ARLA/CLUSTER: Portable broadcast FM transmitter with Raspberry Pi for the Syrian Radio Network (Syrnet)

[João Costa > CT1FBF]

The Raspberry Pi powered Pocket FM was born out of work by MiCT, with
support from the German Federal Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt), for
the Syrian Radio Network (Syrnet)

Pocket FM is a portable Band II FM broadcast transmitter the size of a
shoebox that starts working as soon as it’s connected to a small
antenna, a power source, and an audio signal. A single device can air
radio programs over a radius of about six kilometers. At its core is
Raspberry Pi, an affordable computer board that can easily be further
developed and modified with different features for different
scenarios.

“The challenge in Syria is that it can be scary, in some areas, to set
up big FM transmitters, because they are easy to detect, easy to
destroy, and expensive to run,” said Klaas Glenewinkel, MiCT’s
co-founder and director. “We had the idea of bringing in many small
ones and creating a mesh of radio transmitters so people can access
local information where TV and other means have failed.”

Big radio transmitters, Glenewinkel said, were sometimes stolen by
people who then demanded money for their return, or could be co-opted
to broadcast certain messages. But a decentralized network of
hard-to-spot transmitters circumvents those obstacles and is simpler
to set up in remote areas. Pocket can also find new frequencies to
broadcast on if one is jammed, and can even send out quick text
messages to listeners using the RDS protocol.

The team that participated in the initial creation of Pocket involved
not only staff from MiCT and IXDS but also software developers, people
from NGOs, radio engineers, and logistical experts who helped
coordinate transport (both legal and illegal) of various pieces of
Pocket FM equipment to difficult-to-reach areas. “This is not just an
app that you can download from the store. It’s still a physical
device. If you want to bring equipment from Germany to Syria, into
Aleppo, you need a lot of coordination,” Glenewinkel said.

Read the full article Portable FM transmitter brings information to
people in crisis
http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/09/this-portable-fm-transmitter-brings-information-to-people-in-crisis/