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Homegrown Wireless Media Servers?
blurg64 asks: "I am about to move into a new house and am keen to be able to stream my mp3 collection out to my stereo. With all of the new media servers out there such as the Squeezebox, cd3o wireless network player and even HP's Wireless Digital Receiver offering, I was wondering if any /. readers had any tips or experiences in building a cheap wireless media server?"
I think the title says it all it plays MP3, AVI and DivX
one of the MII boards with PCMCIA & CF slots built in
mini-itx.com
You'll be paying a whacking premium for something called a "media center"
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Just to clarify, all the devices that you list are CLIENTS - not servers as you stated in your post. All of them depend on your PC to serve the media files. So, what is it you really want to build? A client like the devices listed, or a cheap wireless PC to handle the server duties?
\/\/oobie
I up an old P-75 with FreeBSD, using Slim Server from Slim Devices, using mpg123 and mp3lbaster to play the songs. I had a LCD screen to display the Song Title, Artist, and Album. It worked ok, but it needs to be a bigger machine.
I'm in the same boat of moving to a new place. Currently, everything, including TV and TiVO, is served by my main computer, and while that works well for a single guy, it doesn't work so well for a married one.
Since I have a receiver, will buy a new TV, but don't have a CD player, I figured it was cheaper to buy Tivo's Home Media Option, which uses my computer to stream mp3's and images through my Tivo and by extension, stereo. While I'm sure Tivo's media server is fine, I installed the JavaHMO which not only lets me serve up mp3's from my linux box, but also movie listings, weather reports, and even stream mp3's off shoutcast. Since I rip all my CD's to file anyways (usually ogg, but Tivo doesn't support Ogg :/), now I can access my entire music collection plus internet radio stations through the simple Tivo interface. Add a wireless 802.11b USB adapter, and you have a nice wireless media server through your Tivo.
I've recently evaluated wireless audio/video systems. After testing 5 different systems ($150-$600), I came to the realization...run cable.
The microwave kicks on, TV/audio goes nuts. Phone rings, same thing. Even if you unplug everything electrical around you...odds are you still won't be happy with the quality.
Errant crackle and pops just ruin it all.
----- LoboSoft specializes in Digital Language Lab
Unless you are a real pro, you are better off getting your stuff from dealers.
squeezbox is most definitely not a client.
it is a streaming media server, and you dont need the slimp3 devices to use it.
it streams to WinAmp just fine. runs pretty sweet.
The client, though, is a tougher nut to crack. If you only want to stream MP3s, then a product like the Audiotron would be excellent; you don't have to worry about finding a good Linux-compatible character-LCD based control system (which you probably would want to use, in this case), and then programming it. The Audiotron-type products are probably best in an audio-only environment, although you could probably get by with a second PC, especially if you can stand to have a small keyboard, mouse and monitor in your rec room. Wireless might be a problem, but I'd imagine anything that doesn't natively grok 802.11x would work with an AP on the other end of a short network cable.
I would advise you to take your thinking beyond just MP3s, though. If you were to get a Shuttle or similar small form factor PC and put a TV card, Linux and MythTV on it, you would have an excellent PVR system that would also play MP3s and even act as a frontend to emulators like MAME and ZSNES. Even if you don't want a PVR (already have Tivo, don't watch TV, whatever), you can still use the other functions. Also, most of the small form factor PCs I've seen are designed to be small, quiet and non-intrusive - it probably wouldn't be much worse than a system like the Audiotron, from an annoyance standpoint. If I were in your shoes, I'd seriously consider taking the money I was going to spend on an Audiotron or similar product and putting it towards one of these babies.
That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
slim server = open-source server (what you are talking about)
slimp3 = ethernet client device
squeezebox = ethernet or ethernet+wireless client device
Code poet, espresso fiend, starter upper.
I believe the server you are referring to is actually the "SlimServer5" streaming media server that is provided (for free!) by the same folks that make the Squeezbox CLIENT, which is the newer version of the SliMp3 client device. Yes, it is a very good server. Check here for clarification.
\/\/oobie
You can read about what I did here. It's a headless Pentium 350 running Winamp on top of Windows 98 (yes, really). Winamp plugins let me control it through a web browser and automatically search the network for mp3s. The files are kept on a separate machine with a big hard drive.
I recently added a next-generation user interface device called a 'three-button mouse', but I haven't updated my web page yet. The 3 buttons are 'stop', 'next' and 'play', which is pretty much all I need. On the rare occaision I want to mess with the playlist I use the web interface.
Not the most elegant or advanced solution, but it was all done with stuff that I had already or could download for free and it fit my existing setup with minimal hassle.
whoops, yes, sorry. great program !!
