Hey @alanb128 👋, if you are still looking for maintainers I'm definitely interested :)

In the past year or so I've been getting back into IoT, and specifically audio projects, even using the audio block for some of them. I see that the codebase has not changed much since I was last involved (for context I was balenaSound developer from 2019 to 2022) so this might be good timing.

I've taken a look at the state of both this project and the alternatives in the ecosystem. I think balenaSound (or IoTSound now 😄) still has a place and audience, most alternatives seem to be fully fledged OS-based systems with too many features (music library management, audiophile features, etc). It might be a niche but I believe a simple open source audio streamer that encourages community participation can still exist in today's landscape.

One thing I'd like to understand is what is balena looking for exactly. From the README my impression is that you want to hand over control of the project to a third party, someone who would be responsible from now on for the direction, development and maintenance of the project. The project rename further points to this. But I've read some comments in this issue and some others that made me think you might be just looking for someone to help maintaining it?

Full disclosure I would be more interested in the former. I've given it some thought and if I was given the chance this is a quick sketch of what I would be interested in working on and exploring:

First I think a repository clean up is due. Triage issues, probably close most of them as they are too old and not reproducible, review open PRs that look like they actually work. Once this is done I think v3.x should be put in maintenance mode, if anyone wants to contribute fixes I would be willing to review and patch but I would not be spending time on it otherwise.
Then a rebranding would be needed. I understand IoTSound is a placeholder to remove the balena brand. So a new name would be needed.
Finally what interests me the most, work on a "v4". I think much has changed in the ecosystem since balenaSound was initially conceived, so taking a step back and going back to the project roots. This will need some thinking and exploration, but my goal would be to simplify the project in many fronts. Much of the support burden that came with this project was due to it trying to do too much. Some of the things that come to mind:
- Multi-room mode simplification. This is actually something I had started working on back in 2022 (core: refactor to remove modes #541).
- Focus the project on Raspberry Pi devices only. Drop support for other types of devices. Obviously contributions would be welcome but treated as "community support" with less guarantees.
- Redesign the audio stack. Linux audio has changed quite a bit in the past years. Most major linux distros have moved away from PulseAudio and are now using PipeWire. I have played very little with PipeWire but my understanding is that it's a modern take on PulseAudio's concepts and architecture, but it has much lower latency and much better bluetooth support, which are two of the biggest support headaches balenaSound 3.x has.
- Move away from balenalib base images. I see they been deprecated recently.

As I mentioned I have some other audio projects (https://github.com/tmigone/primer-pi) that are thematically close to balenaSound and also re-use some components (like the audio block, which makes me think, would you be open to hand over that repository as well? ). What I'm interested in is in creating like a hub for IoT projects/products, so the focus would be creating a simpler and more maintainable IoTSound so i can spend time doing other things.

Anyway, if all of this sounds good to you AND assuming you haven't found a maintainer yet, let's discuss it! I'm sure I'll have more questions and thoughts to share.

IoTSound Call for Maintainers #689

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