Tag Archives: RootIO

RootIO and a new community radio initiative in Uganda


(Source: Global Voices via Mike Hansgen)

How RootIO Broadcasts Radio in Uganda Using a Bucket

The open-source toolkit allows users to broadcast using just a smartphone and a transmitter

Radio is still and continues to be a powerful medium across most of the African continent. Not only is radio used to share community information but it is cheap and very accessible. In Uganda, a mixing of radio’s power with new mobile and internet technologies has created a cheap and powerful open-source toolkit that allows communities to create their own micro-radio stations. All one needs is an inexpensive smartphone and a transmitter and a community that will share, promote and collaborate on dynamic content.

[…]They have no studio and all the radio shows are done using the host’s smartphone.

How does this work? Users can purchase most of the materials at local markets. A small transmitter is built into a waterproof bucket with a fan, a charge-controller and a smartphone, which is connected to an antenna and a solar panel.

The radio stations are really small and can serve a village or a couple of villages reaching to 10,000 listeners. The content produced by the radio hosts lives in the cloud so stations are able to share content with other stations.[…]

Click here to read the full article at Global Voices.

Note that we first published a post about RootIO five years ago. Very happy to see it’s now in use!

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RootIO: community powered micro radio stations

RootIOThanks, Benn, for sharing this:

Radio continues to be a powerful tool for community information, and the RootIO project amplifies it by mixing its power with new mobile and Internet technologies. RootIO is an open-source tool kit that allows communities to create their own micro radio stations with an inexpensive smartphone and transmitter, and to share, promote, and collaborate on dynamic content. The project will be piloted in Uganda in partnership with the Uganda Radio Network, UNICEF Uganda and UNICEF Innovation Unit.

http://www.knightfoundation.org/grants/20123667/

http://rootio.org/

https://twitter.com/RootioRadio

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