About AccessCaster

AccessCaster lets you use your RODECaster (Pro 2 or Duo) audio desk without the RODE software, and to a large degree without ever touching the unit's touchscreen.

As a blind screen reader user, I found the official RODE software was not usable enough for me: I needed help every time I wanted to set the desk up or change a setting.

With AccessCaster I can control and adjust most of the desk's features, including processing, routing, recording, SMART pad management, and device settings such as wifi and Bluetooth connections, all of it accessible to a screen reader. I have also added things the desk does not give you at all: spoken announcements for every button on the unit, fader positions read out as you move them, and keyboard shortcuts you can put on over 100 of the app's commands, such as starting a recording or loading a mic processing preset.

The app was built with Claude Code, and took many months of capturing the USB traffic between the RODE app and my own RODECaster Pro 2 to work out how the desk talks. I have tried to keep the code as clean and efficient as I can, and I now use this app exclusively to run my desk. The interface is HTML rather than a native Windows one, so that moving it to a Mac later on is straightforward.

There are things AccessCaster cannot do, and they fall into two quite different groups. The first I am still working on. The second I am not, because the unit does not offer them over the USB cable at all, and no software on this computer can change that: they are here so you know where the edge is rather than waiting for something that is not coming.

Still to come:

• Recording, and the desk's own backups (Shows), on a Duo. Both are switched on and both are answered by the unit, but no Duo I can reach has a card or a drive in it, so nobody has yet watched one make a recording or write a backup. Put storage in a Duo and it should simply work; until somebody has done it, I am not going to tell you it does. Recording matters more on a Duo than it sounds, because a Duo has no record button on it at all. Everything else a Duo used to be locked out of now works there: the unit settings, the virtual fader and monitor levels, the network settings, stereo linking, and a channel's processing following it to a new fader.
• Listening back to a recording, or copying one off. Starting, stopping, marking and deleting all work, as do what gets recorded and whether it is saved as WAV or MP3. The recordings drive does not appear on this computer over the unit's cable, so today a take is fetched by taking the drive out and plugging it in here, where it is an ordinary removable disk.
• Backing up your Bluetooth pairings, your wifi network and a wireless mic pairing. A backup can neither save nor restore any of them, so they are the settings you would have to put back by hand after a factory reset. Joining a wifi network and making the unit discoverable are both in the app, on the Device page under Wireless connections; the Bluetooth pairing itself is made from the phone.

Not coming, because the unit does not expose them:

• Searching for Bluetooth devices or starting a pairing from this end. Making the unit discoverable, and pairing from your phone, does work. The radio simply ignores the request when it arrives over USB; this was tested three separate ways rather than assumed.
• Setting the unit's date and time. It sets its own clock over the internet, and the only way to change it by hand is the touchscreen.
• Setting a fixed IP address. This is the unit's own limitation rather than mine, and it was tested on the desk rather than assumed: it reports the address, subnet and gateway it currently has, but gives no way to set them.
• Recording straight onto a pad. The unit reboots when asked to, every time, so this one is deliberately not offered.
• Installing a firmware update. That still needs RODE Central.
• Reading the unit's own level meters. The level readings come from the audio it sends this computer over USB instead, which is close but is not the same meter.

AccessCaster is not endorsed by, associated with, or supported by RODE. It is an independent project, and RODE have had no hand in it. I have taken every precaution I can to make sure the code is safe and that nothing it does to the desk cannot be undone, but it talks directly to your hardware, so you use it at your own risk.

Have fun, and I hope it helps. Shaun.