Named after an automation pioneer.

Heron of Alexandria

Two thousand years ago, Heron of Alexandria built machines that ran on their own: an automaton theatre that played a whole show, and a cart steered by a rope wound around a pegged drum. Programs, long before the word.

Heron Broadcaster carries his name, and the bird’s temperament: a heron stands still at the water’s edge for hours, attentive, never off duty. That is the job of radio automation: be there at three in the morning, stay on air, and never make a fuss about it.

And if you turn “on air” around and say it in French, you almost hear héron.

Why Heron

Many stations still run on dated Windows automation software. Heron is a modern alternative that runs on Linux, is operated from any browser, and is open from the audio engine to the API.

It is built for community radios, school and student stations, web radios and hobbyists, and for anyone who wants their station on their own hardware.

Free software

Heron is released under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0. You can run it, study it, change it and share it; if you run a modified version as a service, you share your changes too.

Contribute

Bug reports, ideas, translations and code are welcome on GitHub. Adding a language to the web interface takes one catalog file.