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DIY Ethernet Audio Receiver
geo writes "I created this site to describe my latest toy: a digital audio multicast receiver. LANPipe receives 16-bit, 44.1 kHz audio multicast from a PC based server. The server uses a Winamp plug-in, so LANPipe can play almost any source format (mp3, ogg, uncompressed). It even has a digital audio output. The receiver uses a custom CPU written in VHDL and implemented on a Xilinx FPGA. This was a fun project that is best appreciated by fellow hardware geeks."
"This was a fun project that is best appreciated by fellow hardware geeks."
Not appreciated nearly as much as Web servers than can handle a Slashdotting.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Looking at the device I see a place for you to plug in the device. It should be able to do PPOE and get its power from the ethernet cable, that would rock.
How can you say it's of no interest to potential employers? This guy has demonstrated his expertise with Xilinx design, and, last time I looked, that was a marketable skill.
Okl it's cool, but for $100.00 in parts? it makes just buying an audiotron from turtle beach look nicer.. i can have 30 audiotrons playing 30 different things all from my samba server or even that legacy OS called windows.
I understand the part of doing it for the learning fun and the "I DID IT" factor.. but overall it's pricey for what it is, and doesnt seem to be too open source so that I can duplicate it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I like this.. This would solve many of the problems I have with putting a computer near my stereo.. I don't have any space near it... SOmething small like this would be very very cool..
One feature I would like to see is the possiblilty of "multiple channels", so that I could stream several channels at once.. So my GF, who likes country, can listen in the livingroom, and I can listen to my stuff in the basement, without having a computer at each location...
--John
Slashdot is like Playboy: I read it for the articles
The site mentions a Linux server "prototype driver". Frankly, if this guy wants to make money off of this little invention directly (I.E. doesn't sell it to some company for a few beans), then he would shoot himself in the foot sticking with Windows. Imagine, LANPipe BestBuy special, $250, $100 of that from the Windows license. 10 people might buy it at @$250, 1,000 would buy it at $100.
Network Audio System has been around for as long as I remember.. Some pretty good pages here and here. In the case of NAS the hardware decoder is in the workstation.
Slashdotters, before you slam this thing, please consider the following facts:
I hate to respond to such an obvious troll....but...
A project like this is very valuable. For one thing, it makes a great hobby. How much time does the average moron spend watching NFL? Take that time over a year and you can create some pretty cool (and valuable in many ways) technology. Even if nobody other than yourself ever uses it, it has value.
What is the value? Although you claim that employers don't care, it is projects like this that have made my career. I'm currently employed, making a decent living as an engineer, even though I have no degree (working on it still at age 29.95). I got a job offer from one of those top 100 employers who was looking for an engineer with a masters degree because they were so impressed with my portfolio of hardware/software projects I had 'hacked' together on my own. I actually didn't take the job because I was interested in pursuing a different job offer I got because of some software I had written and published online as a hobby. It got me attention, and the offers literally came pouring in.
If you are unemployed, by all means spend most of your time looking for a job....but there is a lot of value in showing that you are smart enough and motivated enough (even more rare) to complete a project like this on your own.
So you can go back to watching NFL while the rest of us do something useful.
Multiroom audio without having to install wiring. I've got multiroom at home, between the lounge and the kitchen. Great for parties and such like, but it meant having to install wires between the rooms, hiding these was a long task that involved removing sideboards and putting wiring under the floor where possible. It was worth it, it's great to go between rooms and heart the same song playing.
Wireless solves this. My only question is on syncronisation. With multiroom audio, you need perfect timing, otherwise you'll hear an echo from the other room. With wires this isn't a problem, but as this uses packet data transfer, I'd dare say there was some buffering going on.
Multiple receivers would be cool as well.
Anyone working on a wireless version? ;-) That would be cool, you could make portable receivers that play what is on your main stereo. Good for the bathroom/garden.
"spend your free time refining your resumes " There's a point where a resume can no longer be refined.
Also, all work and no play make Homer something something........GO CRAZY??? DON'T MIND IF I DOOOOO!!!!!
But it's running multicast to unless you have a HIGH end switch or a long chain of multiple switches all receivers get the packet at nearly the same time as multicast would go out via port flooding to all ports simultaniously. If your particualry worried about it put all the playback units on the same hub this will insure they all receive the packet at nearly the same time (cable length etc varying this) as they are all the same hardware they should all proccess the packet and play it back with the same delay.
No sir I dont like it.
I'm an apple picker, my job does grow on trees you insensitive bastard.
At the same time, this is a useful project - clearly, Ethernet is a common communications infrastructure component, and is probably one of the most flexible. This type of technology means that someone can plug a (commodity?) component into an unquestionably commodity network infrastructure, something not really available right now. There's no need to rewrite the home because the best place for the CD deck is in one room, and one place where the output might want to be listened to is another.
These two issues are important - a problem has been solved with open components, and it would be impossible to solve that problem without that open infrastructure. Yet various groups, lead by the MPAA (and to an extent cheered on by the RIAA, the representative of the recording industry which has concerns about unauthorized copying) have promoted laws that remove that ability to problem solve. In the end, the output of copyrighted material producers is being compromised by these actions, but this doesn't stop them as there's an assumption that open technologies are bad, and that technologies need to be centrally controlled and contain technologies to prevent not merely uses of copyright material that are clearly unfair to the content producers, but also of uses of that material that the producers have not heard of.
One company, Microsoft, has already proposed and demonstrated technologies that would make projects such as the above impossible. Content would not be copyable onto unprotected commodity components in Palladium, a digital restrictions mechanism that uses encryption and authorization at the hardware level to divide a world into "trusted" and "untrusted" realms. While Microsoft argues their technology is voluntarily, a content producer can restrict use of their content to only those who sign up for the technological restrictions.
This is a block on innovation. It's a block on personal freedom. In the end, it will cause damage not merely to consumers but also to those who produce content. We face a future of stagnant information growth, resembling more the state of Brewery development in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, than the technology industry during the same period.
Palladium is backed by entertainment industry promoted laws such as the DMCA, that make it illegal to bypass access control mechanisms, such as Palladium's Digital Restrictions Mechanisms.
This quagmire of a paranoid entertainment industry crippling the future both of content production and technology will not disappear by itself. Unless people are prepared to actually act, not just talk about it on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.
You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman or senator. Write also to the Jack Valenti, the CEO and chair of the MPAA, whose address and telephone number can be found at the About the MPAA page. Write too to Bill Gates, Chief of Technologies and thus in overall charge of Palladium, at Microsoft. Tell them you understand the concerns content producers have about unauthorized copying, but that without an open technological infrastructure, the value of content will be lowered, and as the bar to entry into content production is raised more and more innovation will be sucked out of the industry. Tell them that technologies such as Palladium, DVD CSS, and other technological locks, will damage both the content and technology industries in ways that go well beyond anything reasonable. Tell them that you appreciate the work being done to create new ways of viewing and hearing content but that if those technologies are closed, you will be forced to use less and less secure and intelligently designed alternatives. Let them know that SMP may make or break whether you can efficiently deploy OpenBSD on your workstations and servers. Explain the concerns you have about freedom, openness, and choice, and how digital restrictions harms all three. Let your legislators know that this is an issue that effects YOU directly, that YOU vote, and that your vote will be influenced, indeed dependent, on their policies towards legally enforcing clearly damaging restrictions management systems.
You CAN make a difference. Don't treat voting as a right, treat it as a duty. Keep informed, keep your political representatives informed on how you feel. And, most importantly of all, vote.
KMSMA (WWBD?)
I recently attended a demo of the IBM/HomeDirector "AudioPoint" device AudioPoint and it's the same idea.
Nice "nifty" factor but they wanted far too much money for it (C$280) and it used Win-only proprietary software and protocol, and didn't have a digital out.
I work in a building where both AM and FM are impossible to receive. I guess my question is, waht are the legal implications of me setting up a server at home, then using a service such as noip.com to provide me some real audio feed --- as opposed to some of the ad-laden and in some cases, pay to play, internet feeds some radio stations and radio shows are offering?
--- have you healed your church website?
Sorry about the being slashdotted. We're working on getting that fixed.
I'm a server administrator at the webhosting company that hosts that page. Today (at 1AM) two of our five T-1's went down (Qwest appearantly had a cable cut - bah, force majure). Of all days for our network capacity to be decreased by 40%...
At any rate, we just turned up MaxClients, MinSpareServers, and MaxSpareServers in the apache config. We're going to start really hounding Qwest. We'll get it back up as soon as possible. It is accessable right now, but slow.
Again, apologies.
~Will
Server Administrator,
Netmar inc
sig?
About the same thing.
Remote controlled, streams over Ethernet, GPL'd software (Linux, Win, Mac)
250$ - a bit expensive, but I bet the price will come down...
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
The Xilinx Spartan II FPGA board alone costs $450 bux. For that price, you can just buy a full blown computer.
The Virtual Bookcase: book reviews
There have been a number of discussions about /. /.ing sites that simply can't handle it. And whether /. should courtiously mirror the site.
/. admin that posted the story made a comment with a bit of text from the linked URL as the first comment that showed up for everyone. Then you would only need to go to the URL if you wanted to know even more.
After seeing this post at the top, what if the
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
This is the 2nd time karmawarrior posts this
The last part about "getting off your rear" has been used numerous times in his comments.
Not a stupid opinion, just troll.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
The best way to explain is to give an example. Say you have two cards running from the same source. In order to get them syncronised, they would both need to be initialised at exactly the same time. If you didn't, it's possible that the first could be running with one second of audio in it's buffer, while the other has two seconds of audio.
This project raises more questions than answers! I'm not familiar with multicast, so I may be picking it up wrong, but as I see it, any media over ethernet is going to need some sort of buffering, to handle the times where the frames don't get through on time (congestion and collissions). Any design where sync playback is desired would probably need to design this in the the hardware.
No slamming here. Even if you could get something commercially, it is always fun to hack your own solution. That *IS* what hacking is all about. Fun first, to satisfy a need a very close second.
not everyone has a spare PC or two lying around the house
True. But I bought a PII-233 Dell Optiplex for $85 at a computer show. I am sure you can get one much cheaper now, I got mine a few years ago. I wanted one of these because they are fairly slim and quiet.
I run Knoppix off of a CD (quiet), so the PC has no hard drive. It displays through the TV via a cheap video card with TV-OUT. Sound card plays through the stereo. It accesses my MP3 collection on my GNUMP3D server on my LAN. (Mozilla/XMMS) Quiet, relatively unobtrusive solution for me. Was pretty cheap too, probably $100 total.
some people DON'T have their PC sitting in the middle of their family room, right next to the stereo.
Yeah, this does kind of suck, and the keyboard/mouse control on mine could be more elegant. I could go wireless I guess. Mine sits on the floor under the stereo rack, so it doesn't stick out too badly.
people value elegance
This is where a lot of hacks fail, and this one seems pretty good. There is always the balancing game between elegance and price though.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Lan Pipe is cool, but what about a simple to use Music Server?
Someone please tweak Knoppix boot CD OS into a music server!
PC with, bootable CD drive, as well as Nic and sound cards. Hardisk with digital audio files, normally mounted read only, so hardpower off is no problem.
Samba and Netatalk for music via file sharing and play list creation, and LAN Pipe. Xmms with RF wireless remote and relevant plug in. Also use a webinterface to control the sound card on the server via Xmms command line tool and Web Control interface
LanPipe is nice, but FM Broadcast is MUCH cheaper. It uses existing home radios, and 1 piece serves all, and no pulling cables, with this $39.95 FM solution, or that $189 FM solution.
First person to say "Knoppix" on slashdot?
Mac Refugee, Paper MCSE, Linux wanna be
This is a very cool project in the tradition of what used to appear a lot on Slashdot. Hopefully it will inspire more people to something similar. One suggestion - howabout adding an IR interface to it so that it can be controlled with a remote? Just send the IR back to the server and let the SW on the server handle it.
Can i run more than one on the same network?
I disagree....for around $150 you can easily have all the hardware and software you need to experiment with (very powerful) FPGAs. That's cheaper than a lot of hobbies!
MP3elf is the same, just better (more features), fully open-source and has existed for over a year.
Lan Pipe is very cool, particularly if the house is correcly wired with Cat5.
But what if you don't have wires already? FM is MUCH cheaper!
Uses your existing home FM radios recievers in every room, or your walkman. Simply add one of these to your music server, and no pulling cables.
$39.95 FM solution, or that
$189 FM solution.
First person to say "Knoppix" on slashdot?
Mac Refugee, Paper MCSE, Linux wanna be
The ADS Cadet ISA card can be picked up for really cheap and it has Linux support. Only problem is scaring up ISA slots.
Anyway, all this needs for me to want one in my living room is:
- An LCD to display song info. Doesn't need to be big. 2x24 would be fine (4x__ would be better).
- Some kind of input. Either a few buttons and/or a jog-wheel. Something to play/pause/ffwd/rev, maybe change the volume (which I realize you can do from your stereo), shuffle through playlists. There must be a way to have the device translate input actions to simple commands that get sent back over TCP to
... something.
- RCA out, rather than the 1/8" stereo out.
- A nicer case
... but owners could hack that themselves.
All in all, very cool though. Sign me up.Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
You could bring the BOM of this project down by chucking the FPGA and using a microcontroller. The FPGA and its RAM and ROM are probably a large percentage of the total cost (the Xilinx Spartan II would cost around $15 with the ROM and SRAM chiping in a couple dollars). As a fun project that might allow you to learn something new, using the FPGA was interesting. However, you can find a microcontroller, potentially with integrated 10Mb Ethernet, that can do the job. You could also, potentially, do away with the external DAC by using a microcontroller with intergated DAC capability (e.g. Cypress Micro. This project was meant as a fun learning exercise. Analyzing the BOM in terms of a production-quantity retail product is unfair.
