Play the same song in every room, listen to different things upstairs & downstairs or make every room different — either way Strobe will ensure that everything sounds perfect.
Strobe is equally perfect for bringing new life to that old set of computer speakers you have lying around or for powering your top-of-the-range amplifier. You can start small or go big — it’s up to you.
Your music is not re-encoded or re-compressed. If your library is stored as 16-bit 44,100kHz FLAC files, then that’s what your Strobe will deliver.
Modern home networks are more than capable of dealing with 176,400 KB/s raw PCM streams, so why compromise?
For hi-quality digital-to-audio conversion Strobe uses IQaudIO’s Pi-DAC+ or Pi-DACZero.
Strobe eshews knobs, dials, settings, configuration and tuning. There’s nothing to understand beyond some basic concepts. Nothing to type except your wi-fi settings. Nothing to tweak except the volume.
Strobe is powered by a Elixir server which leverages Erlang’s famous reliability to provide an audio system that’s always there when you need it. The player software is compiled to an embedded application using the Nerves build system.
The user interface is built in Elm — a functional language that compiles to a fast Javascript application and communicates over Websockets so that the user interface is fast and responsive.
So that you’re free to copy, modify and contribute to the system that we hope you come to rely on.
Strobe is a work in progress. Although the streaming & synchronisation side of things are working and stable, the user-facing aspects (e.g. installation and interface) are very much a work in progress.
You’re welcome to try Strobe, and we’ll do our best to help, but this is not a finished product.
Strobe was started as a side project by Garry Hill prompted by a general dissatisfaction with the open-source multiroom audio solutions that were available and out of a desire to learn the programming language Elixir by solving a real problem.
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Now nearly 2 years of development later the “20%” project has has successfully scratched the original itch and is now providing the Hill family home with high quality audio in perfect sync.
Working on the assumption that other people might be wanting the same thing, the only sensible option was to release the result to the world...
