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Ethernet MP3 Player

Posted by michael on from the ping-your-stereo dept.

Erik Johansson writes: "You can now stream mp3s to your stereo, the guys at slimdevices seems to be building a bonafide ethernet mp3 player. There are some cool pictures of the soldering sweatshop, so perhaps it isn't vaporware?"

8 of 232 comments (clear)

  1. The Rio Receiver by fuchikoma · · Score: 5, Informative

    Found here (http://www.riohome.com/products/receiver.htm), the Rio Receiver does basicaly the same thing, and is already available in stores.

    It also has the advantage of being able to stream over standard phone lines, for those of us who don't have cat5 strung out to the living room.

    1. Re:The Rio Receiver by dschuetz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Problem with the Rio is you have to run a special Win32 app to stream to the thing. its not as flexbile as I would wish.

      Actually, that's not necessarily true. Jeff Mock (http://www.mock.com/receiver/) has hacked together a linux server for it. Basically, it's a bunch of mod_perl scripts for apache, along with a real simple perl server to answer the device's initial request.

      That, and it runs linux, too (sort of). Basically, it spits out a DHCP request for an IP address, sends a broadcast request to a particular port to ask for servers (which is answered by the little perl server), and from there it learns of the IP address and TFTP directory of the server. It then NFS mounts a directory from that server, and reboots with the image it pulls from that directory. So, to upgrade it, just change the files in the server's directory. Real cool. Once running, everything (all artist, track lookups, and audio fetching) happens over HTTP on the fly.

      They've even got a cross-compiler for it, so you can write some of your own programs, and a couple kernel hacks already. I'm waiting for someone to improve the UI a little -- it's good, but not quite all there. Maybe 80% perfect.

      I got mine for, like, $150, on E-Bay. Also branded specifically by Rio, though the front panel looks much weirder.

      There's also the AudioTron, which I looked at first, but that scans your net for SMB servers, then builds its own internal database. Lose power, lose the database, and you've got to re-scan all over again.

      That and the display is impossible to read from across the room.

      That I will give you. :(

      I definitely recommend the Rio Receiver, though. I'd love to see more people hacking it, and improving it. I'm really amazed it hasn't been a bigger hit around here so far...

      david.

  2. oh man by psychalgia · · Score: 5, Funny

    wtf, i cant pass calculus, but these bastards can do this soldering while drinking beer? I'm going to be workign at McDonald's the rest of my frickin' life...

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  3. Re:Insaine! by baptiste · · Score: 5, Informative
    Its actually not impossible. SMD chips come with solder coated pins. The PCBs have a coat of solder on the pads as well. You spary flux on the board and heat the pins to join the pins and pad together. They make special heads for soldering irons to fit various SMD package types so you can heat all the pins at once.

    Its not easy but it can be done. If enough folks order them, however, it'll make economic sense for them to get them made in a fab facility.

    And I'm sure its not a fake. Embedded devices have gotten very powerful. You can fit an entire ethernet capable Java computer with its own embedded JVM, filesystem, etc on a SIMM size card. An MP3 player that just reads a socket stream, decodes the MP3 and outputs audio is not super complex. Its not childs play but its certainly something an embedded system could do. Can't wait to get mine - gonna be fun to finally hook up my stereo to my RAID5 MP3 array :)

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  4. Audiotron by cs668 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Turtle Beach has the Audiotron which does the same thimg works great and can be found at some best buys for $149. I love mine.

  5. Slashdotted! by seanadams.com · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So I'm sitting here looking at my MRTG graphs and saying WTF - my server's trying to push out 2.5MBps onto my T1. Oops.

    Thanks everyone for you interest in the SliMP3. Yes, we *are* building these by hand, at least the first 100, and we plan to ship in about two weeks. No we're not planning to build our next batch this way.

    I'll do my best to answer everyone's questions. Again, thanks for the traffic, and sorry my server can't keep up!

    Sean Adams
    Slim Devices, Inc.

  6. Re:Insaine! by seanadams.com · · Score: 5, Informative

    It is certainly possible, but it's not easy. The SliMP3 firmware is, AFAIK, the only modern IP stack to have been entirely hand-coded in assembler. The hardware we're using is a PIC microcontroller, along with a custom chip (prototyped in a Xilinx CPLD) for doing DMA transfer through an SRAM to the MPEG decoder. It's a rather different design than other embedded Internet platforms - we're cranking 10Mbps through system built around a 20Mhz, 8-bit microcontroller. Of course you don't need this kind of throughput for an MPEG *audio* stream...

  7. Re:But where is the Ogg Ethernet player? by seanadams.com · · Score: 5, Informative

    It would have supported OGG, had there been a low-cost chip for Ogg decoding (like the STA013 and MAS3507D for MP3).