Review: SliMP3

Frequent readers of Slashdot know that I'm an MP3 junkie. Hell, even casual readers probably know that at this point. This week I review another MP3 player, Slim Device's small wonder, SliMP3. And this $269 is really worth a good look.

So what is it? Its a small MP3 player with no internal storage of its own. It has an ethernet port, RCA audio outputs (you'll need an external amp!), and a power plug. It has a really bright little screen for displaying song information and a remote. It's about the size of a car stereo faceplate, but a little thicker.

It doesn't have a fancy plastic box. The backside is simply an exposed circuit board. But thats sorta the idea: this is a toy that can work for users, but is also hugely designed to be a hacker toy.

Configuring the device is easy. The latest version has DHCP, but I tested it on a network that lacked the protocol. I put the IP in of my 'Server' and gave the unit its own IP and I was off and running. The server is a perl program you download from the Slim Devices web site. It supposedly will run on on Linux, Windows, MacOS, FreeBSD, BeOS, and MacOSX. It worked great on my linux box. Trivially easy. This unit was the easiest to set up of any MP3 player I have ever used. Of course, I was already running Linux and had Perl ;)

You can control the SliMP3 with a remote control, but the server optionally can just serve up HTML on a high port number and set your playlists up via an acceptable web interface. And since its perl, its all ready for you to hack yourself. The code itself is fairly legible... there's a mailing list, and it is actively being developed.

The closest competitor to the SliMP3 is the Audiotron. The audiotron is almost the same price, has an optical output, a more developed HTML interface, and is physically a nice stereo component. It is a far more mature product. But the audiotron uses SMB file sharing and controls everything within itself. The SliMP3 uses an open source server program to stream the audio to the player. So the smarts are mostly on the PC. Which of course lends itself to easy hacking.

The interface currently is pretty sparse. Some places display filenames where ID3 tags would be preferred. I was unable to get it to load a 20,000 track playlist. But the server software is under active development, and these things should both be resolved in a not-so-distant release.

There are a variety of cool projects that could conceivably be hacked into this thing. A GTK-Perl interface would be super smooth. Cross-fade functions. Intelligent playlist creation. Tivo style thumbs up-thumbs down track rating for music playback. And this is the first MP3 player I've seen that things like this are possible because the code is right there and ready to rip apart. It's even legible!

If you need a pretty box, or demand optical connections to your reciever, go with the audiotron. If you want something tiny, or just want to hack at your MP3 player stereo component, this is a great way to go.

Comments

"The code itself is fairly legible... "

[seanmeister]

Does this really mean anything, considering the source? I've never looked at Slashcode, but I've heard rumors...

Re:"The code itself is fairly legible... "

[EvlG]

That's not entirely fair. Taco always acknowledged that Shash was ugly internally; he just didn't fix it. I'm sure he can recognize bad code when he sees it; afterall, he recognized HIS code was a pile...

How about

[Motheius]

Building one of your own players:

http://www.pjrc.com/

Re:How about

[ImaLamer]

y is this modded to zero?

http://www.pjrc.com/

does have some cool stuff.

Just for the sake of asking...

[mystery_bowler]

I've got just a few questions about MP3 players:

Software

Which MP3 player has the smallest memory footprint/is the least taxing on the system in Windows? In Linux?

Hardware

Which portable MP3 player has the smallest form factor? How about smallest form factor with the most memory (say, 64 or 128 MB)?

Re:Just for the sake of asking...

[toupsie]

Which portable MP3 player has the smallest form factor? How about smallest form factor with the most memory (say, 64 or 128 MB)?

The Apple iPod is:

• Height: 4.02 inches (102 mm)
• Width: 2.43 inches (61.8 mm)
• Depth: 0.78 inches (19.9 mm)
• Weight: 6.5 ounces (185 g)

Has 5 gigs of storage (4.66 formated). Thats alot of memory plus it has 20 minute skip protection. The case is also pretty strong, I just dropped mine on to a NYC street from 3 feet with only minor cosmetic damage and major heart skippping.

Re:Just for the sake of asking...

[mystery_bowler]

Ack, I'd forgotten all about the iPod. Shame the thing is $400, because I just know I'd eventually lose or crush something that small. Hate to have flushed that money down the drain. :)

Re:Just for the sake of asking...

[chaos421]

what about mp3 players that are designed for us athletes? the nike one looks pretty crummy. sony has the memory stick walkman, but it's expensive and the software is crummy ( i hear).

which mp3 player is the runner's choice?

Ogg?

[krmt]

Pretty cool, but I'm waiting for a player that supports ogg files too, since all my own music is encoded that way. Once there's a nice high storage player that supports oggs too, I'll go for it.

I also see a fairly limited use for this sort of thing, since most people probably want a player that has a fair amount of local storage. While this thing is really cool if you're on a network, most of us don't really have the capability to use it. I wish I was on the kind of network that would allow this to be useful though. :-)

Now totally OT, but I'm glad Taco's been posting today again. He's still got the best story choices of all the editors.

Re:Ogg?

[zutroy]

From the product FAQ:

Other codecs (Ogg vorbis, WMA, raw PCM)

The SliMP3 supports MPEG 1/2, layers 2/3, for both VBR and fixed data rates up to 384Kbps (the maximum for MP3). The SliMP3 server software will soon support automatic endoing/transcoding from other formats, but the player will still speak MPEG.

Re:Ogg?

[krmt]

Sweet! Does anyone know of a player that can store and play them locally?

Re:Ogg?

[John_Booty]

That's cool, but it's sort of a kludge, isn't it? I'm not sure if an OGG converted to an MP3 would sound that great.

Then again, all my OGGs are pretty high bitrate anyway, they shouldn't sound too badly when recompressed....

I must be missing something

[kilgore_47]

What is the point of controlling it from your computer? Why not use WinAmp? If you're running ethernet to your stereo so you can use this little device, wouldn't it be cheaper to just run audio cable to the stereo? It's a cool product, I guess, but I just couldn't see shelling out that much money for a device that will give me zero extra functionality over a PC with a soundcard, especially when that device still requires the PC.