Makes you wonder what Google did concerning this and the Google Cache.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
> There is always the balancing game
> between elegance and price though.
Not neccessarily, it's just that many (most?) hackers simply don't value or care about aesthetics. They only value functionality, and once the project is functional, it's finished. It's quite easy to find an old CD player on a dump, gut it and mount the mobo and PS in the empty shell. There, it already looks much more elegant. Next, add a simple IR receiver (e.g. IRMAN) and find some software that interfaces to the IR driver. That's the trickier bit, there's a scarcity of nice looking software that can be driven interely via IR. That's the second aspect of aesthetical indifference--not only is there a beige PC in the living room, but it's driven via a keyboard and shell or Perl scripts. MythTV and Freevo are working precisely in this direction to provide a hands-off appliance experience, so those are definite options. Once it's all said and done you haven't really spent any more, yet you have a much more visually and ergonomically pleasing result.
I had horrible luck getting a signal from those things.
I picked up an Audiotron off EBay for $180 for Christmas last year. It has an ethernet jack, digital optical and analog RCA outputs, can read SMB shares or a stream from the Internet or a local server from "favorite station presets" that you can set up at their web site (www.turtleradio.com) and have it downloaded, and has a programmable display. All be controlled through the web interface. Many people set up 3Com Audreys at home so that when they throw a party guests can edit the playlist. No Ogg, though; only MP3, WAV, and WMF.
The developers at Turtle Beach are constantly adding new features such as a clock display that syncs through NTP and an alarm clock. In fact as we were watching the ball drop on New Years Eve, we noticed that the seconds were perfectly synced with the clock on the TV.
Not a bad little contraption, and I plan on getting another for the bedroom later on. Never know when you want some funky porno jam steaming from the Internet. =)
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
I just updated the web site minutes ago: MacWorld show special: $239 with free ground shipping!!
Now if it had been running wireless network protocols over an ultrasonic link, that would have been a geek's delight.
The Navy have had such technology for ages! Tho they only seem to support 'Ping' so far.
By not modulating and demodulating the audio signal, you'd get better audio quality with this than you would with an FM transmitter/receiver pair. It's the same reason you hook your VCR to your TV with line-level audio and video cables instead of coax, but with the added benefit here that your audio stays digital until it hits the RCA jacks on this device. (Someone could do a digital wireless connection...then again, you could bridge this receiver (or an Audiotron or Rio Receiver) to WiFi.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
What is the cheapest way to program an FPGA using just Linux? All I've seen are development kits costing thousands of dollars, which only run in Win32.
> There is always the balancing game
> between elegance and price though.
And you replied with:
Not neccessarily, it's just that many (most?) hackers simply don't value or care about aesthetics.
I would agree to some point, but there is always the cool factor. The very small PCs are elegant, but some would argue not worth the price. I consider elegance to include the slickness/cool factor. It does have some value to it, if not for the hacker market, then definitely for the general population. Trying to increase the elegance of products is what helps to improve them. A CRT is not as cool as flat panels, but they both do essentially the same thing. I still don't have a flat panel, but I will someday because the price will come down. Some people are willing to pay for that now.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Well, you COULD use this and add an 802.11 bridge. All this thing wants is Ethernet - it doesn't care HOW it gets it. If you've got 802.11 already, you could just put the access point by this thing. Depending on your setup it could be identical to what you need - otherwise you'd need to pick up an access point for about $100 or so.
By not modulating and demodulating the audio signal, you'd get better audio quality with this than you would with an FM transmitter/receiver pair.
I'm not quite sure what you're saying. The original poster wants to pick up FM broadcasts and stream them. For this he needs an FM receiver. Now, instead of trying to find an FM tuner card that works with Linux, why not just use an ordinary FM tuner and an ordinary sound card?
The tuner demodulates the modulated signal in any case. I've no idea where you're modulating it again.
Uh... be sure you restart apache after changing the config file.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
Cool, when did that technology get put in place?
:)
Man I'm behind the times here.. I still download software.. and hardware specifications
Where can i download a new digital tv for free?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Sure the DEVELOPMENT boards are a bit pricy, but once you start pumping out the final result, prices go down fast..
And like others will say, useable development boards are not $450.. more like $200...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I would love the moderator who modded this a troll to explain to me why he or she did so. Reply, please, to gordonjcp@yahoo.co.uk
Everyone,
The source for this thing is not available. Thus, this is nothing more than some jpegs of a circuit board to you.
As you can tell from the poll, the guy is interested in selling the device and NOT releasing the code if enough people are interested...
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
That was my intent too.... perhaps mine wasnt as obvious..
---- Booth was a patriot ----