I’ve recently drilled a hole through my girlfriend’s wall for the RG-6 coax. This allows me to put my DreamCatcher inside the house (at one end). My audio reception is pretty choppy although my SNR is -12 to -14 or so. I get a lot of audio segments that repeat themselves.
Second, I find the audio jack on the DreamCatcher to be very restrictive. I would love to listen to the broadcasts through streamed audio over WiFi. There’s an Android App called WiFi speaker that might be something to look at. They have a Windows-based server program. Of course an open-source streaming server could use the WiFi port on the DreamCatcher to cast the audio.
I like this idea of streaming the audio. I wonder if the DC can really handle it. I look at my running processes and the tuner/demod typically runs at 25 to 40% cpu utilization.
A cheap RPI zero could probably accept the audio from the DC and operate as a second wifi device to do the audio streaming.
I just need to figure out what is needed at the receiving end of the signal.
We are running the Wi-Fi stack already to talk to a router or access point already. The devices on the other end for our applications are PCs, laptops, cellphones or tablets over WiFi or Ethernet.
Does the DC have enough horsepower to add the needed code? That can be determined later. In the meanwhile a slave RPi can be used as a streaming server.
So why not receive the audio stream on a PC, laptop, tablet or smart phone? Check out the Android app called “WiFi speaker” for smart phones and tablets. We should also try “Tune-In”, etc. the only real variables are the data rate, the number of channels, and the sound encoding.
Let’s get an RPi streaming server up and running and find an app or program that will work to receive the stream.
The reason I was pursuing storing the audio into files was to hopefully eliminate the stuttering and looping of the “live” stream. Maybe this not really possible.
The stuttering and looping is a problem that Othernet will need to solve. Sending liable sounding voice over an unreliable link is a real trick onto itself.
@Abhishek I have some questions regarding the stuttering and looping problem:
Is this a problem you are trying to resolve?
Are you seeing packet errors with audio that you don’t get with files? I have a dish on one of my DreamCatchers. It has literally no packet errors, yet the audio stutters and loops.
When you miss a packet, do you replay a previous one? (if so, this is where the looping comes from)
Does the software see packet errors?
How long are the audio packets?
How long is your buffer? On an audio broadcast, it’s OK to have latency.
Do you do interleaving? Since latency is not an issue…