rpi-imager VS Mumble

It's a bug: https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-imager/issues/749 It's probably best at the moment to avoid the "lite" version.

I've used Win32 disk imager in the past. I've moved on to Balena Etcher and Raspberry Pi Imager now, but I don't think they ever had a "SD-to-image" functionality.

There are/were issues with using the rpi-imager [1] under Windows, which would result in the configuration information not being written to the memory card. They claimed to have fixed it, but it never worked for me.

Instead, I downloaded a live Linux dist, kde-neon [2], wrote that to a USB stick with rufus [3], booted my PC with that, and imaged under Linux. Only then did it work.

[1] https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-imager

Use https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-imager/releases/latest. Scrollll to the bottom, click misc utility images, then bootloader then you can choose to make it boot from usb or sd.. burn it on a sd card and boot from it in pi.

Could you try to use another program to write the image to the sd-card, like the Raspberry Imager?

I think Sonobus is overkill. I suggest you look at a couple of relatively old-school gamer voice chat tools - Mumble or Teamspeak. Mumble is open-source and the connection is always encrypted, Teamspeak is commercial but the free tier should be fine for you - but you have to make sure to manually turn encryption on yourself. It has been a long time since I used either, so I don't know which is easier. Both of them require you to run their matching server software.

Mumble's latency is unbeatable imo, it's basically their main focus and shows.

The sticking point for me is the lack of persistent messages, something the devs strangely think is a privacy plus. Issue open since 2016: https://github.com/mumble-voip/mumble/issues/2560

If you drop out for a minute you won't have access to anything that was posted in chat, which makes it useless for anything other than voice only comms, that might suit some business purposes but I've always needed to post links or screenshots in chat during meetings.

There's any number of alternative chat applications available, like Element, Mumble, Teamspeak etc.

Mumble?

I think Mumble might fit what you're looking for. It's been a very long time since I've used it, but it seems to still exist: https://www.mumble.info/ - I've used previously for exactly what you're describing, events with lots of crew dispersed around and no budget for radios. I had it installed on an AP running OpenWRT so it was just a case of plugging that in and getting people to install the app and connect to it.

Along with the options already mentioned, if you're not into TeamSpeak, there is an open source alternative called Mumble which operates in the same manner. No internet required, and is supported on multiple platforms.