Ideas/Help regarding streaming scanner audio from Raspberry Pi

[mibzzer15]

I bought a Raspberry Pi with the intention of following this guide to stream my scanner audio to my phone so I can listen while at work. Military Comms Streaming Your Scanner Audio Using a $35 Raspberry Pi Computer

I actually got it to work very well and currently use it. I do have a problem with it though. It may be Icecast or darkice specific but I am not sure yet (using Raspbian distro). Heres the problem: I have a AT&T Samsung Galaxy Note 2, I listen to my stream by entering my home network IP address into the chrome browser. Currently at work I am connected to wifi, but as soon as I walk outside of the shop, or go for a test drive (I am a mechanic btw), the phone will switch to the LTE network and stop the stream. I have to open up my phone, switch off the chrome browser, and turn it back onto the stream webpage. Now I can't even just press the play/pause button because it will then start playing a previous recording (or buffer?) on the phone. I actually have to close chrome, quit it from running in the background, and start it back up. I have tested this on a iPhone (using a different wifi network) and it is the same issue using Safari for the browser. I also tried using an internet player radio app on the Samsung Galaxy note 2 and it does the same as using it in chrome.

So is there another way to stream audio from my Raspberry Pi to my phone through the internet? I can't have my PC on 24/7 to stream audio because the energy bill would fly through the roof. Or is there even an unknown setting that I can change on icecast/darkice to fix this issue? Any other ideas to stream my scanner audio would be great, whether I need to buy some other piece of hardware (keeping it under $100 would be great) or use some different software for the RPi, I would just like to fix this or get something running.

Any help would be appreciated, Thanks!

 

[FireTTD]

Well, the normal semantics of wifi is exactly as you described. When you leave the area, you lose the connection. One thing you could do is open up the ports and do some port forwarding on your router so that you can make your scan accessible from the outside world. So then you would take an open up a browser on your phone, and then go to your house/shop ip with the port, and it should be able to start streaming. The downside of that tho is - it's just that - streaming. Streaming could put a hefty charge on your phone for usage with continuous streaming.

So to answer your question - can it be done? Yes. Port forwarding and open the ports on the router to be accessible by the net.

Hope that helps some.

Best,
Mike
FireTTD

 

[mibzzer15]

Well, the normal semantics of wifi is exactly as you described. When you leave the area, you lose the connection. One thing you could do is open up the ports and do some port forwarding on your router so that you can make your scan accessible from the outside world. So then you would take an open up a browser on your phone, and then go to your house/shop ip with the port, and it should be able to start streaming. The downside of that tho is - it's just that - streaming. Streaming could put a hefty charge on your phone for usage with continuous streaming.

So to answer your question - can it be done? Yes. Port forwarding and open the ports on the router to be accessible by the net.

Hope that helps some.

Best,
Mike
FireTTD

I already have port forwarding setup on my home router, so when I am at work, I can just enter in my home's public IP address + the port and listen to the stream, I just would think that I would be able to switch from wifi to LTE seamlessly while at work without having to start/stop the stream. Sort of something like if I have Pandora streaming on my phone, I can go from wifi to LTE or LTE to wifi and it will continuously play music. I do understand that Pandora will preload/buffer the music, but while listening to my stream, I shouldn't have to reset the connection because I went from wifi to LTE. And like I had mentioned, if this current way with the raspberry pi +icecast/darkice does not work, is there something else out there that is cheap and will get the job done?

Thank you Mike.

 

[SCPD]

Currently, there is not an option for what you want. What you can do is download one of the Streaming apps that let you put in a custom url and when it disconnects it will attempt to reconnect. Try Scanner Radio.

 

[mibzzer15]

Currently, there is not an option for what you want. What you can do is download one of the Streaming apps that let you put in a custom url and when it disconnects it will attempt to reconnect. Try Scanner Radio.

That is exactly what was needed. Something that will reconnect after a loss of connection (switching wifi to LTE or other way around). I downloaded Scanner Radio and it works very well. Thank you ActiveHat.

I thought it was an issue regarding the server software because of it happening on 2 different phones (android and iOS phones).

 

[w2xq]

Wirelessly posted (Moto Droid Bionic: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.2; en-us; UPC300-2.2 Build/FRF91) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1)

Before you tear down all the work you've done Just for grins, on your Android phone, maybe try the streaming app 'A Online Radio' (also known as 'AOR'). The app allows entering an IP/port as you require. As an end user it seems to hand off the WiFi to LTE for the sites I listen to.

HTH.

If AOR doesn't work out and if you don't mind experimenting, have you tried the Dolphin browser? There are quite a number of add-on modules available: translate, PDF are two I like. IMHO Dolphin is a more mature, better behaving, Android browser than Chrome. I am forced to use Chrome too, but it seem cranky despite two updates in the last three days.

 

[mibzzer15]

I won't be pulling apart any of my setup right now, I currently have my Raspberry Pi streaming online so I can listen to my scanner when I am not able to carry around my 396xt or am away from my 996xt at home. I'll try the AOR radio and Dolphin browser, thanks for the suggestions.

Now since I have the connection issues figured out, I need to figure out a way to record the audio. I can't do it on the Raspberry Pi while it is streaming from the mic in port because it gives an error of it being in use. I do have a computer running 24/7 in my bedroom, so if I can find software that will record the stream, that would work.