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Our code of conduct: Code_Of_Conduct.md

Welcome to the RootIO Project.

RootIO Radio stations are tiny FM radio stations that require little investment, maintenance, or contribution from the community, yet at the same time offer more and better modes of interaction than traditional stations. They are backed by a cloud service that connects the station with telephony and the Internet, allowing many new forms of interaction and information flows. After a few days of installation and training, stations can start to facilitate new economic opportunities, new opportunities for expression and deliberation, and provide information across, into, and out of the community they serve. Listeners just use the same FM radios they already use; if they have a feature (non-smart) phone they can interact with the station in a variety of ways. More general information can be found at our public site.

Who is RootIO

RootIO is a team of creative technologists from around the world who saw the continued importance of FM in much of the world, and wanted to make sure it received at least a fraction of the attention that apps, IOT, and the Kardashians get. We imagined Community Radio as a Service (CRaaS), and went about scaling a radio station down to the smallest size as we could imagine, a size which would allow a neighborhood or village to have a station without having to pour resources into it. We've been facilitating four stations in rural Uganda with reasonable success. @csik and @judelove founded the project.

How does it work?

The stations themselves are comprised of an android phone running our app, solar power, a radio tower, and an FM transmitter. There is no studio. This is backed up by 1) community and 2) a cloud service. The cloud service can grab podcasts and audio from around the Internet, push content to the stations via data, count SMS votes, etc. But it also is hooked into a telephony switch, which allows it to make or recieve calls. Together, this means that stations in rural areas with only GSM can still receive up-to-date audio content, emergency reports, or talk shows with callers.

What's all this code?

The project is divided into three parts:

We are adding overall project documentation at on the wiki for this page

Contribute

Please email info@rootio.org if you have any questions.