So I have this crazy idea for distributing audio among a number of different buildings, all pretty close to each other.  They all need to receive the same audio, although being in perfect sync is not necessary.  Neither is super high-quality.

My idea is to create a mesh network of Raspberry Pi SBCs.  This will be done via airmesh, which already has a prebuilt image for the Raspberry Pi.  There are a number of options for usb wifi adaptors, such as the DWL-G122.  This site has a list of adaptors which seem to be well supported under Debian, with instructions for compiling the kernel module found here.

Each Raspberry Pi that will act as a receiving node, will also be connected to an amplifier (either D-class or T-class), which in turn will be connected to a speaker cabinet.  The TDA7294 looks like a good option for the amplifier, although it will need a 28V AC transformer such as this one.  These components may end up built in to the speaker cabinet, for ease of portability and robustness.

The Raspberry Pi that will act as the transmission node will need to have a USB sound card connected, since the board has no analogue sound inputs.

The audio data will be transmitted either via multicast RTP, or using OpenOB.  At this stage it’s not clear whether OpenOB will work with multiple receiving nodes.  Otherwise, pulseaudio or ffmpeg will be used to transmit and receive the audio data.