Re:I must be missing something

[cavemanf16]

I don't really see the point either since WinAmp has at least one plugin that does IR control with the proper equipment. I took a look at the SliMP3 a while back when someone posted a link to the site on the Audiotron discussion here on slashdot. Really cool project, and good use of Open programming and simple to replace parts, but more of a mod-job than an end-to-end unit if you ask me. My current project computer is a media server running Linux Mandrake 8.1 and Win2k on it. I don't see the need for the SliMP3 when all I have to do is some digging for already existing software and plugins to do the same thing with the computer hardware I already have (17" monitor, GeForce2 MX w/ TV-out and dual-monitor support, PII 400MHz, and a SB Live! Value).

Re:I must be missing something

[.@.]

The web feature allows you to control the device from _any_ computer (it's a web server), to easily build playlists and similar, and to provide functionality comparable to similar devices. You don't have to use it. It's just a nicety.

The SliMP3 will also play audio streams (Live365, Shout/Icecast, etc.) as well as locally-stored MP3s.

Does it do something more than my computer? You bet. It lets me listen to all my MP3s, playlists, and streams in my living room on my $5,000 stereo, rather than in my home office on my $200 speakers. I even use it via 802.11b, so there's really no problem with wiring.

Re:I must be missing something

[4mn0t1337]

From what I understand:
wouldn't it be cheaper to just run audio cable
1. Audio cable runs can only be so long with out degradation of signal. Cat5 has longer run length.

Why not use WinAmp
2. Web interface. Is there client control for WinAmp?

3. The device has an IR remote. Much better than running upstairs (or downstairs) to switch tracks on a server in another room.

4.It is designed as an audio component. It can sit with the rest of your stereo. And can be operated as such by people that don't need to be messing around on your computer.

5. It can serve mulitple devices. You can serve your 80GB audio collection throughout the house to multiple locations. It is much more difficult to split line level audio output across 4 locations.

Re:I must be missing something

[gmhowell]

Ethernet is not as lossy as a good sized run of RCA cables.

Without having looked at anything other than the review and comments, if you can hook up more than one of these units, then that offers a little more flexibility than a sound card (although I suppose that in Linux you can put in multiple cards. /dev/dsp, /dev/dsp1, /dev/dsp2 etc.)

All in all, I'd rather have the audiotron. SMB, while M$'s child (basically) is freely available through Samba and fairly widespread.

Re:I must be missing something

[bartle]

What is the point of controlling it from your computer? Why not use WinAmp? If you're running ethernet to your stereo so you can use this little device, wouldn't it be cheaper to just run audio cable to the stereo? It's a cool product, I guess, but I just couldn't see shelling out that much money for a device that will give me zero extra functionality over a PC with a soundcard, especially when that device still requires the PC.

If your goal is to save money or you live in a single room abode, you certainly have a valid point. But if neither of those points apply to you, this product has some very cool potential.

The first issue is audio quality. The ideal is to have a digital amp and stream in your mp3s without any analog distortion. This box lacks a digital out so it isn't optimal, but it is still a lot nicer than running analog cables from another room.

The other issue is to provide a complete multiple room audio solution, this is where I suspect this device could really shine. The ideal is to have multiple audio devices in multiple rooms (computer room, living room, the garage perhaps) and be able to play seperate audio selections in each one from a central server. In addition to that, be able to "move" an audio stream from one room to another so the music relocates itself to where you are. There is a lot of cool potential with having an audio setup that works like this, playing music is only the beginning.

Of course, there really isn't any affordable audio solution that does all this. That's why this device is so intriguing, it can be hacked into doing some fairly sophisticated things. There's still a long ways to go, but these devices are very promising and very cool.

Re:I must be missing something

[reachinmark]

Firstly: ethernet sends the signal digitally to the unit, so no signal loss at all between your computer and the unit (someone else said that it would be less - but come on, TCP/IP, we are sending MP3 data to the unit, what loss!?). Important on a long run, where RCA cables would degrade seriously after decent distance.

Secondly: we can assume that at the price, the hardware on the device is certainly a little better quality than the soundcard on your PC, and doesn't suffer from the background noise introduced by the PC. Thirdly: what everyone is saying!

Re:I must be missing something

[easter1916]

Salut à toi EX Punk anarchiste devenu nouveau mouton conformiste...

You don't honestly think that there's any difference between an anarchist punk and a conformist sheep, do you? Punk may have been non-conformist in the 70's, now it's just another fashion.

Re:I must be missing something

[rcw-work]

The hum you're hearing is from the 60hz AC power. You have a ground loop (multiple paths to ground). There's several ways out of this:

• Run your amp and computer off the same power strip
  
• Don't ground your computer (not really recommended)
  
• Pick up a ground-loop isolator at an electronics store
  
• Get a pair of baluns (balanced<->unbalanced) and use them for your line out
  
• Get a different computer (can be diskless/fanless if you're concerned about noise) and plug it into the same power strip as your amp. Ssh into it and and play your music from there. This is what I did since I had all the parts lying around and I didn't want to put my amp on a UPS.
  

Re:I must be missing something

[cavemanf16]

Your PC soundcard and desktop speakers suck compared to your livingroom stereo (assuming you have something better than a K-Mart blue-light special stereo).

That's right, I need ultra-high fidelity sound from my computer. Sure. Why, mp3's are God's gift to mankind with their lossy, although not as bad as cassette tapes, format.

Look, if I wanted ultra-high fidelity sound in the first place, I wouldn't be listening to mp3's, I'd be using the original CD's in a 500-disc changer. But, since it's a pain to manage 1000+ songs when no one cares that much about crystal clear quality at a party I'm planning on hosting come Jan 1st, I think my PC sound card and simple audio/video outs will do just fine, thank you very much.

Sorry if that's a flame, but not all of us are audio-philes with $5,000 systems, and therefore, buying another $260 worth of equipment that I already have is completely unnecessary.

