mpd player within Asus WL-500gP

[MvAngel]

Hello all,

I've searched the forum but I could not find a fully usable answer to my question, so I apologize if this topic has been already answered in some thread.

Here is the questions:
How to use the WL-500qP as audio streaming server and wireless audio player?

My idea is to have the following setup
1. The laptop/wifi capable device (aka. phone) browser based GUI
2. One WL-500qP as a media server (please add suggestion for appropriate SW)
3. One or more WL-500qP + suitable USB sound cards as media players (please add suggestions for working USB sound cards and suitable SW for streaming audio playback)

Thank you in advance!

br
Michail

[darius]

Hello all,

I've searched the forum but I could not find a fully usable answer to my question, so I apologize if this topic has been already answered in some thread.

Here is the questions:
How to use the WL-500qP as audio streaming server and wireless audio player?

My idea is to have the following setup
1. The laptop/wifi capable device (aka. phone) browser based GUI
2. One WL-500qP as a media server (please add suggestion for appropriate SW)
3. One or more WL-500qP + suitable USB sound cards as media players (please add suggestions for working USB sound cards and suitable SW for streaming audio playback)

Thank you in advance!

br
Michail

I have tested some media streaming applications on PC running MS Windows, on mobile Linux embedded devices, on mobile phones and see the problems with bandwidth and signal quality.
a/b/g Wifi is not fit for media streaming as data channel is shared by many users, noise level is high and you have to live close to your access point.

So I moved to cellular modems and can watch video on laptop running vista.
Quality is not best but it works much better than with wifi link.

What is hot is DVB-M, DVB-T, Wimax by Samsung.
Hot is any wireless HD TV quality transmission (satellite receiver +dish).

1Gb wireless data link is what you need
and move to 5 Ghz wifi equipment to avoid community noise.

Please provide me with more details of your project to give you better solution.

What is hot about 3G cellular modems and phones, if you live on flat rate link,
is you can watch tv, listen to audio on your 3G phone on-the-go.

The same with wifi is a nightmare as you have to keep close to your wifi access point.

This is the reason, wifi Internet, hotspots, are no more hot stuff.

Darius

[MvAngel]

to Darius and all,

I apologize if my post was not clear enough. I would like to be able to create a portable wireless active speaker set and use WL-500qP as streaming server and streaming audio player. For this tasks I would need:

1. List of supported external USB sound cards
2. List of streaming servers working on WL-500qP
3. List of streaming audio players working on WL-500qP.

I am working in the mobile business, dealing with 3G/GPRS systems on daily basis, so I can state with good authority that no 3G net in the world could match the performance of wifi 54 Mbps in the range of 10-20 meters.

still Darious, thank you for sharing your ideas.

[wpte]

1. Search for usb soundcards that work with common linux distro's... not sure if it will work, I don't think the router is compiled with alsa drivers.
2. I use UShare, but there are others: gmediaserver and fuppes.
3. no idea wich one works on shell only

[darius]

to Darius and all,

I apologize if my post was not clear enough. I would like to be able to create a portable wireless active speaker set and use WL-500qP as streaming server and streaming audio player. For this tasks I would need:

1. List of supported external USB sound cards
2. List of streaming servers working on WL-500qP
3. List of streaming audio players working on WL-500qP.

I am working in the mobile business, dealing with 3G/GPRS systems on daily basis, so I can state with good authority that no 3G net in the world could match the performance of wifi 54 Mbps in the range of 10-20 meters.

still Darious, thank you for sharing your ideas.

Ok.
GPRS is slow, I use it on my Motorola to access the Internet news/ Bloomberg with Opera Mobile.

3G is my cellular modem and it works ON-THE-GO.
You are right . wifi good range is 10-20 meters,
With 3G I can drive a car, just walk and still have quality Internet access
1Mb/s, other operators offer more but I pay pocket money for my 3G service.

Wifi is a good wireless indoor solution.
There is a number of home theater wifi speakers products on a market.
The same with usb sound cards.
So I will make some tests for you and give you tested and working solution soon.

Personally I prefer to work in silence, no audio, no video, no tv.