Here's my setup,
amd athalon 1ghx with 256 megs of ram.
via kt133+ chipset
40gig hd to boot from, 120 for media, adding more disks beceause this is full.
(shame) windows xp pro,
all hooked together by a linksys wireless router.
no sound card
no video card
crappy generic network card
all you need to do is mount your network share as a disk, and there you go, just a big slow drive, plenty fast for mp3, I'm listening to them right now. I can watch most of my divx movies over the wireless, svcd playback is choppy.
going with linux and samba would be a better choice than windows. windows seems to need to takeup at least 2 gigs on the disk. The setup has been working great, suprisingley even though it runs windows I only have to reboot it about once every two weeks.proof that a windows server will work if it only has to support one user, and never really do anything.
I love it helps to get all the crap huge files that I had on my laptop over where I can still get them.
Well art is art isn't it, but then again water is water; and east is east; and west is west; and if you take cranberries
I use a bog standard old PC to play my MP3s of a file server (no weird streaming going on) and I'd just like to say this: setup winamp or your choice of graphical media player on the player, configure font size to 20pt or so, and use a monitor to view/modify the playlists and other stuff. It's far better than the wanky headless-with-LCD option a lot of people building this sort of thing go for. Also, get a cheap IR remote control unit like the Hollywood Reelmagic one (about AU$60) and configure it well. sy
I've got an old Dell Celeron 400 running Win2k. I bought it for 50 bucks from a dot-bomb who was liquidating their assets.
I have a 40 GB HD in there and utilize a Creative Labs Extigy (USB 'puter to extigy, optical extigy to stereo).
I have no monitor or keyboard attached, so I use VNC (http://www.realvnc.com) on my 802.11b enabled laptop to control the sound from anywhere in the house.
It is great at parties, because I can just load up a playlist with hours of music, and let it play. Also I leave my Laptop logged in and my guests and use it as a virtual jukebox by adding to the playlist, or jumping around within the existing list.
It's not my fault! It was this way when I got here.
First, I screwed together a P166 with Win98, a TV-out card, and sound...hooked it up to the TV and stereo (using one free input, an RCA cable, one RCA to 3.5mm stereo and a 3.5mm extension) and used it as the TV computer...this lasted about 2 months before my wife got irked and made me clean-up the living room.
Iteration II is the notebook hooked into the stereo...as I replaced my Toshiba Protege 1110CT PII with a 12" iBook, it works pretty well for this...or I just plug the iBook in and let iTunes do the work.
The only problem I have now is iTunes won't install on Win98 (needs WinXP or Win2000) and the T sh ba (it's missing a few letters off the lid) doesn't have enough ram to be upgraded...which may be consideration if you want to use iTunes to share...
I built a mini-ITX system in a cube case with a VIA C3 Nehemiah and a Seagate hard drive. Installed Gentoo, SlimServer, and daapd. Fire up iTunes anywhere on the network, click on the server icon found via Rendezvous, and there's all the music. I avoided the Shuttle systems because their fans are too noisy.
I wrote up the whole process including configuration. I finally got ALSA working this week, but I haven't updated the page with that info yet.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Small, fast, efficient music server. Just plop in a massive hard drive, decent motherboard, etc, and you're good to go. For software, just run an old version of Windows, pop a good streaming music server on (Icecast maybe? Heard good things about it).
I'm in the same spot. Building a house, want some sort of whole house audio. While it's a bit pricey, i'm giong to use two HomePods (hard wired - not wireless). http://store.yahoo.com/gloolabs/homepod1.html The device (if it works right) will search all the computers on my home network for music files and let me play them from the HomePod (Which I am hooking up to an amps and then in-cieling speakers.) For the server, I'm just going to use the oldest computer in my house, tucked in a closet in the basement. Luke
"Just drive down that road, until you get blown up" - General George Patton, about reconnaissance troops
Talk to her lawyers.
I set up a p133 laptop with 32mb ram and it runs windows 98 + winamp2 + aac plugin (I think it was this one) + browseamp. It plays 192kbps AAC files, and all MP3 great. Files get to the machine over mounted network drives, phsyically located on my file server.
I can then log in using my laptop (wifi, also a source of some files) over http and control all aspecs of winamp, including browsing the network shares. I can also VNC in =] Just a note, my network is 11g, and I have not tested it on 11b.
It works wonderfully, though, sometimes the AACs skip when I VNC in, so a faster CPU / more RAM would be great.
It can talk to a number of clients, including a piece of hardware you can buy called Squeezebox.
The Squeezebox runs some onboard software that acts as a client to the Slim Server. It has jacks so it can plug into your audio system, just like a tape deck or cd player. I
This is definitely the correct architecture for this problem.