IRL Dashboard

A single-screen control panel for IRL streaming that runs on the router in your backpack — with SRTLA modem bonding, encoder control, GPS, weather, chat, and a visual live-overlay designer. Bond every SIM and Wi-Fi uplink, control what is on air, and build your graphics from the same page you pull up on your phone mid-stream. No laptop, keeps working on cellular.

Install — one private command

Your invitation page provides the personalized command to run over SSH or in the LuCI terminal. The invitation is consumed only after the protected dashboard package downloads successfully.

It installs PHP, downloads the dashboard, adds a location /streaming/ block to your router's existing nginx server, and — on the Mudi 7 — installs the SRTLA bonding sender. Then open:

http://YOUR-ROUTER-IP/streaming/

It runs on the port your router already serves its admin UI on, so there is no second port to bind and nothing to conflict with. The installer backs up your nginx config before touching it and restores it automatically if the change is rejected or nginx fails to come back up.

The first visit lands on the Settings screen. Fill in what you use, press Save. Done.

No SSH and no text editor after that one install command — the whole setup works from a phone, which is where you want it mid-stream.

The private command streams the installer directly to the router. Its separate package ticket expires after ten minutes and after one successful use.

What you need

Why these pieces?

Every part of this stack was picked for a reason, and almost all of it is optional. Here is the honest version, including what you give up by dropping each one.

None of these are required, and that is rather the point: the value is not any one of them, it is all of them on one screen. Your bitrate, your modems, your camera, your chat, your location, your weather and your publishing are normally seven separate apps on a phone you cannot look at while you are walking and talking. Here they are one page, on the router in your backpack, that keeps working on cellular with no cloud service in the middle. Turn on the parts you use and ignore the rest — every tab you leave unconfigured simply is not there.

Modem bonding SRTLA

The Bonding tab turns every modem, tethered phone and Wi-Fi uplink into one resilient stream. It's automatic: plug an uplink in and it joins the bond; unplug it, or lose service, and it drops out — no menus, no per-link fiddling. When one link stutters the others carry it, so your stream rides through dead spots that would drop a single modem.

Phones can join the bond too. The Bonding tab supports Moblink — install the Moblink app on any spare Android phone, join it to the rig's WiFi, and it relays its cellular data into the bond as another link. Turn it on in the Bonding tab, set a pairing password, and the app should find the router automatically; the tab lists the phones currently connected. It is the cheapest way to add carrier diversity — a friend's phone on a different network becomes an extra uplink for as long as they are standing near you, with no extra hardware to buy.

The bonded stream must be put back together on a machine with a public address — the receiver. We ship it as a Docker package you run on any always-on box (home server / NAS / VPS):

Point the Bonding tab's Receiver host / Receiver port at that box, add the Director Mini as an SRT Caller to the router, and press Start bonding. The tab shows every uplink, live throughput, and a timestamped connection log.

Configure

Everything is configured in the browser — the gear icon in the tab bar, or /settings.php directly.

Every setting is optional. Leave one blank and the dashboard hides that tab rather than showing you something broken. Set your router IP, press Save, then add the rest as you go.

Settings are stored as plain JSON in /etc/irl-dashboard/settings.json — deliberately outside the web root, so they can never be served over HTTP. Nothing typed into the form can become executable code. Each field carries a note on where to get that credential.

The tabs

Stream overlays

Use the built-ins or design your own. GPS, maps, weather, hourly forecast, radar, lightning, clock, stopwatch, Chat, and Featured Chat are ready to use. The visual designer adds text, live router values, uploaded artwork, icons, shapes, animations, and seamless scrolling tickers on a true 16:9 stage.

Turn any browser JSON API into a live graphic. Paste a URL and the designer discovers nested repeating data and available fields. Pick what is displayed, add before/after labels with independent styling, filter and sort rows, and arrange them as a list or continuous ticker. The encoder fetches fresh data while the overlay is live; the API must allow browser requests through CORS.

One browser source can run everything. Add the optional all-in-one URL to OBS or the Director Mini once, then use the dashboard switches to show and hide individual overlays without touching the encoder. You can still send separate overlays directly to OBS or the Director Mini when you prefer independent encoder layers. The Director Mini migration replaces dashboard-managed webpage GFX with the shared source without touching native titles, logos, or other graphics.

Move designs between rigs. Export or import a complete custom overlay, including its layers and uploaded artwork. API layers also have their own smaller presets for copying a configured feed, filters, styles, labels, scrolling, and placement into another design.

Updating

Re-run the same install command. It replaces the app files and the bonding binaries, and never overwrites your settings.

Documentation

Keep the operational guides with the release: documentation index · Chat operations · overlay reference · architecture and security · deployment and recovery · release history.

Uninstall

sed -i '/# >>> irl-dashboard >>>/,/# <<< irl-dashboard <<</d' /etc/nginx/conf.d/gl.conf
rm -rf /www/streaming /etc/irl-dashboard
rm -f /etc/sudoers.d/irl-dashboard /etc/sysctl.d/99-srtla.conf
rm -f /usr/bin/srtla_send /usr/bin/srtla-bond.sh
crontab -l 2>/dev/null | grep -v irl-dashboard | grep -v srtla-bond | grep -v /www/streaming | crontab -
/etc/init.d/nginx restart

Or restore the backup the installer made on its first run: cp /etc/nginx/conf.d/gl.conf.irl-dashboard.orig /etc/nginx/conf.d/gl.conf

Known gaps

The Modem controls are GL.iNet-specific: they use /usr/bin/gl_modem, so on other OpenWRT hardware the dashboard can still run but those controls are unavailable. The Magewell Director Mini API is beta and Magewell can change it in a firmware update.

Files

README.md  ·  docs  ·  install.txt  ·  receiver