Build your own wireless music player

If you're not quite up to springing for an Airport Express or a Squeezebox to wirelessly send your tunes across the house, Nathan True has a guide for how to build your music player on the cheap complete with display and large rubber band. He's based the system around a Netgear WGT634U router running OpenWrt Linux, which gave him a USB 2.0 port to add an audio adapter, and plenty of wired and wireless connectivity to get his music from his PC. There are a few hardware hacks involved, but he gets most of the system running from a few shell scripts and, well, one expertly place rubber band.

[John Riney @ Feb 17th 2006 10:54AM]

Neat! I just got done putting together a similar system, except mine's built around a Linksys NSLU, has a 200GB hard drive for tune storage, and uses a PDA as a remote control. Mine's eventually going in my car, once I get a power supply rigged up.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/32995839@N00/100355312/

--riney

[quiznos4life @ Feb 17th 2006 11:04AM]

I love that song

[teddyn @ Feb 17th 2006 11:14AM]

Holy Lord Jesus.
You people are psycopathic.

[Mark @ Feb 17th 2006 12:23PM]

I think this guy is a design engineer for Creative...

[tracy @ Feb 17th 2006 12:27PM]

man i love this kind of stuff, buy cheap stuff off ebay, build crazy frankenstien devices, invent invent invent. i think this kind of creativity is one of the greatest things out there right now. makezine.com, hackaday.com, anybody got some other great sources for this kind of basement/garage madness? corporate america can go bite my shiny metal ass.

[rektide @ Feb 17th 2006 12:52PM]

Ugg, hideous!!! Get a damned Vaccum Florescent Display at least, Matrix Orbital has some nice ones. Of course, at $50 on ebay, the WGT is half the price. Personally I just run display-less.

I've got five of thse WGT's, they're truly delightful units. You need a 3.3v serial port to flash them with new bios, I used the 3.3v serial coming off my Linksys WRT54GS, ironically. Many cell phone cables are just USB 3.3v serial widgets.

The big downside of the WGT is the USB2.0 port is entirely completely unpowered. So you need two massive wall warts, one for the WGT and one for the usb hub. Past that, USB audio works great. The other downside is that these things have crappy DMA, I can only sustain about 1.8MBps copying from my USB hard drive to the ethernet port. DMA like this is really inexcusably bad. Still, its enough for movies and music, just dont tax it.

You also need a way to control the music player. I'd suggest an ATI Remote Wonder. Its unncessarily huge and the directional pad is an extremely dumb 8 direction non-analog deal, but it works and its RF. I'm looking for better for cheap still. Getting it scripted sanely into software is still a massive hack job. Also, the Griffin PowerMate is a _delightful_ knob+button interface, truly wonderous.

For music playing, you can use a USB audio sound card. I've got a couple 8 channel output C-Media's. I'm looking for something USB based off of the Via Envy24 chipset series, but havent found aynthing. (MAudio uses this chipset for many of their cards). For playing, MPD is packaged for OpenWrt, but its pretty simplistic and has been waiting for a playlist rewrite for ages (and doesnt look like it'll be that good anywho).

Nice speakers. BoomTube rocks. Battery powered too!

[BRYAN @ Feb 17th 2006 12:54PM]

I love the Woot! speakers in the picture.

[rektide @ Feb 17th 2006 1:02PM]

They're not Woot speakers you clod, that little red logo on them is the Virgin logo. =] products page

When did they start making Sony Fanboys?
Just joshin ya, no sweat mate. ;-]

[rektide @ Feb 17th 2006 1:03PM]

They're not Woot speakers you clod, that little red logo on them is the Virgin logo. =] products page

When did they start making Sony Fanboys?
Just joshin ya, no sweat mate. ;-]

P.s.: they really do go to 11.

[BRYAN @ Feb 17th 2006 1:24PM]

Clod? I think I have been called worse. On the right side of your screen, there is a green logo that says Woot!. Click on it. It is the coolest website. They sell those Virgin Speakers pretty frequently.

[ryan @ Feb 17th 2006 1:24PM]

All American Rejects is playing cool.

[ryan @ Feb 17th 2006 1:25PM]

The All American Rejects are playing cool.

[tracy @ Feb 17th 2006 1:33PM]

#5 rektide
i have that router and the usb port is powered, i havnt whipped out a meter to see how much, but it does power a flashdrive i use for ftp storage. otherwise, thanks for the other info.

[Finished.Law.School @ Feb 17th 2006 3:30PM]

The RIAA is going to sue the fuck out of you for making this.

[Echo_ @ Feb 17th 2006 8:07PM]

why would the riaa sue you consider there are commercial products of this made?

maybe you need to re-Finish Law School because there is no law against playing music on your own speakers

[M @ Feb 17th 2006 10:53PM]

This has been done before. It's called the NETGEAR MP101.

http://www.netgear.com/products/details/MP101.php

[Network @ Feb 27th 2006 7:28PM]

usb port for audio adapter it's very good. digital sound :)

[RobHardwick @ May 8th 2007 2:30PM]

I have also made my own Wireless Music streamer using a similar method but mine is remote controlled. http://www.robhardwick.co.uk