Episode: 1166
Title: HPR1166: Airtime Radio Automation
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1166/hpr1166.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 20:51:52

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Airtime is open source radio automation software for Linux, similar to Rivendale.
However, where this differs is that this is all web-based.
You install the software to a server box and this provides a web front end for DJs and
edels shows for the radio.
If you were broadcasting internet radio, you would just need a server and a data send
or even a VPS or cloud if on the other hand you wanted a set up a traditional station
who would probably want a local box or audio or output hooked up to the transmitter.
Airtime is made by source fabric, tech, non-profit organisation,
who produce open source software for publishing and journalism.
There are other projects include NewSoup, a CMS for news sites,
and BookType, a bushing platform for print and e-book.
One of their sources of funding is hosting and supporting instances at airtime and BookType.
Debian and Ubuntu are actively supported sources available to compile for other
distros. Documentation is very thorough and there is an active community.
Under the hood, the system uses PostGressedQL for the database.
RabbitMQ for messaging, soap for constructing and encoding the stream,
and icecast for serving the audio online.
Installation is straightforward.
Deb package is provided for auto setup, but I just added the app to repose
your stock Debian 6 VM, although the instructions.
After install, you access the interface using your browser.
An admin account is created during install and you log in with that.
Once logged in, you are presented with the interface.
The top is a master panel showing the previous track on track and next track.
The name of the current show, stream switches for live feeds,
a big on-air box turns red when its station is live,
and a clock showing the station time and time zone.
All the info is blank enough, obviously, as nothing is loaded or set up yet.
Beneath the master panel are tabs for different int of screens.
First step after install is to check the system settings.
Only available to admin users.
First is preferences, where the station name is set along with time zone, etc.
There's also settings for email so the server can reset passwords for users
and sound cloud integration.
Automating podcast creation if you use that server.
Next would be users, where you can create accounts for different people running our station.
Permission levels are as follows.
Guests, which only allows you to view the interface and not interact.
DJ, which lets you upload media and add to the schedule during your assigned shows.
Program manager, which lets you create time slots for DJs.
And finally, admin, who also has access to the system settings.
On the media folders screen, you can redefine the folder in which all the media is stored,
and also find Dropbox folders to auto-import media.
Useful for importing in bulk.
However, it doesn't seem to have a way to auto-tag these in the database,
like Rivendell can,
tapping which might be useful in the future.
When first installed, an Ogg stream is created.
It's sent to IceCast on the local server.
Going to the stream settings screen,
lets you change this and all the other output settings.
The audio can be outputted via ALSA on the local box,
as well as three different IceCast streams for different codecs and qualities,
and even to remote servers.
Ogg and MP3 are available,
but I know liquid-soatly engine running the stream can do some others like AAC.
You can also set up input streams on this page.
You can set up two streams, master and show.
The master has one password,
and assuming you set auto on offsetting,
will interrupt anything on the station with its audio.
Good for a studio live stream.
The show stream has a dynamic password,
particular to a user and show.
I'll go a bit into that more later.
Now for the fun bit, actually running a station.
First you need media.
Click on Add Media tab,
and simply click and drag your files,
Oggs, MP3s, etc.
from your file manager into the browser window.
You can also use the Add Files dialog.
Click Start Upload,
and each file will be uploaded and imported into the library.
On the server, there is also a command line tool for importing,
and the aforementioned watched media folders.
You can now click the library tab and browse the tracks,
preview them in the pop-out player,
edit their metadata if needed.
On the right hand side of the page is a button labeled new.
This gives the option of creating playlists,
mark blocks and web stream.
This playlist is simple.
Click and drag or multi-select tracks on the left
to add them to the playlist on the right.
The order can be tweaked by some more click action,
and the fades and cuts between tracks can be added.
Make sure the list is labeled,
and maybe has a description and click Save.
A smart block is like a playlist,
but instead of manually adding tracks,
you define rules,
such as creator-contained spring stream,
or year is in the range 1990 to 1999,
and the system will find your tracks
and create a playlist length you define.
There are two smart block types,
static and dynamic.
In static, you set your rules,
click Diner 8,
and it will create your list end and there,
and can be rearranged as a regular plate.
The dynamic block will only pick the tracks
from the blogger's added show.
This lets you have an up-to-date list
if you are adding tracks throughout library.
Web streams are useful
for if you want to add content
from another iScal stream to your station.
You define the stream URL
and the default length of time
you want to run the stream.
All the playlists, mark blocks,
and web streams are added to the media library
as if they are regular tracks.
Next part of running the station is scheduling shows.
Clicking the calendar tab brings up a traditional day by week grid
which can also be viewed by week by day.
Clicking plus show brings up the new show dialog.
You set the name of the show and other descriptive info.
Time this show airs,
and if you want it to repeat,
this is only the scheduled block settings
to repeat, not the content.
Live stream settings for this scheduled block are also set.
You can opt to use airtime authorization
so your DJ just needs to enter
their airtime logging credentials
into the iScal transmission software
to start streaming.
Or you can set up a custom user and password
for a one-off access.
Record and read broadcast only seems to work
for when audio is entered locally through the line-in.
I'm sure it's technically possible
to do something with iScal streams as well.
You can now set which DJs have access to the schedule show block
and the colors used when it is displayed in the calendar.
Finally, click add this show and it appears.
Clicking on the schedule block
lets you add or remove content.
Edit the settings or delete the show.
If in the day or week view on the calendar,
you can also drag the show around to different times.
Clicking add content brings a similar screen to the library.
On the left is library tracks
and on the right is a list of what will be broadcast and when.
Tracks and playlists can be dragged onto the show list,
populating it and displaying in red the time
still to be filled.
Or green the time that you have overbooked.
If you add a dynamic smart block,
it is at this time it will pickaxe.
If you add a web stream,
the output of the defined stream will be played.
If the show is overbooked,
the last track will fade out at the end of the time allotted.
It's unlikely you will pick just the right amount of tracks,
so it's easy to find a track of a particular length
using our library search to plug.
And there it is.
A show is set up to play.
Obviously you need lots of content to get going with a full station.
Perhaps grab a load of HPR and other CC podcasts
and music in there for practice.
I work at a college in Croatia
and we have a simple streaming radio station for a couple of years now.
After I started researching this episode,
I could see that this could work with us,
so we were looking into using this in the production setting.
I will be doing a follow-up episode for HPR
with a bit on how I got on.
I'm OrconDK.
OrconDK.com.
They are U-K-O-N-D-K.com.
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