mobile live audio streaming with a Raspberry PI

From time to time i get obsessed with non-stationary audio streaming, esp. in the context of the radio aporee continuous stream. As you may know, this station plays random selections of the 20000+ recordings from the aporee soundmap, but also reacts and interferes with listeners, activities in the field and a couple of live microphones from the locusonus project.

The broadcast box is one of the experimental tools to engage with sound in public space, it directly hooks onto the current broadcast and allows to play inbetween places, situations and archive recordings, right where you are at the moment. However, it's quite a bulky bunch of gear to carry around.

This setup is he latest of my experiments in that field. The unit left is a Raspberry PI, a little 40€ pocket size computer running Linux, connected to a USB battery which lasts for a day, and an Olympus LS5 recorder connected to the PI via USB. The stick attached to the PI is an UMTS/3G modem for mobile Internet access.

In short, this assembly is a complete mobile radio broadcast unit, which allows to send live sound in crispy stereo to radio aporee (or elsewhere), on-the-go. Of course, without a network the whole thing is pretty useless...

I still have to do some elaborated tests, and have to improve reliability, but the concept already seems very promising. If you are interested in tech details, let me know. tbc.

edit Sat. Nov. 2nd :

today i did a short test while washing my stuff in the laundry at Ohlauer Str, Berlin Kreuzberg. it worked pretty well it seems, got some feedback from listeners. with the stream2archive recorder on aporee.org i made two 15min. snapshots of "the show":

laundry, Berlin Kreuzberg, part 1:

laundry, Berlin Kreuzberg, part 2:

A100 - construction work progress

see also this previous post, and the sound map of the A100 area

The construction work for the A100 motorway in Berlin continues. A few month ago, in the area around Kiefholzstr., Berlin, many of the abandoned allotment garden houses have been squatted by homeless Sinti and Roma families, not totally sure about this though. They made a sort of living from collecting and selling metal scrap found in this area, kids were playing in the waste lands between the train tracks and the remaining allotments.

Here's a recording of that area, from this summer. A woman is washing, kids are playing in the green. see also radio aporee ::: maps - allotment, Mergenthalerring, Neukölln, Berlin


6 weeks later, August 17, 2013, the houses have been demolished

only the sound of the mobile concrete factory can he heard


October 11, 2013, construction work continues

the sound of the excavator, echoing in the landscape