Heron Broadcaster
ON AIR

Always
on air.

Self-hosted radio automation for Linux. Heron crossfades your library to Icecast around the clock, follows your clockwheels, and never lets the air go silent.

▶ Get startedSource on GitHub

Everything between your music folder and the stream.

06 CHANNELS
CH 01 · LIBRARY

Every track, analyzed

Loudness, true peak, silences at both ends, where the next track can start, a waveform. MP3, AAC, ALAC, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, WAV and AIFF.

CH 02 · PLAYOUT

Two decks, no dead air

Crossfades or fixed overlaps, Gap Killer, loudness normalization, and a fallback folder the engine plays even while the API is down.

CH 03 · FX

Jingles over the music

An FX player fires sweepers and station IDs over whatever is on air, without stopping it.

CH 04 · ROTATION

Clockwheels that explain themselves

Categories, clocks, a weekly schedule and separation rules, with a selection log for every pick and a simulation a week ahead.

CH 05 · CONTROL

A console in your browser

Live updates, light and dark themes, English and French, phone to desktop. Viewer, operator and admin roles.

CH 06 · API

Scriptable end to end

HTTP and WebSocket, documented with OpenAPI, with API tokens. Prometheus metrics on every service.

Heron's On air page: decks A and B, the next tracks, levels, the FX player, outputs and the engine's stateHeron's On air page: decks A and B, the next tracks, levels, the FX player, outputs and the engine's state
THE ON AIR PAGE · DEMO STATION, GENERATED MUSIC BY FICTIONAL ARTISTS
QUICK START

From zero to on air in a few minutes.

Docker Compose pulls five services and MariaDB. It runs on amd64 and arm64, down to a Raspberry Pi.

Read the installation guide
cp .env.example .env
docker compose up -d --wait
 ✔ heron-engine   Healthy
 ✔ heron-api      Healthy
 ✔ heron-web      Healthy
docker compose exec heron-api heron-api user add admin --role admin
→ http://localhost:8000
THE ROADMAP AS A PLAYLIST

Early development, but it plays.

FULL ROADMAP →
  1. PLAYEDFoundations · Import & analysis · Library management · Engine core · 24/7 reliability · API & control plane · Web interface · Track details, labels & tags · Track management · Web interface translations · Preparing tracks in the buffer zone · Rotation & clockwheelsM0–M6
  2. LATERDeck EQ · AGC & multiband processing · More encoders, sinks & live DJM8 · M9 · M10

NAMED AFTER HERON OF ALEXANDRIA, WHO PROGRAMMED MACHINES 2,000 YEARS AGO

Free software, built to stay on air.

AGPL-3.0. Run it for your station, read every line, and send your improvements back.

▶ Get startedStar on GitHub