Re:I must be missing something

[nyquist_theorem]

You *are* missing something. Assuming that your server (or other machine with big hard drive full of MP3s) is in one room, and you have a stereo (or stereos) elsewhere, this device allows you to listen to your MP3s wherever you have ethernet (or wireless 802.11), *and* allows you to control those MP3s and view whats playing without having to run to the room where the computer is.

True, it has no functionality over a PC, but then again neither does a laptop or palmtop - people buy those not for the added functionality, but rather for the fact that they can be taken places where its not really very convenient to take a full PC. Like your living room, for example.

If this is what it appears to be - the most basic, upgradable option for those of us who have a network, a bunch of mp3s on a server, and the desire to hear them played in other areas of the house - then it is a worthwhile item indeed.

Of course, I've been using an FM25 transmitter from Ramsey Electronics to cover my section of the neighbourhood with MP3s, which is a seperate topic entirely!

Apologies if I'm restating the obvious, I figured rather than modding this down, I'd reply to it.

Re:I must be missing something

[alanjstr]

Get a black BookPC. Hook it up to the LAN, TV, and stereo. Control it via one of the many IR remotes out there, or over the LAN. Winamp has plenty of remote control programs as well. Its a little more expensive, but it also plays DVDs and visualizations on the tv. The only real downside is that it's not very quiet (power supply fan needs work), but if you're a hacker, you can fix that.

Re:I must be missing something

[Auckerman]

1. Audio cable runs can only be so long with out degradation of signal. Cat5 has longer run length."

I think he was infering using ones computer as a stereo for mp3s.

"2. Web interface. Is there client control for WinAmp?"

All a web interface means is you can run it from a browser. Fancy, certainly. Buzzword compliant, definitely. The best of all interfaces, nope.

But, if you really want to control a computer-mp3 player with a web browser, you can use Streamsicle on the same machine that will play the mp3s and you can control it from any computer on your LAN (or in the world for that matter) and listen to it from that computer, or any other computer for that matter.

3. The device has an IR remote. Much better than running upstairs (or downstairs) to switch tracks on a server in another room.

I don't even think its feasible to control my mp3 collection with a remote, unless the remote came with an LCD for scrolling through songs. But anyhow, scriptable remotes (USB) have been on the market for 3 years now and cost less than $100.

4.It is designed as an audio component. It can sit with the rest of your stereo. And can be operated as such by people that don't need to be messing around on your computer.

True, but not worth nearly $300.

5. It can serve mulitple devices. You can serve your 80GB audio collection throughout the house to multiple locations. It is much more difficult to split line level audio output across 4 locations.

So can Streamsicle.

Re:I must be missing something

[adolf]

I must be missing something, too:

1. Audio cable runs can only be so long with out degradation of signal. Cat5 has longer run length.

Wrong. 100MHz ethernet over Cat5 tops out at, what, ~100 meters? Analog audio can go for hundreds of miles. The local loop for my telephone here is 25 miles big.

The trick? Balanced signals. For the price of this box, one can have balanced line drivers for every room in the house, which can consist of as little as an op amp, or a transformer, or a somewhat more-expensive pre-fab box. In my line of work, I've used -lots- of several-hundred-foot runs of audio cable, and a few thousand foot runs in places like schools and factories. Never a problem, as long as it's balanced... better audio equipment includes balanced IO out of the box, anyhow.

As for the rest of your claims and queries:

There probably is a Web interface for Winamp, somewhere in the world. However, why do you care?

You're worried about it being operated by people that don't need to be messing around on a computer. But, whatever the case, if not winamp, there's a thousand other players which -do- have some manner of intregration with http.

The remote is a nice touch. And if you'd studied your X10 popups like a good boy, you'd see bit of kit they sell which has remote, expressly intended for controlling an MP3-playing computer with, say, Winamp running on it. If you speak unix, you might also look at the LIRC project for remote control.

And, it's vastly easier to install audio wiring to multiple points than computer networks. No need for a hub, or expensive termination tools - wirenuts, solder, or crimp-on splices from the telco industry are the order of the day. It doesn't get much more simple. If you're running things balanced, Cat5 will work fine for wire, though I prefer Belden 2200. It's cheap, stranded, a little heavier-guage than cat5, shielded, and can withstand a lot of abuse during installation (as opposed to Cat5, which will break if you look at it funny).

That all said, >$250 for a device which can only play MP3s stored elsewhere, over a network, seems silly to me. Especially when it doesn't even match the rest of the stereo - did you even read the review? It's the size of a car stereo faceplate, but a little thicker, with a bare circuit board on the back. Not my idea of a finished, quality audio component.

Re:I must be missing something

[kilgore_47]

Does it do something more than my computer? You bet. It lets me listen to all my MP3s, playlists, and streams in my living room on my $5,000 stereo, rather than in my home office on my $200 speakers. I even use it via 802.11b, so there's really no problem with wiring.

If you've got a 5,000 stereo and a digital music collection, and your PC isn't plugged into your stereo, I might have to come steal your hardware and burn down your house.

Seriously, go to radioshack (or, if you've got a 5k$ stereo, you'll probably want to go somewhere else...) and buy an adapter for fucks sake!

Re:I must be missing something

[FreeUser]

Don't lable this funny, it couldnt be closer to the truth. I spend whatever time I'm not behind a computer in the so called "punk" scene of WI and it makes me want to cry.

Many of us miss the early days of punk and the hard core, in-your-face rebellion and rejection of conformity it represented, but lets be honest. When we were 16 (or 20, or whatever) and in that scene the thirty-somethings were remeniscing about their rebellious rock'n'roll days in just the same fashion, and were writing off both punk and rock as "fashion."

