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Centrally-Controlled Home Music System on a Budget?
akgoatley writes "Recently my technically inept parents bought a new stereo and have expressed a wish to have it connected to a computer for storing large amount of music - a Linux CD jukebox. An example of this would be The Idiot Jukebox, but the solution has to be less complicated than that. I've already written a fairly basic music database in Perl with a web frontend for searching through it from our LAN, and I'm looking for a Linux-based collection of software to run the jukebox. It has to rip CDs when inserted, store them in a directory structure based on the name of the album. Modification of the ID3 tags is not necessary as my database handles that centrally. To complicate matters, it has to be command-line based as I will be SSHing into the jukebox to control it. The solution has to be a simple collection of software that can be easily controlled via SSH. Due to hardware (and budget) constraints the jukebox will be too slow to run X, anyway :( This means programs like Grip will not be usable. What do you Slashdotters out there think? Any good suggestions or pieces of software you would use?"
Are you entirely certain this is a good idea? Aging parents + new technology = unending tech support calls and the increasing likelihood of parricide...
Taadaa!
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I would give SlimServer a try. It is web based but would probably suit your needs. You may also like their hardware since you won't need a direct cable connection between the stereo and the computer.
Funny this story was just posted... I've been trying out a couple of these web frontended jukeboxes the last couple of days. I personally like Tunez! the best because I can setup an icecast stream. The installation was fairly simple.
I've also tried Jukebox (which i found difficult to get going - with a icecast stream) and also tried the Andromeda look-alikes.
You mention : "the jukebox will be too slow to run X"
If you can't get X to run smoothly, how do you expect to encode you CDs ?
I got several of tem when they were on sale, and I've been totally happy with it. They have wifi and ethernet versions, and the best part is that it just worked. I was worried that since I have my music in FLAC format it would be a problem, but their software detected it and just did the right thing. It was super easy to set up.
Want to try it out without buying a device? There are several software projects that can use a regular Linux machine to act as a client. SoftSqueeze, IIRC, is a Java program that accurately emulates the squeezebox.
The hardware devices can be synced together, so they play the same music in sync. That's pretty neat. Or you can unsync them and have different music in different rooms.
I am so happy with the Squeezebox.
Sean
I believe MythTV will rip cd's, has a user friendly menuing system, etc.
while I generally agree, some math shows:
Say 1 CD at 192 is about 100MB
so 500CDs= 500 x 100 MB = 50,000MB so about 50GB, given that you can get a 120GB IDE disk for under $90 easy, I think it is safe to say that ripping 500 CDs is more likely limited by ability to find 500 CDs worth ripping, rather than disk capacity.
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
Just for kicks I made remote control streaming karaoke jukebox. I used WWWinamp by Justin Frankel. Pick a song, add it to the playlist, then watch it here. You'll need winamp to watch the streaming karaoke video. Kinda cool, kinda on topic, kinda free (well windows isn't but that's another slash discussion)
AutoRip http://freshmeat.net/projects/autorip/ should take care of the dropping a disk in and ripping it.
mplay http://freshmeat.net/projects/mplay/ should take care of a text mode front end for mplayer.
Obviously you would need to include Mplayer, which will probably want to include the ability to do video playback. As long as you only include a CD player, and don't introduce your folks to VCD's, you should be alright.
Hey, hope this helps...
-Rusty
You never know...
I play all of my MP3's via my home network and my TiVo. It's painfully easy to setup.
Not enough space?
According to du my ogg directory, containing 600 CDs ripped at the highest quality setting, is taking 49Gb of space.
That's gonna cost you what...100 bucks?
There are many things a CD rack won't do. Like, say, shuffle your collection. Or let you create playlists off of a large number of CDs. Or start the stereo from an ssh session in another room.
I've been playing all my music off of a harddrive for years. It's hardly impracticle. I used to have a pile of CDs cluttering up my desk. I used to have to worry about CDs getting scratched. I used to have to work to keep the CDs sorted.
No longer.
The cake is a pie
Check out a tool called abcde. It's a shell script frontend that rips and encodes all in one shot. It supports various formats, makes directories based on a predefined set of variables that you can set up as you wish and many other lovely features. It's completely command line based and, of course, GPL'd.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
you want a solution? hell, i'm having trouble understanding your question!
He basically wants a music server, and he apparently wants it to be as complicated as possible, and he wants to run it on an 8088.
This isn't the first time the music server question has come up here, and the questioners always seem to want to make it as hard on themselves as possible. They want a text-based interface, they want to be able to rip and burn, they want Linux, and they want to do it all on a hacked HP calculator or something.
I've got a media server that I cobbled together out of old spare parts, combined with a new hard drive and a new case. Whole thing cost me about $200 for the new parts and I've got a reasonably nice machine that hosts my music, movies, and photos. I have it set to auto-logon to Windows XP (with a username and password) and then launch iTunes and Media Portal (an OSS media center clone) with a girder plugin for my remote control. Then I've got a bunch of options. I can access that PC directly through my TV using Media Portal and play music with my remote control. I can carry my laptop anywhere in the house and control that PC through Windows' own remote desktop connection. Or I can use it as a real music server and stream music through iTunes over my wireless LAN, playing it on my laptop or whatever else I'm using.
iTunes will also rip and burn, which was another listed requirement.
My advice to anyone who wants to do this - build or buy a cheap, mostly second-hand PC. Along with whatever new hardware you buy, pick up an OEM copy of Windows XP for cheap at a site like Newegg.com. Install iTunes, install Media Portal, put them both in your startup folder. Import all your music into both apps and enjoy.
Very simple and very powerful. Not expensive either.
It's been out for about 4-5 years, and has received good reviews.
I've coded ASP and PHP versions, and it works on Windows, Unix, and Mac OS X boxes.
Basically, you just drag in the one script file, and it turns your folders of MP3s into a complete streaming site -- whenever you add new files, the site is always automatically up-to-date.
You can use it over your LAN, or (bandwidth permitting) over the Internet.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
"Any good suggestions...?"
1. Move out of your parents basement. Sure, the rent is cheap, but you will pay for it in free tech support.
2. Get a real job, then you can tell them you are too busy.
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.