USB Sound streamer, possible?

[hertzsae]

I was wondering if anyone had tried to get a USB sound card to work and stream music too it. I have Airport Express envy. I know DVD Jon has hacked it, but think it's a waste to get it when the router could possibly stream music too. Anyhow, I'm just seeing if anyone had thought of doing it, or wondering if it is even possible. I have had trouble just finding a usb sound card with linux drivers.

[rdk]

perhaps this page helps...

http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc...dule=usb-audio

I currently use a Gigaport USB Soundcard on my Ibook with OSX. But if there is a possibility to use the WL500 to stream music this would be great!!

Cheers
Rainer

[hertzsae]

Sorry for not being more clear, I don't have the wl500g, yet! My current 3yr old router isn't forwarding ports correctly to my server so my friends have trouble connecting. I lost 2 ports to an electrical storm 2yrs ago and I think it's about time to replace it. I love hackable products and had been looking at the Linksys wrt54g. Then I found out about the wl500g and I started thinking of all the other possibilities the usb port adds. I don't even have anything wireless, but since I don't know of any wired only routers that you can hack into with usb ports I'm looking at getting wl500g. I usually like to ask a lot of questions before I buy, so sorry that I can't help expirement with it yet.

The gigaport looks awsome, but is out my price range. I'm looking more at the $40usd price range for the sound device. It looks like using the link you provided, it might be possible to get an inexpensive one working. I'd love to hear if anyone gets it working!

[Oleg]

wl500gx will have some kind of audio streaming, at least in contains bplay sound application.

[WlanMan]

bplay ?? Very Cool

The 500g is on its way to me, i couldn´t wait for the 500gx .
The 500g maybe can play MP3 up to 128kbit, but this most likely will load the 125Mhz Cpu to 100%. (What will be not that Problem of you only use it in Wlan Slave mode as a Wireless Streaming Radio Player for example ) This configuration should have also a lower price as commercial-avaliable wlan radio players .

Most USB Audio devices are compilant to a single Specifikation, so it should work on the wl500. I have a Sample of an usb audio chip, need to solder it together with a few compenents to bring it to life .

Btw, if you have no Wlan Cards and dont Plan to get some AND you have no intererest in running an open NoCat gateway for Public (but filtered!) access, you can rip the Wlan Card out of your Router when it comes and sell it (possible to me ), because its seated in a minipci socket. There you can install anything you get in minipci form, whats mostly wlan cards but possible other interesting stuff can be bought...

[hertzsae]

I plan to play the mp3's from my computer in the other room and stream them to the router. So that should work no matter what the bitstream i'm assuming. Good luck on the soldered usb chip. I don't really feal like waiting for the gx box myself either. I need some tunes in my living room. I'm excited to hear how it goes.

[Nenik]

The 500g maybe can play MP3 up to 128kbit, but this most likely will load the 125Mhz Cpu to 100%.

OK, boys, I've thought about this kind of usage already when I was buying it and I've already started experimenting.


Short summary:
wl500g is able to decode 192kbit at ~50% CPU usage.

Long summary:
The box has no FPU and emulation would be too slow, so you need
to use integer-only decoding algorithm. I've picked libmad+madplay and crosscompiled them for the box (statically for now and it wasn't that easy). Playing in streaming mode to /dev/null resulted in 2x speed decoding (so it needs only 50% CPU when decoding realtime). I currently have no USB audio device but I'm certainly going to order one. Sending the data over USB should have neglible impact on the box throughput as it is mostly DMA, so I expect it would work OK.

I've also tried to write the decoded PCM stream to USB device.
The stream was playable OK back on the PC (so it decodes correctly)
but my flashdisk was too slow to handle writing the PCM stream in real time.

[chipanzee]

OK, boys, I've thought about this kind of usage already when I was buying it and I've already started experimenting.


Short summary:
wl500g is able to decode 192kbit at ~50% CPU usage.

Long summary:
The box has no FPU and emulation would be too slow, so you need
to use integer-only decoding algorithm. I've picked libmad+madplay and crosscompiled them for the box (statically for now and it wasn't that easy). Playing in streaming mode to /dev/null resulted in 2x speed decoding (so it needs only 50% CPU when decoding realtime). I currently have no USB audio device but I'm certainly going to order one. Sending the data over USB should have neglible impact on the box throughput as it is mostly DMA, so I expect it would work OK.

