In Part 1 I went over the basics of IRL streaming and the decisions you need to make about how you will make it happen. If you got here then you’re interested in the DIY setup so let’s dive in!
Streaming Device
First up you need a streaming device. This is most commonly your phone but could be a camera like a GoPro with wireless connectivity. If you use your phone as a wireless hotspot you can stream your GoPro back to your home OBS setup using the GoPro App.
Phone App Setup
To stream right from my phone I use an app called IRLPro which has been great for me. It will bond connections, so if you are somewhere with WiFi and cell signal it will use all the bandwidth it can from multiple sources to get your video back to your home PC in good shape. If you are really into the IRL thing and have multiple wireless devices from multiple providers it will bond all those together too. IRL Pro has great camera controls and your Twitch chat will appear as an overlay. The two other apps I use on the phone side are IRL Plus Chat and OBS Blade, more about those below.
We need coverage!
You have to decide how you will get your signal. Obvious options are your cell phone data plan and/or any wifi signal that the place you are livestreaming might have. I’ve done a couple of streams from Aquariums and they had public wifi so I used that along with my 5G and it worked out fine. If you are going off the beaten path you could consider satellite internet from a provider like Starlink. That’s how my friend Paleontologizing on Twitch livestreams his archeological digs from the wilds of the US. Other folks get 5G hotspots from several cell providers and bond those together to try and get the coverage they need. That’s more than I can afford so I’m currently just on 5G plus whatever wifi I can scrounge and for the most part that’s been good enough. I typically IRL stream in 720p just to minimize the bandwidth I need.
Other Equipment – Power and Audio
I plug my phone into a battery pack that I carry in a small shoulder bag. I got my battery from Neewer and it seems fine but there are lots of options out there. A battery might not be necessary for you but I can only get about 3 hours out of my phone with no external battery. My bike ride was almost 6 hours of streaming so I need the battery. If you plan to IRL for just a couple hours you can likely skip it. For audio I have a DJI Mic 3 that I use and that has been awesome. You could just go with the built in mic in your phone and you might get away with it, but you will likely be picking up a lot of background noise, possibly wind noise and so on. I personally think the audio is one of the most important parts of the stream so I splurged and haven’t regretted it.
I have a usb-c splitter with 4 ports. One is a power port so I plug the battery into that and the receiver for the DJI Mic into one of the other ports. All of that goes into my bag and I just have one cable going to the phone. You could get away without the DJI receiver and connect via bluetooth saving the need for the splitter, but I use a bluetooth earpiece when I’m riding to listen to chat via Text-to-Speech (TTS) so I like to keep the bluetooth free for that. I haven’t checked to see if I can connect the earpiece and the DJI mic both via bluetooth without getting audio going to and from the wrong places. I already had the splitter and the audio quality is better with the DJI receiver so that’s the route I went.
Click here for part 3 where we’ll look at keeping up with chat and controlling you stream…