I too miss punk the way it was, but its unfair to label all of today's youth (including those whose taste in music resembles our own) as conformist. Many of them are as ernest about their rebellion (and nonconformity) as we were, and probably aren't looking any more pathetic or foolish to us than we did to others at that age. In the end the spirit of rage and discontent is in the heart, hormones, and (to some degree) youthfulness more than the music, the clothing, or the slang. And lets not forget that, even in its hay-day, punk had conformity within its own borders to some degree, even if such was defined more in terms of what it was not (not conforming to the lame world outside) than what it was. Such is true of any social group greater than two, but it does not make the need, desire, or ideal of rejecting cultural conformity any less legitimate ... just more difficult to achieve than one thinks at first glance, which is true of most every ideal.

Doubly so when an industrial cartel like the RIAA incorporates said ideals into their own marketing drivel, something the punks (and the rappers that came after them, and the goths that came after them, ad infinatum) could do little about.

Re:I must be missing something

[adolf]

As another poster has pointed out, the hum you experience is known as a ground loop.

The vast majority of ground loops (~95%) in homes are due to improperly-grounded telephone, cable, and satellite systems. The rest are due to dangerously broken equipment.

Here's what happens:

Cable/phone/sat guy shows up to wire a house. The existing ground rod is inconvenient for him to tie onto, so he drives his own in a more convenient spot, and uses that to connect the shield of the coax to earth. This is usually illegal, per National Electric Code, not to mention a Bad Thing To Do.

So. You connect this to your TV, and your VCR, and whatever else you have - and that to your stereo. No problem, because these components typically do not have a connection to earth (ie, they use 2-prong power connectors) - there is only one path to ground, and no hum occurs.

That is, there's no hum until you plug in your grounded, 3-prong-having PC to the mess. After that, you've got two paths to ground from the stereo - one, via the cable TV wire, and another through the audio cable, sound card, PC chassis, and electrical outlet.

More often than not, there is voltage potential between these two grounding points. By tieing them together with a patch cord, current flows. This gets amplfied, and delivered to the speakers
as familiar 60-cycle hum.

So. How to fix? Just identify and remove or isolate the offending ground. Leaving your computer plugged in (and humming) start pulling wires off of the stereo, unplug your modem, and so on until you identify the source of the problem and achieve silence.

If I recall, the NEC specifies that ground rods need to be driven 6 feet into moist earth, and that if more than one is used for a given structure, that they must be connected together using #6 wire, with additional rods also driven 6 feet into the ground at 6 foot intervals along the run. It's expensive, and laborious.

That said, it's better/cheaper/easier to remove/disconnect the offending rod, and run a wire to the main (electrical) ground. Simple enough, and should be able to be done in less than an hour in all but the most extreme cases. Also complies with NEC. ;)

But, you're not allowed to touch the cable company's wiring, as it doesn't belong to you. Which means that they'll need to come out and fix it themselves - which is great, if they're willing to even acknowledge that it's their problem, because they also have to do it for free, just like any other problem that happens on their side of the demarc box.

In the likely event that they're not so cooperative...

Use a pair of real transformers (the Radio Shack 75300 ohm jobbie made for outdoor antennas works, and is probably the most readily availalble) back-to-back (that is, connect the 300 ohm twinlead ends of them together) to "fix" it.

All this does is isolate the ground. You can insert your newly created device any point on your cable TV wiring that falls before your stereo -- the further upstream, the better. Bonus points if you connect your ground-isolated coax to the proper grounding rod with heavy-guage wire - it's good for signal quality, and helps keep stuff from leaking. Done right, no ground loops will be introduced.

For troublesome telephone and satellite systems, there is no plug-and-play Radio Shack solution. The FCC says you're not allowed to have a transformer on your phone line. Also, both satellite and telephones need DC voltage to operate - which the transformer would block. You'll have to remove their existing ground connection, and tie them onto the building's main (and now, only) ground. Same no-touch rule about phones, though - they own that end of it, too. Good thing that the phone line is almost never the culprit, due to the way things interface with it.

And you should own all of your satellite gear, since the demise of Primestar - you're (thankfully) on your own if that's the problem.

Oh. Lest I forget: Don't just clip or otherwise disconnect the ground wires. Same goes for 3-prong "adapters", or 3-to-2s. Bad news. Ground connections are there to prevent you from killing yourself, to keep your cable system from leaking, to shield your PC, and prevent static discharge into your AV system from your fiberglass satellite dish, as well as lightning protection for phone and cable networks, and surge protection on PCs.

Copper isn't cheap, and they wouldn't throw in extra wires without a damn good reason.

Re:I must be missing something

[asv108]

The point of this device is to have the ability to play digital music on your AV equipment which is generally located in another room. In my house the living room is at the opposite end and one floor down from where my boxen reside. If I wanted to change a track using an audio cable solution, I would have to get up and go upstairs. This device allows users to do that from the comfort of their sofa. I don't want to stick an ugly beige box in my living room. This device and others like provide a lot more functionality than your solution. And no, an RF remote for a PC would also not work because you wouldn't be able to display the tracks.

Re:I must be missing something

[adolf]

I suppose it could be induced noise, but I didn't presume that the poster's audio system was very far away, given the casual stance portrayed -- he just plugged it in. No mention was made of wasted efforts of procuring and installing obscenely long patch cords.

Indeed, balanced lines will tend to eliminate induced noise, but at such lengths being discussed here (20-30 feet, at most) it should be well within non-issue status at frequencies of 50 or 60Hz. Hence, the bit about ground loops, of which he exhibits every symptom.

I've run into grounding issues with cable TV what seems like hundreds of times. Induced noise has been an issue for me exactly three times, and one of those involved a poorly-designed preamp that made a better wide-band AM reciever than anything else - a whole 'nother ballgame.

Though, there is one point I've failed to mention in any of my comments in this thread: balanced lines also make good ground loop eliminators, as the sheild only needs grounded at one end.

I lessened the problems of the aforementioned troubled preamp, which was getting EMI from the TV, by replacing the fairly long cables to the amp with Canare mic wire. With the pin on the RCA connected to positive, the shell of the RCA connected to negative, and the shield grounded at the amp's balanced input, EMI/RFI hasn't been an issue.

