1.9.2.7 Audio features

[Antiloop]

Ì don't need audio shit as well, the only thing I COULD MAYBE find interesting for audio was if it supported shoutcast streams.. e.g. I enter up a Shoutcast address in websetup so the device starts streaming it from the internet/intranet to the speakers

at this moment when I need such feature I use my Asus A716 Pda to do the same, but antenna from WL500g is better..

[eludias]

Speakers of 2W directly attached to the ASUS are pretty useless. I couldn't find any here in the list of 'supported speakers'. Not that I found for example the 'ASUS Speakers', but still...)

However, has anyone succes with a USB audio card attached to the router? This would be useful to play mp3s to the stereo.

Problems:
- Which USB audio card is supported?
Linux 2.4.20 'make menuconfig' only supports the EMI 2|6 USB audio card if I'm correct. Compiling ALSA for 2.4.20 might work?
- Is the ASUS (500g) powerful enough for mp3 playing? Or do I need the 500gs? Or should I forget it? 'madplay' doesn't require a FPU and should be optimized for cases like this...

[benlau]

Speakers of 2W directly attached to the ASUS are pretty useless. I couldn't find any here in the list of 'supported speakers'. Not that I found for example the 'ASUS Speakers', but still...)

However, has anyone succes with a USB audio card attached to the router? This would be useful to play mp3s to the stereo.

Problems:
- Which USB audio card is supported?
Linux 2.4.20 'make menuconfig' only supports the EMI 2|6 USB audio card if I'm correct. Compiling ALSA for 2.4.20 might work?
- Is the ASUS (500g) powerful enough for mp3 playing? Or do I need the 500gs? Or should I forget it? 'madplay' doesn't require a FPU and should be optimized for cases like this...

I just played with a wl500g box. Unfortunately that I couldn't use it original waveserver to play mp3. The media player report that "DEVICE not found".
The AP is connected directly to the second lan card on the windows desktop. I am not sure is the cause of problem. And I found no way to specific the IP address of my box..

Therefore I compiled a madplay by myself. It seem that it is quite smooth to run on this box(if i remove unwanted applications). Here is the output of "top"

Mem: 12256K used, 1892K free, 0K shrd, 1232K buff, 6228K cached
Load average: 0.61, 0.24, 0.10 (State: S=sleeping R=running, W=waiting)

PID USER STATUS RSS PPID %CPU %MEM COMMAND
497 admin R 352 496 58.1 2.4 madplay
491 admin S 536 472 3.0 3.7 slimp3slave
498 admin R 412 465 2.1 2.9 top
471 admin S 412 464 1.7 2.9 top
40 admin S 320 1 0.7 2.2 telnetd
1 admin S 684 0 0.0 4.8 init

[..removed..]

On the same time, I have compiled a program called slimp3slave client that able to communicate with a SlimServer. That is a MP3 streaming server that work on Linux/Windows/Max OS X and even Solaris.

[The Dude]

Welll I´m using the Sony CAV-U5 USB Digital converter to connect the WL 500g to my optical stereo port and it works fine to me!
One problem is that ASUS made the speaker tool for WMP only, so I'm waiting for an iTunes plug in... or are there some plug-ins already.

Thx.

[Alfredo Traps]

Using an usb-audio adapter on the wl-500g with my stereo, turns my notebook into a jukebox.
A really nice feature!

[xopr]

(Updated, enables it to use paths in the URL)

Someday I'm gonna use the usb sound module as a voIP addon.

Until that day, it sounds good to hear a shoutcast stream.
I used benlau's madplay, and eludias' netcat binaries
To get everything together, I made a script which eases the use of enabling a webstream.

'stream' script

#!/bin/sh
#STREAM V1.1
#POINT TO THE PATH WHERE YOUR MADPLAY AND NETCAT BINARIES ARE
BINPATH=/tmp/harddisk/tmp

case "$1" in
"start")
echo -n "Starting stream.. "
if [ -z $4 ]; then
 WEBPATH=/
else
 WEBPATH=$4
fi
echo -e "GET $WEBPATH HTTP/1.0\nHost: $2\nUser-Agent: WinampMPEG/2.9\nAccept: */*\nIcy-MetaData:0\nConnection: close\n\n" | $BINPATH/netcat-0.7.1 $2 $3 | $BINPATH/madplay -i -Q -o /dev/sound/dsp - & 2>&1 > /dev/null
echo "Done"
;;
"stop")
echo -n "stopping stuff.. "
killall -q -9 netcat-0.7.1 madplay 2>&1 >/dev/null
echo "Done"
;;
*)
echo -e "Usage:\t$0 start host.tld port path\n\t$0 stop"
;;
esac

Madplay gives some sync errors, but I ignore everything by redirecting all output to /dev/null

To use the script you just adapted, put somewhere and made it executable, just type ./stream start radio.bmj.net 8000
I made a second script for the http daemon which runs the above command, but unfortunately, it doesn't output any html data (yet), because the script seems to wait for user input.

[palbeda]

Just to report that MADPLAY works fine with the Sitecom CN-126 USB 5.1 audio adaptor on my WL500G. It will not work with the standard ASUS WMP streaming features, seems to be strictly limited to ASUS USB boxes.

The earlier posted version SMIXER works well to control in- and outputs, but for some reason does not seem to notice that "Mic" and "Line in" can be used as recording inputs. But I have the same problem with the webcam (Philips).

Shoutcast streaming from the WL500G is something I would really like.

Peter

[xopr]

@palbeda
To play a shoutcast station at your router, you could use the script I posted previously

To stream your MP3 through your router (make a shoutcast server), you may want to look at AMPLE, but I don't know enough about compiling.

