RadioPal is a self-hosted automation tool for 24/7 internet radio. It manages a continuous music stream and schedules TTS-generated spoken content, such as news bulletins, short stories, and station IDs to play at defined intervals. It functions as an orchestration layer over standard radio software like Icecast and Liquidsoap.
What it is
RadioPal is three cooperating pieces:
- Icecast -- the streaming server. This is the URL listeners connect to.
- Liquidsoap -- the audio engine. It plays the music playlist and mixes in spoken segments, then sends the result to Icecast.
- Scheduler -- a small Python daemon (this repo). It decides what to play and when, generates dynamic audio (LLM & TTS), and hands finished clips to Liquidsoap at the right moment.
The music stream never stops. Spoken content arrives in one of two ways:
- duck -- the music dips in volume and the voice plays over it, then the music comes back up. Good for short station IDs.
- takeover -- the music fades out, the segment plays in full, then the music fades back in. Good for news and stories.
Why it exists
I saw this post on reddit the other day and liked the idea of having a custom radio station that plays the things I actually want to listen to: my music library, my audiobooks, custom news bulletins, or basically any audio content I own or can generate via an LLM and TTS.
I have a few ideas in mind for the future:
-
Connecting my calendar so the "host" can remind me of my appointments.
-
Listening to my audiobook library every night at 9 PM
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Automatically playing jazz when it's raining outside
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Read top RSS headlines
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Tying into smart home events, so the host casually announces when the laundry is done or the 3D printer finishes a job.
How it works
generates audio telnet push
Scheduler -----------------------------> Liquidsoap ----> Icecast ----> listeners
(Python) TTS / LLM / static clips (audio engine) (stream) (browser, etc.)
Requirements
- Docker and Docker Compose
- API credentials, depending on which actions you enable:
- Google Cloud Text-to-Speech service-account JSON (for spoken generated content).
- A LiteLLM-compatible LLM key, e.g. DeepSeek (for news/story text).
- A newsapi.org key (for the news action).
Setup
- Configuration file. Copy the example and fill it in:
-
Google credentials. Place your Google service-account JSON at
creds/radiopal-tts.json. -
Music. Put mp3 files in your
MUSIC_DIR. Liquidsoap watches the folder and picks them up automatically. -
Schedule. Edit
config.yaml(see below).
Run
Build and start everything:
docker compose up -d --build
Watch the scheduler:
docker compose logs -f scheduler
Listen to the stream:
http://localhost:8000/radio.mp3
To stop:
Configuration
config.yaml has two global settings and a list of actions:
lead_seconds: 300 # how far ahead to prepare a segment tick_seconds: 20 # how often the scheduler wakes up actions: - name: station_id action: station_id lane: duck every: "15m" - name: news action: news lane: takeover time: "19:45" params: country: us category: general count: 5 - name: sport action: news lane: takeover time: "19:50" params: country: us category: sports count: 5