player (e.g. VLC) at radiomate.ninux.org:8000.

For the techies, the engine is based on liquidsoap, written in Python, and easily extendable through liquidsoap scripts. It exports a JSON API which is exploited by the Javascript (jQuery) based Web frontend. Source code and documentation can be found at radiomate.org.

Of course there is still work to do, but I hope that this software will be soon used by our friends running webradios!

As we say in Rome:Daje!
Clauz

Radiomate (Radio Automation Made Easy) is a modular web-radio engine developed for the Google Summer of Code 2010 by the ninux and freifunk community networks. The work was motivated by the presence of many web radios related to community networking projects all over the world.

In Rome, for example, there are the Fusoradio and Radio Sonar web radios but these are currently using proprietary systems.

The development of the RadioMate engine is finished, but a complete Web frontend is missing to start using it in a real-world environment.

Radiomate will allow WJs involved in decentralized Web Radios to manage easily their files and transmissions. The engine has been designed with a plug-in architecture in mind, so that developers can adapt quickly Radiomate to new and unexpected use cases. The front-end will also have a plug-in architecture to allow the addition of new themes or features.

You can soon follow the development on http://radiomate.org/trac/timeline

Clauz

With the RadioMate project we are building a new free software platform for distributed webradios, i.e. webradios in which the WJs can transmit wherever they are (from home, from the site of an event, …). The project is a Freifunk–Ninux.org proposal, and is sponsored by the Google Summer of Code program.

The first webradio that will use the new platform will be Fusoradio, that is an active and distributed webradio headquartered in Rome (at Fusolab), but that currently uses closed-source solutions. Thus the project will not end with the GSOC sponsoring, but will continue growing thanks to the contributions of people that will be actively using RadioMate.

For what concerns the current status of the work, the design of the architecture, of the API and of the database schema have been done, and the code that accesses the database has been completed. I have also studied the liquidsoap language and found a solution to use it in a decentralized fashion, performing some tests.

What is missing, and will be done before the deadline (I am currently working on the project full time) will be to complete the JSON interface, implement the scheduling of the webradio transmissions, and of course, write documentation.

For the source code, more information and updates visit the project’s website: http://radiomate.org

Clauz