Do you have any idea the legality of using those super low power transmitters that say they are FCC approved on ebay and connecting them to a raspberry pi that is pulling a stream and then doing that in multiple locations? Like technically having no one location exceeding the FCC limit to transmit without a license, but increasing coverage by just simply running one per block or something like that? Aside from other technical issues that might crop up with timing and what not, does that break any FCC regulations that you're aware of?
@grimacing Looks like 61 meters per transmitter. All the rules I am aware of are "per transmitter", but I am not an attorney... I mean, if you had an entire block of people with their own FM transmitters playing Halloween music or Christmas music (noncoordinated) that is legal as long as each transmitter meets requirements. If they are all coordinated, I would (guess?) they are all separate transmitters, as long as every transmitter is below the limit. Great idea!https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/low-power-radio-general-information
grimacing
My thought though for the technical aspect, was to use my airsonic server, then post the days playlist and each client pulls that down over python and gets the stream link for each song, then plays them using a headless VLC. I've only been playing with it for a few days so it's not working currently, but the real challenges I see are like what happens when one client buffers a bit longer than another and somebody switches range from one transmitter to the other... It wouldn't be a seamless experience. Not sure how to address that problem or the geographic timing issues, which honestly, I'm not quite as concerned with, because it would still be pretty close together geographically for the most part. I am toying with the idea of downloading the days entire playlist to the client a few hours before it would be set to play. That way streaming issues could be avoided, but I am going to have to play with it.
@grimacing So... VLC has support for RTP, real time streaming -- which is synchronized in time. It may be there is a way to send RTP to your headless VLC instances so they will auto-sync.
https://prime-5.videolan.me/vlc-user/streaming_files/en/advanced/streaming/stream_over_rtp.html