Could varanny be used for other soundcard modems on a PC such as sound modem for packet?
Yes, varanny can definitely help when using other soundcard modems like Soundmodem.
It was originally designed to solve three main problems in headless environments:
1. Manage VARA’s lifecycle and config files—especially important on Linux where VARA doesn’t rebind to its port cleanly after a restart.
2. Provide zero-conf discovery so client apps can automatically find and connect to VARA.
3. Tap the sound card to give a visual indicator for volume control.
For something like Soundmodem, #1 isn’t as necessary. But zero-conf discovery and audio visualization can still be useful.
Feel free to fork the project and send pull requests:
That said, direwolf has built-in dns-sd discovery and is a better fit for building a headless packet modem in my opinion. It’s CLI-friendly and widely used. For example, DigiPi leans heavily on it for all kinds of setups.
I thought direwolf only had discovery on a development kind d of thing and only on Linux? I used direwolf a few years ago and hated using it. I’m not a great Linux program type user. Thanks for the reply. As far as forks and pull requests, that’s all Greek to me.
You’re correct, looks like it’s not implemented on Windows yet: