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Hardware

DIY Ethernet Audio Receiver 229

Posted by michael from the fly-by-wire dept.
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."
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DIY Ethernet Audio Receiver More

DIY Ethernet Audio Receiver

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  • Slashdotted (Score:4, Funny)

    by vjmurphy ( 190266 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2003 @10:56AM (#5039729) Homepage
    "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.

    • Re:Slashdotted (Score:5, Informative)

      by zerocool^ ( 112121 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2003 @11:38AM (#5040000) Homepage Journal

      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 [netmar.com]
      • Server Version: Apache/1.3.27 Ben-SSL/1.48 (Unix) mod_perl/1.27 PHP/4.2.3 ApacheJServ/1.1.2
        Server Built: Nov 1 2002 02:25:45

        Current Time: Wednesday, 08-Jan-2003 10:47:54 EST
        Restart Time: Wednesday, 08-Jan-2003 10:44:25 EST
        Parent Server Generation: 0
        Server uptime: 3 minutes 29 seconds
        Total accesses: 3729 - Total Traffic: 26.0 MB
        CPU Usage: u14.56 s2.98 cu.27 cs.31 - 8.67% CPU load
        17.8 requests/sec - 127.2 kB/second - 7.1 kB/request
        153 requests currently being processed, 33 idle servers
      • Uh... be sure you restart apache after changing the config file.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2003 @10:59AM (#5039753)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Pseudo Mirroring? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Flamesplash ( 469287 )
      There have been a number of discussions about /. /.ing sites that simply can't handle it. And whether /. should courtiously mirror the site.

      After seeing this post at the top, what if the /. 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.

      • Interesting thought, however in these days of huge law suits, has anyone considered the legal implications of just replicating a web site wholesale without your permision.

        Even though the site is in the public domain, the author will still own the copywrite on the material. If you are making an income by duplicating his/her work then they should be entitied to a share of that income. In the case of slashdot, as the site is run as a buiness now, anybody who had their work duplicated by slashdot without permision might try to sue for adverstiving revenue gained on pages that displayed the content.

        Yes you can replicate small sections for "fair use" and reporting purposes, but replicateing the whole site or any significant portion of it is probably dodgy

        This isn't a comment on the rights and wrongs of copyright law and the law suit crazy world we live in - just an observation ;)

        • How do google get away with caching then? Not a flame, but a valid question.
        • Makes you wonder what Google did concerning this and the Google Cache.
        • Even though the site is in the public domain, the author will still own the copywrite on the material.

          Ummm...you don't understand how copyright works. If something is in the public domain, then nobody owns copyright on it. If somebody does own copryright on the material, then the material is NOT in the public domain. The concepts are mutually exclusive. Either someone owns copyright, OR it's in the public domain. It can't be both...that's like saying "even though program is platform independent, it only runs on Wintel."

        • I think a good case could be made that if a site has a /robots.txt file and that file allowed an automated "SlashBot," then the slashdot could/should create a mirror.

  • PPOE (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 08, 2003 @11:03AM (#5039778)
    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.

    • To do power over Ethernet you need to be connected to a switch that supports it. Not many do and they aren't cheap. Since this device has to be connected to your audio equipment for output you will obviously have power available so why bother?

  • Cool but not.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2003 @11:05AM (#5039787) Homepage
    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.

    • Re:Cool but not.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nehril ( 115874 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2003 @11:33AM (#5039968)
      totally dude. I mean... why spend $100 for networked audio when you could buy a $300 audiotron that does the same thing?

      and you're right on about it not being open source. Until I can download the actual hardware for free, I'm sticking with my trusty Audiotron distro.

      • Even better, spend $20 on an old Mac 6100. I have 4 of em, some running Linux, some running MacOS. Even found a guy selling AUI ethernet transcievers on ebay for dirt cheap. Add a set of computer speakers or hook up to your stereo. The A/V model has Svideo out too!
      • $100 in parts is a $400 product.
        -russ
      • Try something called EBay. I got mine for $180. YMMV.

        http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?cgiurl= ht tp%3A%2F%2Fcgi.ebay.com%2Fws%2F&krd=1&from=R8&MfcI SAPICommand=GetResult&ht=1&SortProperty=MetaEndSor t&query=audiotron

      • how you got +5 insightful I have no idea...

        you obviousally dont know jack and never soldered a fpga to a board. how about made your own 2 sided Pc board? where was his link to the board layout? the FPGA sourcecode?

        it will cost you at LEAST another $100.00 just to build it and then it's just a bare piece of circuitboard with parts on it...

        where's it's LCD? oh wait buy that too....

        It will cost more than the $250.00 that an audiotron costs if you buy it from someplace that isn't gouging on price like thinkgeek. and if you dont like that price get a rio reciever from ebay for $100.00

        please, let me know when you have something smart to say... because I have yet to hear it.
        • You're right about a few things:

          There were no schematics.
          There were no gerbers.
          There was no FPGA sourcecode.
          There was no driver sourcecode.

          In fact, there was NOTHING there other than pictures.

          My guess is that he was feeling to see if there's a market, and then if not, releasing everything. Personally I would've rather he released everything, THEN submitted it to Slashdot, rather than using Slashdot to feel for a market.

          As for the actual cost of building it: it'll be under $100. The PCB is $26 from the vendor he got it from. The Xilinx FPGA is $14, and the rest of the parts probably total about $30, at best. LCD screens would be easy to add on, and they cost basically nothing ($20 or so). You could even add an infrared remote if you felt like it pretty easily. (be about $20 or so for the HSDL-1001 & 7001 pair, and then need to implement a UART).

          If you can do the work, and put in the time, you can easily make it for far less than $250, and far less than $150, as well, with basically any features you want.
      • 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?

    • Yes, it's cool, and I'd like to build one.

      Right now, I'm interested in the construction. I have a project going right now that uses a lot of surface-mount parts (robotic pan-tilt webcam mount, with a Motorola USB microcontroller and integrated USB hub). I had a few boards made, but the tough part is getting those flat-pack devices soldered down. No access to hot-air soldering equipment, so I do it with a fine-tip soldering iron (which is way too big) and a magnifier. I've heard rumors of solder paste and toaster ovens.

      Unless he has access to hot-air soldering equipment, the construction cost was probably a bit more than $100. Especially with that etched, drilled, plated, silk-screened, and solder-masked circuit board.

      Soldering these things really slows me down, I want to have this project done so I can show it off at interviews, and control/view it through my cell phone.
      • Soldering flat pack devices is a bit of a pain, but there are a few tricks that you can use to get it to work. The solder paste/toaster oven trick is a poor man's reflow oven, and I wouldn't recommend it, as especially with flat packs, you'll have as much problems getting the thing registered correctly as you would with a fine tip soldering iron.

        Best way to do this is lots of solder, and lots of flux. You can cheat as well if you want - get it registered correctly (do the middles of each side) and then literally bathe each side in solder. Don't worry about bridging - you just want every joint made. Then go back with solder wick and very carefully remove the solder inbetween the pins. It's crufty, and you need to be a bit careful, but it is very quick and it does work.

        BTW, circuit boards are cheap through the right vendors. CustomPCB for instance is $50 for a single-layer solder-masked circuit board (4 of them, to be specific) and Olimex (who I've never gone through) is even cheaper - $26 for double-layer with soldermask & silk.
        • ... and what do you know, he did go through Olimex for the PCBs. OK, so apparently they don't suck. $26 for double-layer soldermask and silk is completely insane. Granted it doesn't include shipping, but who cares? It's practically free.
          • Ummm...yeah, that is totally insane.

            Considering I recently paid about $25 each for unscreened, unmasked boards from ExpressPCB, and that was a "buy three tiny boards for one low price" deal.

            Olimex's site is pretty crappy, but the guy'd board doesn't look too bad. That $26 board is 6"x4" and my other boards were limited to 3.8" x 2.5".
      • I think you missed the point. He bought a commercial, off the shelf FPGA board from xilinx. Didn't have to solder very much!
        • Nope, not unless he works for Xilinx, as his name is silkscreened on the board. He bought the FPGA from Xilinx, had the board made at a cheap board house (the cheapest, from what I've seen... though they don't look that bad), and soldered them himself.
    • 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 [cypressmicro.com]. This project was meant as a fun learning exercise. Analyzing the BOM in terms of a production-quantity retail product is unfair.

  • Very slick.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Garion911 ( 10618 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2003 @11:06AM (#5039797) Homepage
    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

  • Related to NCD's NAS? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by forged ( 206127 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2003 @11:09AM (#5039814) Homepage Journal
    Network Audio System has been around for as long as I remember.. Some pretty good pages here [www.ice.ru] and here [gatech.edu]. In the case of NAS the hardware decoder is in the workstation.
    • Yeah, but workstations are 1) loud 2) big 3) don't nicely fit into the typical livingroom stereo setup.
      • The NCD workstations I used were actually very quiet (no fan or moving parts), reasonably small (standard 15" black-and-white CRT) and can always be setup so that they don't intrude too much in the foreground... And they run X11 so you basically get an extension of your Linux desktop.

        I have unfortunately dumped the last 2-3 I had, since space is getting scarce around the house. So I can see the point of shrinking the decoder down to a simple hardware box like the original poster has done. Kudos !

  • Pretty cool (Score:5, Interesting)

    by URSpider ( 242674 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2003 @11:10AM (#5039823) Homepage
    This is a pretty elegant solution for how to get your MP3 collection from your computer to your stereo(s). Think about it -- you can have your own radio station at your house. Add a wireless uplink, and you can carry it around with you. All for only $100! Made into a commercial product with an ASIC instead of an FPGA, you could probably put it on the commercial market for well under $200.


    Slashdotters, before you slam this thing, please consider the following facts:

    • not everyone has a spare PC or two lying around the house
    • some people DON'T have their PC sitting in the middle of their family room, right next to the stereo.
    • people value elegance

    • Re:Pretty cool (Score:5, Interesting)

      by lfourrier ( 209630 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2003 @12:00PM (#5040155)
      Add a wireless uplink, and you can carry it around with you

      If the geek value is not the main point, you can hook a small FM transmitter to your sound card and use standard FM receiver all around the house.
      I'm quite sure that with sufficiently low power, it can be used unlicenced all over the world(check your local legislation).

      It is not high-tech, but it could do the job for cheap, reusing existing infrastructure (the stereo). And if your Os can manage many souncards, you can transmit using different frequencies, for different music programs.
      • I'd have to check the legistation, but I think as long as your under a watt, you'll be safe... Also, before you set something like this up, goto your FM radio and go through the dial and find a frequency that's out of range. This will minimize the chances of the FCC showing up with a triangulation van...
    • Slashdotters, before you slam this thing, please consider the following facts:

      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.

      • > 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 originally wrote:

          > 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.

    • This looks great. There was a similar project a while ago (can't find the link now) where the creators were trying to make a go of it commercially. Maybe 500 units, or something? Anyone else remember?

      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.
    • Instead of thinking of something like this as a $200-300 box, imagine it as an option on your next receiver or dvd/mp3/cd player... For example, a dvd/cd player already has the DAC & digital outputs. How much would the parts required to add ethernet or wireless ethernet add? With the cost amortized over a few hundred thousand units, the next version might require $2 in parts.

  • The DMCA will make projects like this harder (Score:3, Interesting)

    by karmawarrior ( 311177 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2003 @11:26AM (#5039922) Journal
    This project is a demonstration of the value of open technologies, hardware, and standards. Ogg, MP3 (patents aside), Ethernet and TCP/IP, are all open and well documented technologies. There's nothing in the CPU the creator proposes that's been crippled to prevent "unauthorized" use. Even MP3 which is encumbered by patents is documented and anyone may use it for any (legal) purpose they wish, although in a limited number of commercial cases, they may have to pay a small royalty. It's no big deal.

    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 [house.gov] or senator [senate.gov]. Write also to the Jack Valenti [mpaa.org], the CEO and chair of the MPAA, whose address and telephone number can be found at the About the MPAA page [mpaa.org]. Write too to Bill Gates [mailto], 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.