[xopr]

I received a list of shoutcast servers and thought: "it would come in handy if I have a webpage where I can choose which station I want to listen."
So I made another script some of you might be interested in.
Just put this file into your cgi-bin directory of your secondary webserver and browse to the name of this script.

There's still only one problem: if I start a stream, there won't be any page output.
Maybe someone has a solution for this.

#!/bin/sh
# WEBRADIO SCRIPT V1.1
echo "Content-type: text/html;"
echo

# SERVER FILE FORMAT:
# <host> <port> <url_path> <description of station with spaces allowed>
SERVERFILE=stations

# EXTRACT PARAMETER, IF PRESENT
# THIS CAN BE script?param=value&param2=value2...
# OR CAN BE   script/param=value&param2=value2...
ESC_SCRIPT_NAME=`echo $SCRIPT_NAME | sed -r 's/\//\\\\\//g'`
PARAM=`echo $REQUEST_URI | sed -e "s/$ESC_SCRIPT_NAME.//g"`

if [ "$SCRIPT_NAME" != "$REQUEST_URI" ]; then
 # MAKE VARIABLES OUT OF THE PARAMETER
 `echo -e export "$PARAM" | sed -e "s/&/\nexport /g"`

 # NO HOST GIVEN, PROBABLY WANTS TO STOP THE STREAM
 if [ -z "$host" ]; then
  ./stream stop
  exit 0;
 fi

 # STARTING STREAM, USES THE STREAM SCRIPT
 ./stream stop > /dev/null
 ./stream start $host $port $urlpath
else
 # DEFAULT: NO PARAMS GIVEN
 # PRINT THE SERVER LIST
 cat $SERVERFILE | sed -r "s/([^ ]*) ([^ ]*) ([^ ]+) (.*)/< a. h.r.e.f.=\"$ESC_SCRIPT_NAME?host=\1\&port=\2\&urlpath=\3\">\1:\2\3 \"\4\"<\/a><br \/>\n/g"
fi

Also, it is likely, you have to kill the waveserver and waveservermain processes, otherwise you can't access your soundblaster device

Update:
I improved the script a little to play streams which contain paths in their url (Like Digitally Imported does: 64.236.34.67 80 /stream/1017 DI DJ mixes 96k)
You have to use the updated stream script posted earlier.
To show an example stations file:

radio.bmj.net 8000 / Bash.org radio (trance)
rs1.radiostreamer.com / 8370 70's
classical.music4free.no-ip.org 8000 / Classic
radioprank.com 8000 / Comic
www.media4fun.com 8004 / Music Hq
native.screaminghost.com 8010 / Mixed
64.236.34.67 80 /stream/1017 DI DJ mixes 96k
  / Stop stream

[pete]

Well, I'm wonder if someone here uses new Audio "features" added with the 1.9.2.7 firmware. Do we need this?

Well, I do have an interest in that.
I'm searching to implement a sort of radio over lan system at home.
It needs to be simple and cheap; This rules out the use of a PDA.
The wl500g is a "low cost" thing and I've got a 15€ USB sound card which goes well with it.

For this project I don't think I'll need the WLan interface, nor the routing capabilities.But anyway Imagine a portable wireless Ethernet radio!! :

What I would like to find is the source code of that waveserver and waveservermain deamons running on the 1.9.4.7 custom firmware. I haven't found them in the source package yet!

Anyway I've done some sniffing while playing audio and it doesn't seem to be too hard but I would like to know what exactly these 2 deamons are doing.

What I would like to do is to stream audio from another machine (mp3 server, radio capture card,...) to different boxes located in my house.

So you see that yes there are guys interested in using the audio feature on the wl500g.

[Graldensblud]

I bought the router specifically for the audio option. In a domestic setup its cool. I can wirelessly use my laptop anywhere in my room, whilst still being able to play music from my proper speaker system.

I will just add that Maplin's cheapo £12.99 usb-to-audio dongle works perfectly with this (added to compatability list). Easy.

[Hydra]

I think this is a really great idea.

My main PC has two uses (for audio at least, it does lot of other things too):

1) Playing Music
2) Playing On-Line Games that need stereo headset + mic

Now, you might think I'm lazy, but I really hate having to switch from using the headphones+mic back to my amp. Given a decent USB Audio device I would be able to hook up both my headphones + mic + music, all at the same time and never have to change cables again!

Combine that with a plugin for winamp that lets you control the playlist from a wireless pocket pc (last time i checked there were some webbrowser plugins for winamp too) and I can control the music from my pocket pc in it's crade *while* i'm playing a game

[SocoNaTromba]

Ì don't need audio shit as well, the only thing I COULD MAYBE find interesting for audio was if it supported shoutcast streams.. e.g. I enter up a Shoutcast address in websetup so the device starts streaming it from the internet/intranet to the speakers

I totally agree!


I hate those all-in-one things wich has nothing to do between them ... it is just a marketing technique...
I would prefer so much to see full support with bluetooth dongles... fitting in a firmware for internal router memory without any data storage device connected.
And how 'bout a Radius server?
But any thing related to network tools is fine for me. think about that on next firmware releases, you custom developers... so far I'm loving the hard work seen on this forum.


____________
Oleg's firmware's fan.

[Reflex]

Hi!

I will try to use the audio feature on a wl-hdd with a usb2audio convertor (already ordered in ebay). The wl-hdd will connect to my car hifi system, controlled via wlan pocketpc (mda compact).

c ya
Reflex

[rmdijkman]

I bought a USB harddisk and USB2Audio convertor and attached them to my WL-500GX.

Then I wrote a PHP web-page to select MP3's from my harddisk and play them through the USB2Audio. I can access this web-page with my WiFi enabled PDA.

Works like a charm. Now I have a completely silent MP3 player in the living room that I control with my PDA.

If anybody is interested in the PHP code, I would be happy to post it (it does need some cleaning up though )