What do you mean by portable and active speakers ?
Small size accu powered speakers ?

Darius

[MvAngel]

3. no idea wich one works on shell only

My ideas is to use web interface to control the streaming server, and the streaming players to be statically configured to always connect to the to the streaming media from the audio server. With this requirement in mind, any streaming player working on the WL-500qP having functionality to stream from a server (I would assume if such player exists this would be part of the functionality) would do the job.

I've found couple of links on streaming players for the WL-500qP.
http://wiki.openwrt.org/UsbAudioHowto
and also:
http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Music_Player_Daemon_Wiki

I guess the wiki link will do the job.

@Darius, you can read about active speakers behind the link
http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volum...s-12-2002.html
I don not plan for them to be completely wireless, as they will need to have power supply. But still, there could be some benefits, related to quality of sound.

[darius]

My ideas is to use web interface to control the streaming server, and the streaming players to be statically configured to always connect to the to the streaming media from the audio server. With this requirement in mind, any streaming player working on the WL-500qP having functionality to stream from a server (I would assume if such player exists this would be part of the functionality) would do the job.

I've found couple of links on streaming players for the WL-500qP.
http://wiki.openwrt.org/UsbAudioHowto
and also:
http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Music_Player_Daemon_Wiki

I guess the wiki link will do the job.

@Darius, you can read about active speakers behind the link
http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volum...s-12-2002.html
I don not plan for them to be completely wireless, as they will need to have power supply. But still, there could be some benefits, related to quality of sound.

Hi,

just visited eBay, looking for USB sound cards.
There is a number of products marketed as 5.1, 7.1 virtual USB sound card, 1 speakers output jack, one jack for microphone input.
So I don't know how to connect more than 1 stereo pair of speakers to work.

I have media streamer installed and running on portable Nokia Tablet and works fine for audio but video quality is not good.
I can select sound tracks from on-line menu,
can connect stereo headphones or active speakers.
To install remote control I need another wifi device, as IrDA is not supported.

Tested, worked and no more interested.

Tell me about your 3G network, pricing, Internet bandwidth and more.

Darius

[pitsch]

hi all, music player daemon has a new maintainer since last winter and there are quite a few interesting updates in the new version. have a look:

http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Music_Player_Daemon_Wiki

this thread should be about how to compile and install the new mpd/mpc, which hacks and scripts to run with it, how to do podcasts and run a webinterface with as little as possible resources. everyone with extra experiences with MPD should feel invited to contribute.

let's have some fun.

[thejew]

The new version is available through ipkg update & ipkg upgade.
But I got some issues with low bitrate audiofiles, the cpu goes very high and it almost not playing at all. Looks like it tries to transcode, last version didnt do so.
I someone got an idea i would be glad, i installed 0.13 again in the meantime

[bzhou]

http://www.musicpd.org/mantis/view.php?id=1918

[thejew]

@bzhou

hmmm still not working.
With 0.13 it uses like 8 % Cpu power in the beginning and then its goin down 1 - 2 %.
When using 0.14 it uses 100 % and I hear once a while just a zap sound. Weird becouse with 128 kbps files its ok just my old audio-books which are at 64 kbps wont work any more .
Since we use the oss output I cant set "auto_resample" option in the mpd.conf which is suggested in the link you provided...
Still puzzling with it.

@ all
I atached some binaries that I found on the MPD website and compiled them to work with oleg. They allow you to save & restore states, and sync with other MPD servers.
Just drop them in "/opt/bin" to use them.

[blubberblah666]

hmmm, after upgrading mpd dies with following message:

mpd: can't load library 'libgthread-2.0.so.0'

any ideas?
ok, fixed the problem myself. installing glib also installed libgthread-2.0.so.0...
and finally: shout support seems to be compiled in!!!!