Re:I must be missing something

[dstone]

It lets me listen to all my MP3s, playlists, and streams in my living room on my $5,000 stereo

If you're like me and you have good home audio gear, you'll be disappointed that the SliMP3 routes everything through a cheap DAC and analog RCA patch cables. The website says a SPDIF hack may be coming soon, but for now, it's a darn shame about the analog bottleneck. I'm looking forward to enhancements, but for now I'll stick with 20 feet of SPDIF coax cable running from my PC to my home audio gear in another room (where a much better DAC awaits the stream).

Hmmm...

[Kefabi]

$250+ for an MP3 player that doesn't have it's own storage with a display that doesn't exactly look as professional as other MP3 players on the market...

And it's not even availiable yet! I wonder how CmdrTaco got his. A "free" review copy perhaps?

Re:Hmmm...

[seanadams.com]

$250+ for an MP3 player that doesn't have it's own storage with a display that doesn't exactly look as professional as other MP3 players on the market...

Umm... not storing the files on the player is the whole point! The idea is that you can have two or three of these in different rooms of your home, and they can all be controlled idependently, with your music all stored in one place. So the amount of music you can access is not limited by the player, and you don't have to replicate your collection between several hard disks.

The display is vacuum fluorescent, as opposed to LCD. They're much more expensive than LCDs, and much more readable. I had trouble taking a good photo of it though - you really need to see it in person.

I chose to go with the VFD because even though it's expensive, the $30 price difference vs. the LCD is not a huge percentage of our cost right now. Some day, we'll might make a cheaper version with a backlit LCD. Right now it doesn't make much sense cost-wise, and people generally feel that the VFD is worth the $$.

And it's not even availiable yet! I wonder how CmdrTaco got his. A "free" review copy perhaps?

Yep, I sent him a prototype so he could write the review. The product will be available for sale in 1-2 weeks.

Sean

Re:Hmmm...

[seanadams.com]

where can I buy a VFD?

The display we're using costs $92.2 in single QTY, and you can get them from Digikey.

Digikey carries the full Noritake line. They also have some smaller displays and some graphic ones.

how much power does a VFD consume?

There's a copy of the data sheet in our CVS repository if you're interested. The 40x2 uses about 450ma @ 5V, IIRC.

can one be plugged into a COM port?

No, it uses an 8 bit parallel interface, the same as standard LCD modules. The interface is pretty simple, I'm sure there are some examples out on the web of how to hook one up to your parallel port.

Re:Hmmm...

[cloudmaster]

I've got a matrix orbital (http://www.matrixorbital.com/) 40x4 VFD with serial interface and keypad reader installed in my car's dashboard right now. You might look into their product fi you don't wanna figure out how to control an LCD/VFD directly. The VFD kicks LCD's arse for legibility and cool-factor any time of day.

It's cool, but expensive

[zutroy]

For $10 you can get PalmAmp software to operate WinAmp/XMMS remotely. Add some extra-long speaker cables, and you've got a more functional version of this for a whole lot less. But this is still pretty cool.

Re:It's cool, but expensive

[tswinzig]

Add some extra-long speaker cables, and you've got a more functional version of this for a whole lot less.

Your definition of 'functional' must be different from mine.

wait wait wait...

[rho]

Since when is anybody's Perl code legible? And besides, CT is *certainly* not the best judge of legibility... hell, he thinks Duckpins is funny...

Danger!

[rho]

These are beer-guided MP3 players, evidinced by the second photograph down.

Not sure I want my MPEG decoder chips soldered by some beer-swilling hacker... :)

Re:Danger!

[pi_rules]

Hey now... some people -need- that stuff to keep their hands from shaking. I know somebody who worked with a painter (house, not artist) that couldn't trim a window until he had a pint of booze in him. After that his hand was all nice and steady and his lines were as straight as can be.

There's a technical term for this disease.... but the name escapes me right now. :)

20,000 track listing

[mESSDan]

CmdrTaco, why on earth would you want to have a 20,000 song playlist? I can see having that many mp3s, and even wanting to load them all in the same playlist, but damn, what happens if you have an alphabetized list and you're listening to something in "A", and you want to listen to something in "S" ? You're going to be holding the down key on that remote for a LOOONG time. This leads me to an idea, maybe at some point in a high number of songs, your playlist should (maybe it already does, I don't know, I don't have anywhere near that many mp3s) instead of displaying the name of every track, to instead just display the album titles, then when you select an album title, it expands to a song list. that would cut down the listing from 20,000, to probably less than 1,000.

I guess the beauty of this product is that you could just modify the script and have it produce something like that.

Re:20,000 track listing

[zerocool^]

And another thing:
Am i the only one out there who can't stand ID3 tags? It bugs me to no end to see that a file named X will show up in my playlist and be Y. I just want correctly named mp3's, i.e. BandName-AlbumName-TrackNum-TrackName. Gives you displays like GWAR-Scumdogs Of The Universe-03-Sick Of You.

Mabey i'm missing something, but everything i want to know is in that filename.

Re:Haven't we had this discussion before?

[4mn0t1337]

Running CAT5 cable from my back bedroom to my living room would be more of a pain that it is worth.

802.11

Empeg/SonicBlue/Rio Receiver

[dschuetz]

The closest competitor to the SliMP3 is the Audiotron.

I'm amazed how few people know of the Rio Receiver. It's a great little box, can be found on eBay fairly cheaply, and there's even a couple of Linux servers out for it (check out JReceiver for a hideously-complicated but wicked-cool mpeg server back-end. It's designed to interface to multiple types of systems, and could probably even have an interface built for the SliMP3.)

$250+ for an MP3 player that doesn't have it's own storage

I'm further amazed by how many people on slashdot apparently don't have networks. If I've got 30G (or more, maybe, haven't looked at the total lately) of MP3s, I don't want to have to deal with replicating that collection on different MP3 players scattered all over the house. Put it all on one box, and let smart devices do the playing. That's what SliMP3, AudioTron, and Rio are all about. Store once, play anywhere.

