Quiet

When I started working on libquiet, I was trying to answer a question for myself. I had seen projects which passed data through the headphone jack, which I thought was an interesting idea. I wanted to know how fast this method could send data. Many of these methods used Frequency-Shift Keying, which is easy to implement but typically does not achieve the maximum speed possible. I started researching, which lead me to liquid sdr which offers basic framing and all the modulation and error correction methods I would need to answer my question. And so, libquiet was born, creating a configurable modem engine which connects soundcard to liquid SDR.

As the project continued, I realized it would also be possible to compile my library to JS using emscripten. I was surprised how well this works, and now, Quiet.js is compatible with the native binaries create with libquiet. My aim is to bring quiet to as many platforms as possible. It’s not just for your headphone jack, either. Quiet works quite well through your speakers.

There’s a few reasons I chose the name quiet. For one, I was thinking about using the headphone jack, which wouldn’t emit any sound. As the project expanded, I realized that ultrasonic transmission would also be possible – another type of quiet modem. Additionally, the quiet modem uses SDR, but it’s “quiet” in the RF spectrum (mostly!). And finally, the best reason, because modems don’t work when they’re clipping! Turn down your volume before using quiet.