OpenEar — Free Real-Time Captioning for Churches

OpenEar

Every voice deserves to be heard. Every word deserves to be understood.

Free • Open Source • Local • Private

What is OpenEar?

OpenEar is a free, open-source system that provides real-time AI-powered captioning and translation for church services — in 200+ languages and dialects.

A computer taps audio directly from your soundboard and uses NVIDIA's Parakeet speech recognition to transcribe the message in real time. Captions stream to any phone, tablet, or display on your local Wi-Fi. Add an inexpensive graphics card and those same captions can be translated into any of 200+ languages and dialects via Meta's NLLB-200 model. No app to install. No account to create. Just open a browser.

Everything runs locally. No audio leaves your building. No internet connection is required during services.

Why it's different

No subscription, no per-minute charges. Free and open source, forever.
No cloud dependency. Commercial solutions like CaptionKit, Wordly, and Sunflower AI route your audio through third-party servers. OpenEar doesn't.
No internet required. OpenEar runs on a local network only — no internet connection needed. Don't have Wi-Fi? A simple $30 router is all it takes.
Clean audio from the source. Taps your soundboard directly — not ambient room noise through a phone mic.
Personal, not projected. Captions appear on individual devices. Those who need them get them, without a distracting overlay for everyone else.
Captioning needs no special hardware. Live captions run on an everyday Windows PC — no graphics card at all. Most churches already own a machine that qualifies.
Translation is an inexpensive add-on. Want captions in other languages too? An inexpensive NVIDIA graphics card — starting around $250 — drops into almost any PC. Low-power models are slot-powered, so there's no power connector to add and no power-supply upgrade needed.

Roadmap

Version	Feature	Status
v0.1	Proof of concept — live transcription via browser	✓ Done
v0.2	Server-side mic capture from soundboard	✓ Done
v0.3	UI polish, quality presets, admin settings	✓ Done
v0.4	Real-time translation — 200+ languages and dialects, any device	✓ Done
v0.5	One-click installer	✓ Done
v0.6	Mac Mini M4 development	◐ In progress...
v0.7	Testing at select churches	◐ In progress...
v0.8	Expanded testing & feedback	○ Planned
v0.9	Public release — manually deployable for any church	○ Planned
v1.0	Public release — automatically deployable for any church	○ Planned
v1.1	Reverse translation — foreign-language speakers understood by English congregations	○ Planned

The story

OpenEar was built by a pastor who spent a decade as a software engineer before entering ministry. He wanted every member of his congregation to feel fully included — regardless of language, hearing ability, or what resources they had available.

Every congregation deserves accessibility — not just the ones that can pay for it.