Now if we could only get this to be a VideoLAN client, too... :)

Re:Empeg/SonicBlue/Rio Receiver

[dschuetz]

So I ask again, why should I get excited about this when it costs over $250?

Um, well... Hm.

You should be excited by the concept of a simple, lean, network-based front end to an MP3 player. It's part of a first generation of devices that begin to blur the line between computers and consumer electronic devices. Unlike some other "bridging" technologies (like, say, the internet-enabled fridge), this actually has applications for typical daily use.

In short, things like AudioTron, Rio, or SliMP3 are cool precisely because they take the power of computer networks and put it into a simple, non-computer-looking system that even grandma can use.

Why should you be excited about this particular device, for $250, when you can find things like Rio for $200 or less? Well, okay, you shouldn't be necessarily excited about THIS one, 'casue it is more expensive than other solutions. However, several things about it do spark my interest:

Bright, flourescent display (more readable than Rio, but, you're right, not as much info as it or some CD/MP3 players)

Very small footprint (mount it in a picture frame on the wall and it takes up zero desk space)

Open-source mentality

but, above all:

Made by geeks, for geeks, and got enough interest that the geeks what made it are actually getting it professionally manufacturered.

If this were $250 for something from, say, Sony, I'd agree with you. But it's a first-generation, custom-built, almost "vanity press" product. If it's a success, it'll get cheaper -- possibly much cheaper. Don't belittle it too much 'cause the early adoption price is (relatively) high.

Ultimately, to me, it's not about the product (though it is way cool), nor even about its potential (which, if its successful in these early models, could be great). It's exciting because these are two (or more? I forget) guys "in a garage" designing, and now professionally building, something that normally would only be in the reach of big corporate giants. It's like the Apple I -- looked like crap, but enough geeks at the time were excited by it that Steve and Woz built a sequel.

(ps -- sorry about the network crack. :) )

Portable MP3 Player to Plug In To Car Audio?

[idonotexist]

Haven't seen this feature, but curious if someone has seen it around: I hate having to burn separate CDs for my car. I could get a car audio mp3 player, but I would have the same inconveniences.

Why can't a portable mp3 player with gobs of music merely plug in to the car audio? One source of music...

Re:Portable MP3 Player to Plug In To Car Audio?

[pete-classic]

Does you car stereo have an "Aux in" jack? Mine doesn't.

Anyway, you can skate with either one of those "CD Adaptors" or a short range FM transmitter that you can tune in.

-Peter

Re:Portable MP3 Player to Plug In To Car Audio?

[norton_I]

Mine does, though admitedly on the back, not the front. Many after market CD players and the like have a pair of RCA inputs on the back for hooking up to the original deck. It isn't so hard to bring this around front if you, say have a DIN head unit in a double DIN space.

I still say...

[swordboy]

I would still like to see the "industry" recognize the need for a "disposable" PC form factor. Instead of ZIF sockets and DIMMs, put the memory and processor right on the motherboard (BGA packaging)along with all the other integrated components. Video, network, modem, sound, etc. If there were a couple USB or firewire ports, this would provide for cheap expansion into any multitude of devices.

Perhaps this way, an "open notebook" could develop as well as open Mp3 players. Since the actual board would be tiny, there would be many uses. Hell - flat panel makers could use them to convert an ordinary flat panel monitor into a full terminal (firewire hard or network boot drive optional).

Has anyone priced PC parts these days? Get rid of the fluff and put everything on one standards based board and you have a cheap, universal PC for use in ANYTHING including Mp3 players that would otherwise cost $270 like the one we see here.

Re:I still say...

[cymen]

All the notebooks I've seen have at least memory in sockets and usually the CPU too (especially the newer notebooks)...

The only problem with saying "hey, look how cheap all these components are" is that they are cheap because they are components. Once you put them all in a tidy little package the value/price goes way up...

Who decides what standards go on the "on standards based board"? If there is only one board we are going to have a ton of features on it and what about next months standards...

Think time == money (although I have some gut level annoyance with the idea).

We have had this story before

[reachinmark]

this article looks kind of familiar. Is there something new now? Are they slightly closer to a finished product?

Tivo thumb up/down mp3 app

[IceFox]

I wrote a playlist generator and a frontend for it that has a thumb up/down feature. :) I thought you might enjoy it. You could easily adapt ti for use in such an app for the SliMp3.

source, screenshots (of frontend), etc:
http://www.csh.rit.edu/~benjamin/desktop/program s/ sondra/

-Benjamin Meyer

Centralized mass storage, distributed playback

[kriegsman]

Presumably you can have multiple players on the same network, each playing back different content from the same centralized server.

The idea here, which I particularly like, is that you'd set up one "server" with stored copies of all your MP3s on it, and then put one of these and a pair of powered speakers in each room where you want music: the bedroom, the kitchen, the dungeon, etc. That way, you can play any music from any room in the house at any time without needing complete stored copies of the whole collection in each room.

Now all it needs is a built-in 802.11b wireless ethernet setup...

-Mark

A Great MP3 Player...

[Muerte23]

I realize that this article is about a home MP3 system, so this may be slightly off topic, but I just bought an awesome MP3 player.

It's the Diva3032 MP3 player. I got it for $69 with 32 megs built in. But the best part is that it takes CompactFlash, up to 2 Gigs (!!!). And when you plug it in (under win2k, maybe linux?) it automatically mounts as an additional drive letter so you can drag and drop MP3's on (and off) it.

So I got a 128 MB CF card off of pricewatch for $48 and now I have a 160MB player for $120.

It's about _half_ the size of a deck of cards, and runs for (supposedly) 10 hours on a single battery. The digital display is pretty lacking, but who cares if it's in your pocket? The sound quality is good, and the volume goes high enough to hurt my ears.

I went to this after bad experiences with a JazzPiper/Cabo, and even worse experiences with the Toshiba MEA-110. The Cabo's parallel connection just plain stopped working, and the Toshiba uses a "library manager" so draconian it makes me want to die.

