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?"

Comments

Servers?

[woobieman29]

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?

I attempted it

[bulldog2260]

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.

Avoid Wireless if you can

[wolf-]

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.

The other side of the equation

[PurpleFloyd]

The server side is easy - all you need is a vaugely recent box (a PII is almost overkill) with lots of drives and a network connection (802.11x, since you specify wireless). Pick SMB, NFS or FTP to serve files; I use SMB because it works well with both Windows and Linux, but you are free to choose whatever you wish.

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.