A powerful, offline-first media server
Designed for curated collections and advanced file support.
Gallion is an open-source, offline-first media server designed as the more capable evolution of the original
Jcorp Nomad.
Nomad set out to be the smallest media server possible, running entirely on an ESP32-S3.
But thanks to the overwhelming enthusiasm from the community, the project grew far beyond the limits of that hardware.
Gallion exists because the vision outgrew what Nomad’s foundation could reasonably support.
It runs on more powerful hardware, Raspberry Pi, small Linux machines, x86 hardware, using Node.js or Docker, while staying true to Nomad’s values:
- Fully offline operation
- Simple, flexible library structure
- Multi-user accountless access
Gallion is not trying to compete with Jellyfin or Plex, I’m a full-time college student, and that’s well outside my scope!
This is a personal, flexible, media system for curated collections rather than massive libraries. The goal was to make a combined system for managing many underappreciated file types in one place.
Gallion includes all major features from Nomad but adds a huge range of new capabilities made possible by more powerful hardware.
- Full CBZ Comic Support
- ZIM File Search (offline Wikipedia-style archives searchable from the menu)
- Shared Whiteboard Page
- Chat Page
- ROM Game Emulator
- Runs on most linux capable hardware
- Better multi-user handling and performance
- Online Support
- Nomad required very specific ESP32 boards
- Porting was difficult for many users
- ROMs, ZIM search, and advanced features are impossible on microcontrollers (well, really hard at least)
- Serving multiple users on ESP32 was pushing the limits, stretching its bandwidth.
- Larger file sizes, aswell as 4k support was highly requested.
Gallion is designed from the ground up to remove these bottlenecks.
Current (Beta v1.0):
- ✔ Raspberry Pi 3/4/5 (recommended), should run on any linux machine, and potentialy on windows if you install coresponding dependancies.
- ✔ Linux SBCs
- ✔ Desktop OS (Linux/Windows/macOS)
- ✔ Node.js environment
Future versions will include recommended hardware templates and prebuilt OS images. The general idea is to get this to run on whatever random SBC you bought and never used (I know you have a pile..) Right now it should work fine on windows or linux making use of docker or node.js
As for specific hardware I do plan to develop out the OrangePi RV2, which is about $40, and includes 2 NVME slots, aswell as 2gb networking and lots of other great features for this use case.
Gallion runs, but it's extremely early in development. Expect bugs, slowdowns, and missing features.
Currently Functional:
- Core server
- Media routing
- Media Pages
- ZIM search
- CBZ reader
- Whiteboard
- Chat
- ROM support
Incomplete or Broken:
- Advanced customization menu
- Multi-library UI (support for routing your media files from multiple sources)
- Drive detection / auto indexing
- Network drive support
- Heavy testing and optimization (I have done basicly none)
This version exists mainly as a foundation to build on.
- Offline media access, hosting via captive portal eventualy
- Multi-user support
- Movies, shows, music, books, images, files, whiteboard, games, chat, pages. (maps soon)
- CBZ comic support (including webtoon inf-scroll format)
- ZIM title search from the menu page (searchs local media and the zim side by side).
- Shared / private whiteboard page (kinda like r/place)
- Live Chat / message board
- ROM emulator interface
- Clone the repository.
- Run Gallion in your Node.js environment (or Raspberry Pi).
- Place media into the folders you specify in the config. (settings button on menu page)
- Access the UI from your browser.
Detailed installation steps will be added as the project stabilizes. If you know what you are doing give it a shot, I will put together proper install guides once its tested in any capacity.
- Video:
.mp4, .mov, .mkv, .webm - Audio:
.mp3, .wav, .flac - Books:
.pdf, .epub, .mp3, .cbz - Images:
.jpg, .png - Archives:
.zim
- Functional Emulator
- More stable indexing
- UI cleanup and branding redesign (its literaly just nomad's rn)
- Docker deployment (should work but not tested)
- Full customization dashboard
- Better metadata handling
- Plugin/mod support
- Themes
- Optional cloud sync / web features for fetching cover images.
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 — free to remix and share for non-commercial use with attribution.
Developed by Jackson Studner (Jcorp Tech).
Pull requests and contributions are always welcome!