As many of you will no doubt have realised, Transmitter went offline at VirtualFlight.Online yesterday, and won’t be returning in the near future. That’s not the end of the story though - the source code and client software are freely available for anybody to download, and operate their own server. Several groups already have.
Many are greater than one
Given that we’ve proven the Transmitter service doesn’t scale well (also explaining why nobody else tries to do it), the best solution is for lots of independent Transmitter services to exist - and for people to use instances operated by the group(s) they are affiliated with.
To that end - the last changes I made to the Transmitter client software were to add both a server URL, and a pin number to the client application - allowing people not only to choose where to broadcast to from the Transmitter client software, but also for those operating servers to set a private pin number - to avoid servers being used without permission.
Where can you download the Transmitter source code from?
The source code is available to download from Github:
You will notice in the margin there is a link to download the latest installer for the client software, along with the zipped up source code for the server.
What skills do you need to setup a Transmitter server?
The Transmitter server is a very simple PHP application, using a MySQL database. You’ll need to have some basic skills covering the following subjects:
Linux Web Hosting (buying a domain name and web hosting from a provider)
FTP (to upload the server files to the web hosting account)
MySQL (to setup a database, a user for the database, and to run the included SQL file that provisions the table required within the database)
PHP (to change the config file to point at the database - it’s a simple text file, but if you don’t know a little PHP, you may mangle it)
If you have any experience installing platforms such as Wordpress, Drupal, or Joomla, Transmitter is straightforward in comparison.
Where can you get help with setting up Transmitter?
The github page linked above has full instructions for installing and setting up a Transmitter server.
Are there any alternatives to Transmitter?
Perhaps the closest free alternative to Transmitter is Volanta, created and operated by Orbx. It’s a free download, and I’ve recorded videos about it in the past.
Good luck!
If you do decide to install your own instance of Transmitter, I wish you the best of luck with it.
Hiya VFO, I think this idea is GREAT! I love distributed systems. I hope it catches fire (in a good way). ;)