seren(1)

🌸 seren — the terminal VoIP glow-up 🌸

Okay bestie, so this is the manual page for seren, from the General Commands Manual section <pink>1</pink>, and honestly? It's giving "group call but make it hacker chic." Let me walk you through it 💖

---

✨ NAME ✨

Seren — a simple VoIP program that lets you create conferences right from the terminal. Periodt.

---

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

seren [option...]

That's it. That's the whole vibe. Options are optional, the conference is mandatory (jk, but like… go call your friends).

---

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

Okay so picture this: Seren is a simple VoIP program built on the Opus codec that lets you spin up a voice conference straight from the terminal, with up to 10 participants 🔥. And the best part? No account registration, no email exchanging, no adding people to contact lists. None of that. It's the "just show up" of voice chat.

All you need to join an existing conference is the host name or IP address of one of the participants. That's the whole entry ticket, bestie 🎟️

Seren creates a dynamic peer-to-peer network of equivalent nodes — no main character server, everyone's equal — and those nodes exchange text and audio data over a udp connection. On top of that, you the user get to:

• change the quality/bitrate on the fly
• encrypt the traffic
• record the calls

Iconic behavior, honestly. 👑

This manual page documents briefly the seren command. Please refer to the README file to get more information on how to use Seren.

---

💅 OPTIONS 💅

A summary of command line options is included below.

• -h — Print help, showing a list of available command line options. The values in parentheses on the right are the default values. Sneaky little defaults living in parentheses, love that for us.
• -v — Increment verbosity level. -v enables verbose messages and -v -v enables verbose and debug messages. More v's, more lore 🗣️
• -L logfile — Send log messages to logfile (default: $HOME/.seren/seren.log).
• -N — Disable ncurses interface and run Seren as a pure command line application. No fancy TUI, just raw terminal energy.
• -t theme — Set ncurses theme: 0-simple, 1-dark, 2-clear (default: 1). Pick your aesthetic ✨
• -n nick — Set nickname (default: login name). Choose wisely, this is your whole identity in the call.
• -p port — Set udp listening port (default: 8110).
• -b bitrate — Set Opus encoding bitrate in bit/s (default: 16000).
• -C complexity — Set Opus encoding complexity. The supported range is 0-10 inclusive with 10 representing the highest complexity. Small values will make Seren run faster, at the expense of quality. You may want to lower this value if you are on a embedded system like the Raspberry Pi or if you notice that Seren is using up all your cpu time (default: 10). Highkey a "turn it down if your poor little computer is sweating" knob 🥵
• -d audiodev — Set alsa playback audio device. If you get an error with the device hw:0,0 try prepending plug to the device name, es. plughw:0,0. If your system has pulseaudio installed, it should be possible to specify 'pulse' to use it. (default: depends on how Seren was configured, see the output of -h option). Yeah, the default is a mystery — go ask -h 🔍
• -D audiodev — Set alsa capture audio device. Useful if you want to use two different audio devices for playback and capture. (default: same value specified for playback device). Two devices, one slay 🎧
• -c host[:port] — Automatically call the specified host on startup. Speedrun the calling, we stan efficiency.
• -a — Autoaccept calls. If this options is enabled Seren will accept every incoming call without asking the user first. (Yes bestie, every call, no screening, no caller ID check, just vibes 🫶)
• -S — Disable STUN to retrieve the external IP address.

---

💜 FILES 💜

• $HOME/.seren/seren.log — Log file.
• $HOME/.seren/seren.conf — Configuration file.
• $HOME/.seren/history — Command history file.
• $HOME/.seren/fifo_in — Input fifo: accepts raw audio in 48000Hz/2ch/s16_le format. When fifos are enabled (using the /f command), writing to this fifo will make Seren mix this pcm audio signal with the one coming from the sound card. Useful if you want to transmit pre-recorded audio together with your own voice. Drop your soundboard clips in here, no cap 🎵
• $HOME/.seren/fifo_out — Output fifo: provides raw audio in 48000Hz/2ch/s16_le format. When fifos are enabled (using the /f command), reading from this fifo will allow you to get the pcm audio signal of the conference and pipe it to another process. Pipe it, record it, remix it 💿

Reminder: both fifos only do their thing when fifos are enabled, which you do with the /f command. Don't come for me if you forget 🫠

---

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Written by Giorgio Vazzana <mywing81@gmail.com>. Thank you for this gift, king 💐

---

🌈 sign-off 🌈

And that's the whole page, bestie! This absolute gem of a manpage dropped in December 2014 — yes, the <italic>December 2014</italic> you see stamped at the bottom — and it's the seren(1) page from the General Commands Manual. Now go start a conference, set your bitrate, and be the main character of your own peer-to-peer network 🌟💅

seren(1) — December 2014 — General Commands Manual — periodt.