My current idea is this - I have seen a CompactFlash to PCMCIA adapter. Heck I have even seen a CF to IDE adapter (the wrong way though). So why not plug a freakin hard drive in it when you are in the car? I think all you need is 5V. Does anyone have any experience with this?

I promise I am not the guy selling these, but the main page is at www.mydivaplayer.com and the place i got it for $69 is at www.mydigitaldiscount.com. Shamless plugging, I know, please keep the flames to a low broil.

Just my 2 cents.

muerte

Winamp 3

[Captain_Frisk]

Winamp3 (currently in open beta) has this functionality (sortof)

You can have your standard playlist manager, but theres another way of managing your music, which allows you to query by artist, album, year, genre. Double click on an album, and boom, its in your playlist. Really slick. Nullsoft rules.

Captain_Frisk

Re:Winamp 3

[Captain_Frisk]

Granted, I don't have 6500 songs, but the "Media Library" function is supposed to provide this functionality, and has worked like a charm for me.

The first truely hackable player....

[pjrc]

Rob (cmdrtaco) writes:

And this is the first MP3 player I've seen that things like this are possible because the code is right there and ready to rip apart.

Just over one year ago, Rob posted a story about my little Open-Source MP3 Player Project... which also isn't the first open-source design (but it may be the first open-source player that you can buy the hardware instead of buying all the individual chips and soldering them yourself).

Well, enough shameless self promotion for one day....

Re:Haven't we had this discussion before?

[4mn0t1337]

one device on the network

*ONE* device?!? You can think of only one device to hook up in that room?
And you call yourself a geek! HA! &nbsp &nbsp ;)

The truth is revealed!

[Ether]

hhhrm...

bash# nmap slashdot.org
Starting nmap V. 2.54BETA29 (www.insecure.org/nmap/ )
Interesting ports on slashdot.org (64.28.67.150):
(The 1542 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: closed)
Port State Service
21/tcp open ftp
22/tcp open ssh
80/tcp open httpd
21345/tcp open SliMP3d

Remote operating system guess: Linux 2.2.13

Maybe you might want to put it on another box. :)I know it's already running Linux and Perl, but I don't think reuse is a good idea in this case.

Power over Cat-5?

[YuppieScum]

I'd buy this like a shot (if you could buy one at all right now, natch) if it, instead of having a wall-wart for volts, had volts over CAT5 (including volts for an amp) just like the 3com 4-port face-plate on /. last week, or the Cisco W-LAN AP's. I'd even pay $50 on top of the asking price (converted into GBP)...

That way I can just flood-wire my house with CAT5 - as every good geek should - and plug this sucker in most anywhere along with a pair of passive speakers to get sounds...

I wonder if they're going to offer it in kit form? It'd be cool to do a battery version with a W-LAN card...

Re:Power over Cat-5?

[YuppieScum]

PoIP (power over IP) is possible - assorted kit already does it.

Cool device, but here's what I did

[IronChef]

I built a jukebox out of a P200, FreeBSD, a SB AWE32 PCI and Webplay.

Webplay kicks ass. I can fire up the tunes from any PC in the house -- streaming, if I want to use headphones at a computer, or I can feed the audio into my stero... or both at the same time.

There are apparently hacks to enable a digital audio output port on the cheapo SoundBlaster Live! cards. Once I do this I can even have my nice Yamaha receiver do the D/A conversion for better sound quality. (yeah, MP3, I know, but I use high bitrates and they can sound pretty good to me at least.)

Once I get a bigger hard drive in the jukebox I'll be able to use it as the home's general-purpose file server too.

For me, a PC-based solution is better than a component-based solution. The web interface alone cinches it. I don't even miss the remote contol, though one can probably be hacked in there.

Re:Cool device, but here's what I did

[adolf]

Don't all SBLive! cards have SP/DIF output?

Or. More to the point, six channels worth of it?

Pinouts of the Live's expansion headers are on this page, and Hoontech sells a fairly cheap ($25-35) adapter offering some digital IO capabilities.

Or. CVS ALSA, these days, supports the digital output of the Live 5.1 cards, which have a coaxial digital output on the back panel. OEM-packaged Live 5.1 cards are also a fairly cheap $25-35.

Seems to work fairly well for me, driving an Audio Alchemy DDE 1.1 (which I'm using as a DAC instead of the thing built into the sound card).

Re:Cool device, but here's what I did

[IronChef]

The Live! Value Edition doesn't have the SPDIF enabled. I have one in my main PC.

If I can find the 5.1 edition at the price you mentioned I won't have to bother with the Value Edition hack. Cool.

For all of you who want 802.11 on this...

[thesolo]

You could always hook this thing directly into a WAP, and then bridge that to the WAP at your PC. I know its not the cheapest or easiest way to do it, but it *would* work.

I think then have a good idea but the wrong market

[waitdyahoo.com]

They should be marketing the "Digital receiver" and a digital media server for businesses.

With that they could wire music into every were there is a existing network drop.

With a little modification to the software on the server I am sure they could do forced broadcasts for warnings in the building and company propaganda.

In a building that is already networked it could very well be cheeper then the "tradional" PA system.

In the home envirment I really think it needs to be more "sterio" like and have some form of storage on board to store the music so the server does not always need to be on.. Otherwise it boils down to what a lot of people are saying..

Nothing more then WinAmp with a remote control.

Firmware was posted...

[stienman]

The firmware was posted (finally) for the PIC16F877 controlling the whole thing. Disassembly shows much of it is regular code, but some appears to be encrypted - ie, not real code. At some point one hopes that they open this part up, but I doubt they will. One would need the configuration for the altera part as well to duplicate the whole thing, so this code, while important, is not going to put them out of business even if it weren't encoded (which could be the case - I haven't inspected it extremely closely - but the return from interrupt instruction and whole interrupt handler are valid and appear to be good code - just lots of other invalid code elsewhere, which could be encoded (not encrypted) text for the display...).

