Scene Stream
Listen to live audio rooms with per-room play, mute, focus and volume controls.
Scene Stream connects to live streaming audio rooms and shows each one as a card. You can start and stop each room independently, mute one without stopping it, isolate a single room with Focus, and set each room's volume on its own slider. Coloured outlines tell you at a glance which rooms are live, which are muted and which one is focused. The screen keeps the display awake so you can leave the phone in a cradle and listen.
Overview
Each card shows the room name and a member count, plus these controls:
| Control | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Play / Pause | Starts or stops listening to that room |
| Speaker | Mutes or unmutes the room without stopping it |
| Focus | Mutes every other playing room so you hear only this one |
| Volume slider | Sets that room's level from 0 to 100 |
| Settings (three dots on the card) | Reserved for future per-room options |
Reading the outlines
The card outlines are the fastest way to read the state of every room at once.
| Element | Green outline | Red outline | White outline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Room name box | Room is playing | — | Room is stopped |
| Play / Pause box | Room is playing | Room is stopped | — |
| Speaker box | Playing and audible | Playing but muted | Room is stopped |
| Focus box | This room is focused | — | Focus is off |
Card layout
| Device and orientation | Cards per row |
|---|---|
| iPhone, portrait | 1 (full width) |
| iPhone, landscape | 2 |
| iPad, either orientation | 2 |
Getting Here
- Open Scene Stream from its entry point in the app.
- The audio session is activated and the app subscribes to the available rooms straight away — there is no connect button to press.
- Room cards appear with the volume slider ready. A status indicator in the header reflects the stream connection.
Rooms arrive already marked as playing, so audio can begin as soon as the stream delivers something. If a room is silent, it usually means nobody is transmitting on it right now, not that the connection failed.
Play and Stop a Room
- Find the card for the room you want to monitor.
- Tap Play / Pause to start it. The room name box and the play box both turn green.
- Tap Play / Pause again to stop it. The play box turns red and the room name box returns to white.
Starting or stopping a room rebuilds the live subscription so the app is only streaming the rooms you have playing.
| Action | Side effect |
|---|---|
| Starting a room | Clears that room's Mute so you hear it immediately |
| Stopping a room | Clears that room's Focus |
Speaker and Focus only respond on a room that is currently playing. Tapping either on a stopped room does nothing — start the room first.
Mute and Adjust Volume
- With a room playing, tap Speaker to mute it. The speaker box turns red; the room stays connected and keeps its place in the stream.
- Tap Speaker again to unmute. The room returns to the volume its slider is set to.
- Drag the volume slider to set the level. A small pop-up shows the value as a whole number from 0 to 100 while you drag.
Muting is better than stopping when you want to come back to a room quickly — a muted room stays subscribed, so there is no reconnection delay when you unmute it. Moving the slider on a muted room stores the new level and applies it the moment you unmute.
Focus on One Room
- Tap Focus on the room you want to hear by itself.
- Every other playing room is muted, the focused room is unmuted and set back to its own slider level, and its focus box turns green.
- Tap Focus again to turn it off. Every playing room is unmuted and restored to its own slider level.
Focus is the quickest way to isolate one conversation when several rooms are busy at once — one tap in, one tap out, without touching any other card.
Audio Routing and the Screen
| Behaviour | Detail |
|---|---|
| Speaker routing | When no headset or Bluetooth device is connected, audio is forced to the built-in speaker so you do not miss traffic through the earpiece |
| Route changes | Plugging in or removing headphones is detected and the route is corrected automatically |
| Screen | The display is kept awake while this screen is open so you can monitor hands-free |
| Leaving the screen | The back arrow stops the audio connection and releases the player, so nothing keeps streaming in the background |
Because the screen stays awake and audio is forced to the loudspeaker, Scene Stream uses noticeably more battery than most screens. Keep the device on power for long monitoring sessions, and use the back arrow rather than just switching away, so the stream is properly closed.
How This Connects
- Where the audio comes from. Rooms are delivered over a live server stream that pushes audio as it is spoken. The app subscribes only to the rooms you have playing and re-subscribes each time you start or stop one, so stopping a room genuinely stops its traffic.
- What updates it. There is no refresh action and nothing to pull down — member counts and audio arrive as the stream sends them.
- Related audio features. For talk-group style audio tied to an incident, see Incident Comms Tab and Command Audio Hub. Scene Stream is for monitoring rooms on their own, outside any single incident.
- Microphone is not used. Scene Stream is listen-only, so it never asks for microphone access. If you are prompted for a microphone, that came from a different screen — see Permission Required.
- Screen sleep. This screen deliberately overrides the usual behaviour and keeps the display on while you are listening, regardless of Keep Screen Awake in App Defaults. The normal setting resumes when you leave.
- Offline and reconnect. Scene Stream needs a live connection; with no signal no audio arrives and the cards sit silent. When the connection returns, the stream reconnects on its own for whichever rooms are still marked as playing. If nothing is heard after several minutes, stop and restart a room to rebuild the subscription.
Troubleshooting
| If this happens | What to do |
|---|---|
| A card is green but silent | Nobody is transmitting on that room; also check the volume slider is not at 0 and Speaker is not muted |
| No audio on any room | Raise the device volume, confirm the phone is not in silent mode, then stop and restart one room to rebuild the connection |
| Speaker or Focus does nothing | The room is stopped — tap Play / Pause first |
| Audio comes out of the earpiece | Disconnect and reconnect your headset; the app forces the loudspeaker when no headset is present |
| Unmuting is silent | Check the slider for that room — muting leaves the slider where it was, and 0 stays silent |
| Turning Focus off leaves rooms muted | Tap Focus again on the same card; turning it off from that card is what restores the others |
| Audio keeps playing after you leave | Reopen the screen and use the back arrow, which closes the connection properly |
| The battery drains quickly | Expected while monitoring — the screen stays awake and the loudspeaker is in use. Keep the device on power |
| Audio stopped after losing signal | Wait for the stream to reconnect, then stop and restart a room if it does not resume |
Related Pages
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