Supported outputs:
shout null fifo ao oss

i've been waiting for this a loooong time ;-)

hello again, it seems i'm having no luck to get streaming functional. my current setup includes mpd running on the asus and icecast running on a windows box.
for playing back the stream i use winamp on the windows box as well.
when i now play a track with mpd and try to listen with winamp mpd grabs a lot of ressources (cpu and mem) and noting is to hear. I've configured mpd as follows:

audio_output {
        type                    "shout"
        name                    "Radio"
        host                    "192.168.1.214"
        port                    "8000"
        mount                   "/mpd.mp3"
        password                "hackme"
        quality                 "1.0"
        format                  "44100:16:1"
        encoding                "mp3"
}

note that i've set encoding to mp3. using ogg resulted in the following message when starting mpd:

shout: couldn't find shout encoder plugin "ogg"
Aborted

so, mpd error log reports this:

Feb 04 19:32 : shout: error flushing lame buffers
Feb 04 19:33 : shout: Lost shout connection to 192.168.1.214:8000: Socket error
Feb 04 19:33 : shout: Lost shout connection to 192.168.1.214:8000: Socket error
Feb 04 19:33 : shout: Lost shout connection to 192.168.1.214:8000: Socket error
Feb 04 19:33 : shout: Lost shout connection to 192.168.1.214:8000: Socket error
Feb 04 19:33 : shout: Lost shout connection to 192.168.1.214:8000: Socket error
Feb 04 19:34 : shout: error flushing lame buffers

icecast logs the following:

[2009-02-04  19:32:56] WARN stats/stats.c seen non-UTF8 data, probably incorrect metadata (stream_start, Wed, 04 Feb 2009 19:32:56 Westeuropäische Normalzeit)
[2009-02-04  19:32:56] INFO source/source.c listener count on /mpd.mp3 now 0
[2009-02-04  19:33:07] WARN source/source.c Disconnecting source due to socket timeout
[2009-02-04  19:33:07] INFO source/source.c Source "/mpd.mp3" exiting
[2009-02-04  19:33:18] INFO connection/connection.c Source logging in at mountpoint "/mpd.mp3"
[2009-02-04  19:33:18] WARN stats/stats.c seen non-UTF8 data, probably incorrect metadata (stream_start, Wed, 04 Feb 2009 19:33:18 Westeuropäische Normalzeit)
[2009-02-04  19:33:18] INFO source/source.c listener count on /mpd.mp3 now 0
[2009-02-04  19:33:29] WARN source/source.c Disconnecting source due to socket timeout
[2009-02-04  19:33:29] INFO source/source.c Source "/mpd.mp3" exiting
[2009-02-04  19:33:44] INFO connection/connection.c Source logging in at mountpoint "/mpd.mp3"
[2009-02-04  19:33:44] WARN stats/stats.c seen non-UTF8 data, probably incorrect metadata (stream_start, Wed, 04 Feb 2009 19:33:44 Westeuropäische Normalzeit)
[2009-02-04  19:33:45] INFO source/source.c listener count on /mpd.mp3 now 0

it seems that mpd connects somehow to icecast according to the logs...
maybe someone can help me out.
any help appreciated,
regards, holger

[thejew]

maybe its just using to much CPU for transcoding? Because you set the quality to one it needs to recompress all audio on the fly, which is to much for our little mips.
thats what it did when i tried to use ogg in the past.

I still have my issue with 64 kbit files, this applys to internet streams as well. I wonder why no one realy cares. Couse this version is ununsable for me

[blubberblah666]

ok, good point. i'll give it a try tomorrow evening. thnx for the tip!
mhh, same behaviour. tried with quality set to 5.0 and 10.0.
additionally tried with bitrate set to 64, 128, 256.
maybe shout output it simply doesn't work?!
cheers,
holger

[pitsch]

thanks all! in the meantime i also had mixed experiences.
yes, mpd 0.14.3 still is still a bit hungry on resources.

  
  297 admin    S       5436   296 23.0 18.0 mpd
  380 admin    R         436   336  3.8  1.4 top
  298 admin    S       5436   296  0.0 18.0 mpd
  304 admin    R       5436   296  0.0 18.0 mpd
  295 admin    S       5436      1  0.0 18.0 mpd
  296 admin    S       5436   295  0.0 18.0 mpd

wanted to downgrade mpd to 0.13 ...
where to find a mipsel binary to download?
could anybody post the last "light" version here?