Anyway, it would become significantly more hackable if this code were opened. The TCP/IP stack is only a short leap from simple IP and TCP/IP stacks already freely available for this chip, there is plenty of code for controlling both the crystal lan chip and the mas MP3 decoder, so there is little they have to lose by opening it, except that it would give a peek into what's on the altera chip.

-Adam

Re:Firmware was posted...

[seanadams.com]

The firmware was posted (finally) for the PIC16F877 controlling the whole thing. Disassembly shows much of it is regular code, but some appears to be encrypted - ie, not real code.

Heh - I was wondering how long before someone loaded it into MPLAB and disassembled it. The funny thing is, it's all written in assembler, so you're just a few comments away from having the source code. :)

The chunk from 0x0600 to 0x0x07FF that isn't valid instructions is actually string data - two 7-bit ASCII characters in each 14-bit program word, to save ROM space. The PIC16F877 can read it's own program memory, so this is more efficient than using a bunch of RETLW instructions like you had to do with the older PICs.

Re:Firmware was posted...

[stienman]

I suspected that, and peeked at it a little bit more just now. It is all regular assembler, as you state.

So why don't you go ahead and release the code with comments? And while you're at the it, the schematic would be nice... And the contents of the configuration eeprom from the altera part... Gerbers, etc... ;-)

-Adam

Re:Firmware was posted...

[seanadams.com]

So why don't you go ahead and release the code with comments? And while you're at the it, the schematicwould be nice... And the contents of the configuration eeprom from the altera part... Gerbers, etc... ;-)

Sure - first you just have to convince me that there's enough interest in this low-level stuff that it's worth the risk of someone cranking out illegal clones.

SliMP3 is open, in the sense that you can hack the UI and make it do whatever you want, but it's not free as in free beer. Opening the hardware and device drivers would serve a hobbyist's educational interest, sure, but I don't see that our customers or our business would benefit significantly from it.

Only if your Palm is sitting in its cradle

[Namarrgon]

That requires the Palm to be in its cradle. You'd have to run a long serial/USB extension cable to put your cradle in your lounge room, as well as the long audio cables.

Not a bad idea for a two-way remote though, even if it isn't wireless. I have a $25 RF remote to control Winamp on my PC, and a 10m S/PDIF cable returning for the sound, but I don't get any other info, just the music.

Re:A few comments...

[seanadams.com]

I have a home network that this could work with quite nicely?that is, other than the fact that I am going to dust off one of my 10/100 auto-sensing hubs just for this purpose and loose my bragging rights of having a completely switched, 100MB home network!!!

I think you're mistaken. AFAIK, there's no such thing as a 100Mbps *switch* that doesn't support 10Mbps, so SliMP3 would work fine on your network.

Hubs that only support 100Mbps are very hard to come by these days.

Good thing? Bad thing?

[joebp]

I h4ve 0\\/ned j0ur SliMP3. n0w j00 w!ll l!5ten 2 br!tn3y 4ll +h3 +!m3 c0s sh3 r0x0rzzz!111111

I'm impressed

[hrieke]

DId anyone else see the 5000 capacitors that they installed by hand. Suprised someone didn't go postal.

Re:All very nice but ...

[seanadams.com]

When are electronic device manufacturers going to stop making power cords with huge "wall wart" transformers?

The picture of the power supply is out of date. I just got the new ones today, and they are not the clunky wall warts. They're the modern, tiny switching power supplies with an interchangeable two prong cord for US and overseas voltages. I'll post a picture in a day or two.

We used the regulated wall-wart supply for the prototypes, because the switching supplies are more expensive, they have to be custom-ordered in large qty, and they take 8 weeks to get.

Right on

[unformed]

I'd too would prefer they'd be made some dope-smoking hacker instead.

Re:Right on

[seanadams.com]

I'd too would prefer they'd be made some dope-smoking hacker instead.

This is no joke:

Our MAC addresses start with 00:04:20

And no, you can't specifically request a "vanity" MAC prefix. :)

What about raw audio?

[BeBoxer]

Is it possible to hack the firmware to have it play raw audio? Or is the output of the mpeg chip wired directly to the input of the D/A? I ask because it would be infinitely easier to add support for things like Ogg and such by simply decoding on the server and streaming the raw audio to the player. It would also allow us to do normalization, cross-fades, or whatever. It would also be nice to avoid any additional artifacts from re-encoding. Sure, it would take more bandwidth, but with 10bT there's plenty.

Make it play DiVX video

[Dr. Spork]

I'll buy it when it has an S-video output and can play DiVX (and mpeg) movies from my computer. 100MPs Ethernet should be fast enough to move data faster than you can play. Well, I guess DiVX isn't a real streaming format... would that present a problem? Anyway, I think devices like this are the future of living room entertainment; the next (obvious) step is video.

A $5000 stereo and you listen to mp3's on it?

[bythescruff]

If you have a $5000 stereo, then presumably you can hear the difference between that and a $2000 stereo, unless you bought it for that nice warm fuzzy feeling that comes with owning extremely expensive and nifty kit. Which I can understand ;) But if you're a true audiophile, and your ears are really that good, why are you listening to mp3's on that nice system?

Spellong

[EnglishTim]

Grammer... Penguinoflight isn't doing that well either...

Finally! Now I can write a "smart DJ"

[hoggoth]

This is great (although the price sucks).
Here's the first feature I am going to implement:

I want a huge playlist (perhaps encompassing EVERY song in my collection) with a 0%-100% rating on each song. The "smart DJ" will be able to play a "shuffle/random" selection with the probability of any given song being played proportional to the song's % rating.

In other words, it will play my favorite songs more often than my less favorite songs, but it will play them randomly so I won't hear the same 10 songs over and over. And occasionally I will hear the nearly-forgotten songs in my collection (after all if they are in my collection I must like them).

It will also track a short history to make sure I never hear the same song twice within a short time span (say 30 minutes).

The next feature will be to ability to give ratings to SUB playlists so I can for instance have the "smart DJ" choose to play a 3 song "Pink Floyd" medley or to play a song immediately followed by an interesting cover version of the same song by a different artist.