    • Posted before (Score:3, Insightful)

      by infolib ( 618234 )
      This is the 2nd time karmawarrior posts this [slashdot.org]

      The last part about "getting off your rear" has been used numerous times in his comments.

      Not a stupid opinion, just troll.
      • That's great. Now, answer me this: What the hell do you think the solution is to keeping these technologies open while a clearly hostile law like the DMCA is on the books?

        Or do you feel technologies shouldn't be open? That the problems with keeping copyrighted material protected are such that it's legitimate to cripple all future technologies to save them? If so, why do you feel this way?

        I made some important points which I believe to be entirely valid and very critical at this point. I also suggested the only obvious solution. Are you so blinded by the style as to ignore the content?

        • What the hell do you think the solution is to keeping these technologies open while a clearly hostile law like the DMCA is on the books?

          Oh yeah, now I see, you were right all along:

          You can help by...writing to your congressman...Let them know that SMP may make or break whether you can efficiently deploy OpenBSD on your workstations and servers.

          Yeah, that's what I oughta do. That'll surely teach'em. On the other hand they might just think I'm trolling...
        • Your article is the slashdot equivalent of a horoscope.

          It seems to be working for you though, what a wonderful moderation system.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • you SHOULD be writing to these people.

          Yeah, but about openBSD SMP? I don't think so.

          Btw, i have been talking to my legislators on the danish DMCA. Face to face. In a scheduled meeting. What have you done?
  • I recently attended a demo of the IBM/HomeDirector "AudioPoint" device AudioPoint [homedirector.com] 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 [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?

  • Sorry about the slashdotting. (Score:4, Informative)

    by zerocool^ ( 112121 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2003 @11:35AM (#5039980) Homepage Journal
    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 [netmar.com]

  • Heard of SLIMP3? (Score:5, Informative)

    by infolib ( 618234 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2003 @11:38AM (#5040002)
    About the same thing. [slimdevices.com]

    Remote controlled, streams over Ethernet, GPL'd software [sourceforge.net] (Linux, Win, Mac)

    250$ - a bit expensive, but I bet the price will come down...
    • A friend of mine just got one of those for Christmas...way cool. I wish the display were a bit bigger, but other than that it is awesome. Set-up was a breeze...plugged the slimp3 into the network, launched the server on one of his machines...pressed play...that was it. No network config necessary. He's now considering wiring the rest of the house for these and picking up another half dozen or so. And the coolest part, at least on OS X, is it uses ITunes' playlists.

      A wi-fi version would be nice though.
    • I just updated the web site minutes ago: MacWorld show special: $239 with free ground shipping!! [slimdevices.com]

  • cost prohibitive (Score:2, Interesting)

    by NynexNinja ( 379583 )
    The Xilinx Spartan II FPGA board alone costs $450 bux. For that price, you can just buy a full blown computer.

  • where's the vhdl? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by waldo2020 ( 592242 )
    you promised that this would be of interest to hardware types... where's the source vhdl? Where's the source for the custom cpu?? If you really want to hang on to that and make a product out of it to sell, don't use slash. as free advertising, thanks h

  • Somewhat limited, but limitations can be overcome. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stienman ( 51024 ) <adavis&ubasics,com> on Wednesday January 08, 2003 @11:59AM (#5040151) Homepage Journal
    The only thing I don't like about it is that there is no compression. A full stereo stream takes about 1.7Mbits/second, or 1/6 of a 10BaseT. Since he's using the crystral chip, it doesn't go to 100baseT.

    A quick fix is to use a switch or router instead of a hub ( which a good portion of people do now anyway), with the server on a 100baseT link.

    Before making this commercial, though, I'd do three more things: Put the MAC on the FPGA, one for 100baseT, put a simple lossless decompressor in the FPGA, and provide for different bit rates and resolutions. This would raise the cost of the FPGA a little bit for more gates, but would remove the need for the MAC, and lighten the load of the network considerably.

