Software I recommend.
The software I use every day for streaming, monitoring, networking and audio, and what I'd tell another engineer to try first. Everything here is free to run, and most of it is open source.
How I wire it up
Uptime Kuma and Zabbix check → InfluxDB keeps the numbers → Grafana graphs them → my phone buzzes.
Liquidsoap keeps the streams on the air. Wazuh watches the logs on the side. xfr tests the network when a stream won't behave. RustDesk comes out when the fix is on someone else's computer.
Streaming
Getting audio on the air.
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liquidsoap.info ↗
Liquidsoap
Runs the audio side of a stream: takes a live encoder or a playlist, handles crossfades and loudness, and sends the result to the stream server in every format and bitrate.
It's a scripting language, not an app with buttons. Worth learning for the fallback alone: when the live feed drops, it switches to backup audio and nobody hears dead air.
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Short for "broadcast using this tool." Takes audio from a mixer or sound card and sends it to an Icecast or Shoutcast server.
Free, tiny, and runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. It's what I hand to anyone who needs to go live without learning anything.
Monitoring
Is it up, and is it healthy?
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uptime.kuma.pet ↗
Uptime Kuma
Pings websites, ports and streams on a schedule and tells you the moment one stops answering. Status pages are built in.
The easiest monitoring you will ever set up. One Docker container, and it can alert through nearly anything: email, ntfy, Pushover, Discord, Slack.
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zabbix.com ↗
Zabbix
Watches servers (disk, memory, load, expiring certificates, services that quietly died) and broadcast gear too. Anything that speaks SNMP, like transmitters, audio processors, codecs and UPSes, can be polled and alerted on.
Set triggers on the parameters that matter, like forward and reflected power or a temperature creeping up, so you hear about it before it becomes an outage. Start from the built-in templates; the learning curve is real.
Graphing
What happened, and when.
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influxdata.com ↗
InfluxDB
A database for numbers over time. Listener counts, response times and server load all end up here.
Pair it with Telegraf, their collection agent, and you can be graphing almost anything in an afternoon.
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grafana.com ↗
Grafana
Where the data becomes something you can read. Zabbix is better at alerting; Grafana is much better at graphs and trending, like weeks of data on one screen where a slow drift actually shows up. It's the first screen I open when something seems off.
It can read straight from Zabbix with the Zabbix data source plugin, as well as InfluxDB. Don't build dashboards from scratch: import a community one from grafana.com and cut it down to the panels you actually look at.
Security
Who's trying the door.
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wazuh.com ↗
Wazuh
Reads logs from your machines, flags failed logins and changed files, and checks systems for known vulnerabilities.
A free SIEM that holds up. Give the server more RAM than you think it needs, and tune the noisy rules early or you'll learn to ignore it.
Testing
How fast is the pipe, really?
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Measures real throughput between two machines over TCP, UDP or QUIC, with live graphs while the test runs. I use it to check a stream path, a VPN or a new circuit before trusting it.
Think iperf3 with a proper terminal UI. It has its own protocol, so run xfr serve on the far end; it won't talk to an iperf3 server.
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videolan.org ↗
VLC
Plays nearly anything, streams included. I use it to listen the way an audience does and catch problems a dashboard won't show.
Open a stream with Media → Open Network Stream, then check Tools → Codec Information to see what the server is really sending.
Audio work
Editing, converting, checking files.
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audacityteam.org ↗
Audacity
For quick edits: trimming a clip, cutting a promo, fixing a bad spot in an episode.
Free on every platform and opens fast. Not a full mixing setup, but for a five-minute fix nothing beats it.
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ffmpeg.org ↗
ffmpeg
Converts audio and video from one format to another. It runs behind half the internet, and behind most of my scripts for encoding, loudness and batch jobs.
Learn the loudnorm filter. It gets a file to a loudness target, like the -16 LUFS that is standard for podcasts, without opening an editor.
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ffmpeg.org ↗
ffprobe
Comes with ffmpeg. Reads a file and reports what's actually in it: codec, bitrate, sample rate, length, tags.
When a file won't upload or play, run ffprobe -hide_banner on it first. It usually explains why in a few seconds.
Remote support
For the machine you can't reach.
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rustdesk.com ↗
RustDesk
Remote desktop, like TeamViewer or AnyDesk, for fixing a machine you can't get to.
Run your own relay server and point the clients at it. Sessions go through your box instead of someone else's, and there are no seat licenses.
Why these
They're free, they run on hardware you already have, and your logs and metrics stay on machines you control. The cost stays flat as you add servers, and if one of these projects goes sideways you can swap it out without starting over.
Got one I should try?
If there's something in your toolbox that belongs on this list, I want to hear about it.