    My wishlist would include an audio in. This would enable one to use them as intercoms, speakerphones, etc. Lastly would be an IR interface, both in and out. Control components from the computer, and control the whole system from a remote, including all of your components.

    The MAC, and decompressor could use simple (and freely available) fpga code. The audio in would simply be the reverse of audio out (require a ADC) with a compressor and FIFO. Definable bit rates would require new code, but shouldn't be too onerous. IR interface would be trivial.

    If you put the FPGA on one side of the board, and the memory, rom, power, etc on the other side in smaller form facters with the connectors you could make this as small as an MP3 player. Use a larger FPGA and get rid of the memory, use a teeny serial eeprom for the ROM, and the entire thing would be very tiny indeed.

    There's just the small problem of doing the work required.

    But I'd buy one if the extra FPGA pins were brought to a header, and a socketted FPGA (so I could replace it with a more powerful one when I run out of room) were fitted. I wouldn't want to pay more than $150 for it though, since I can get essentially the same thing from XESS [xess.com] for about that much.

    Cool project!

    -Adam
  • Other than the potential for multicasting to multiple recievers (but if you have the money for multiple recievers you can probably afford to wire your whole house w/ speakers into one central reciever), how is this advantageous to just running a cable from your soundcard's output to an input on your reciever? I guess I see an advantage in using your existing household lan infrastructure, as opposed to running additional cable, but is that the only advantage? Will running long lengths of audio cable degrade the audio signal? It is really great that he had the skill to do this- it just appears to me that he was reinventing the wheel.
    • Will running long lengths of audio cable degrade the audio signal?

      In a word, yes.

      You'd also have to be careful to not run any audio cables in parallel with power cable.

  • Music Server in Knoppix Style Boot CD OS? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by npendleton ( 255215 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2003 @12:07PM (#5040197)
    Lan Pipe is cool, but what about a simple to use Music Server?
    Someone please tweak Knoppix boot CD OS [knopper.net] 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 [x10.com] and relevant plug in. [sourceforge.net] Also use a webinterface to control the sound card on the server via Xmms command line tool [sourceforge.net] and Web Control interface [joethielen.com]

    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 [ramseyelectronics.com] solution, or that $189 FM [netplayradio.com] solution.

    First person to say "Knoppix" on slashdot? [slashdot.org]
    Mac Refugee, Paper MCSE, Linux wanna be
    • "...what about a simple to use Music Server?...FM Broadcast is MUCH cheaper."

      There are several reasons against both of those solutions, which may or may not outweigh the advantages you've listed above.

      For the Music Server (computer):
      • Noise
      • Heat
      • Size
      • Maintainability
      • Security

      For the FM Transmitter:
      • Audio quality (nowhere near CD quality)
      • Tuning drift or expensive transmitter(s) and receiver(s)
      • Requires one transmitter per stream versus a computer on a network which can serve multiple simultaneous streams
      • Security - your neighbors can receive said signals, which limits usefulness to non-personally identifiable streams (ie, intercom and other uses), or RIAA could sit outside and check the music you're transmitting against your credit card purchases, or even slap you with illegal broadcasting of copyright material, etc, etc.

      Obviously there are good reasons to use either of the two solutions above (notably- you might already have an extra computer lying around doing nothing, and no need to wire if a network is not present).

      -Adam

  • Very Cool Project (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SloWave ( 52801 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2003 @12:09PM (#5040209) Journal
    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?

  • Similar OpenSource project (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Danta ( 2241 )
    MP3elf [mp3elf.net] is the same, just better (more features), fully open-source and has existed for over a year.

  • FM is cheaper! (Score:3, Informative)

    by npendleton ( 255215 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2003 @12:24PM (#5040295)
    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 [ramseyelectronics.com] solution, or that
    $189 FM [netplayradio.com] solution.

    First person to say "Knoppix" on slashdot? [slashdot.org]
    Mac Refugee, Paper MCSE, Linux wanna be
  • 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. =)

  • 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.

  • This is lame (Score:3)

    by LS ( 57954 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2003 @05:34PM (#5042998) Homepage
    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

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