I've also tried to write the decoded PCM stream to USB device.
The stream was playable OK back on the PC (so it decodes correctly)
but my flashdisk was too slow to handle writing the PCM stream in real time.

Great, will test that out on my chrooted debian, just need to make the nfsswap working first though as I need more memory

[xlephant]

hey that sounds really cool for me.

the dream is:

ob usb hub:
- 40GB sub hdd
- usb sound card
- msi bluetooth stick

software:
affix bluetooth stack
http://wiki.wl500g.info/index.php/PackageAffix

mp3 decoder which is compatible with bemused

bemsued, to controll your music decoder with mobilphone
http://bemused.sourceforge.net/

so you have all stuff together to have a nice 24h running music box. that would be fine ;-). but is think it remains a dream. maybe a modded xbox is better...

[Dex]

Hi,

this year the german computer magazine ct' has published an article about a bluethooth/MP3 receiver called BlueMP3. The BlueMP3 is a small battery powered MP3 receiver that may be used to receive MP3 data from a bluetooth enabled PC or PDA.

Details can be found here

http://www.heise.de/ct/ftp/projekte/bluemp3/
http://www.bluemp3.de/

I have successfully running the PC part (the program l2send) on my WL-HDD and on my WL500g. But for this it was necessary to recompile the Linux kernel to enable the support for the BlueZ protocol stack and to compiler some utilities. If anybody is interested in details I would make a short installation description.

Dex

[xlephant]

hey dex,

das wäre ja cool.
thats would be cool, i noticed the article also, but i didn't implicate it with the wl500g.

i'm very interested in more details...maybe you can use the wiki.

grüße aus frankfurt.

[Dex]

Hi xlephant,

because you are maybe the only one interested in the BlueMP3 stuff, I only
attached the binaries (l2send and the bluez modules) without a step by step
description how to get the binaries.
I wrote, it would be nessesary to build its own Linux kernel but that was wrong.
Only building the modules for the BlueZ protocol stack are necessary. Because of
this the installation of the BlueMP3 stuff is quite easy.

To use the BlueMp3 together with the Wl500g you need:

- WL500g (with telnet access)
- USB flash disk/ USB hard drive
- USB BT dongle
- USB Hub to use the USB flash disk/ USB hard drive and USB BT dongle
simultaneous
- the BlueMP3

Please copy the contents of the attached zip files to /mnt/usbfs/bluemp3.
After calling of the startup file /mnt/usbfs/bluemp3/startup.sh you should
be able to stream MP3 files storing into the directory /mnt/usbfs/bluemp3/mp3
to the BlueMP3 by typing:

l2send <bt address of BlueMP3 > /mnt/usbfs/bluemp3/mp3/*.mp3

It is also possible to sending a mp3 audio stream received from the internet
by typing:

curl http://your.favorite.host/mp3stream | l2send <bt address of BlueMP3> -


Dex

[lada]

OK, boys, I've thought about this kind of usage already when I was buying it and I've already started experimenting.


Short summary:
wl500g is able to decode 192kbit at ~50% CPU usage.

Long summary:
The box has no FPU and emulation would be too slow, so you need
to use integer-only decoding algorithm. I've picked libmad+madplay and crosscompiled them for the box (statically for now and it wasn't that easy). Playing in streaming mode to /dev/null resulted in 2x speed decoding (so it needs only 50% CPU when decoding realtime). I currently have no USB audio device but I'm certainly going to order one. Sending the data over USB should have neglible impact on the box throughput as it is mostly DMA, so I expect it would work OK.

I've also tried to write the decoded PCM stream to USB device.
The stream was playable OK back on the PC (so it decodes correctly)
but my flashdisk was too slow to handle writing the PCM stream in real time.

Nenik, you said you were going to order a USB sound card.. So, did it work? What sound card do you use? My experiments with Asus and libmad+madplay are also quite promising so far (with 500gx, the CPU utilization should be only around 35%). But I really don't want to buy a card and then find out it is not working with Asus...

This one is cool:
http://www.soundblaster.com/products/Live24ext/

[benlau]

OK, boys, I've thought about this kind of usage already when I was buying it and I've already started experimenting.


Short summary:
wl500g is able to decode 192kbit at ~50% CPU usage.

Long summary:
The box has no FPU and emulation would be too slow, so you need
to use integer-only decoding algorithm. I've picked libmad+madplay and crosscompiled them for the box (statically for now and it wasn't that easy). Playing in streaming mode to /dev/null resulted in 2x speed decoding (so it needs only 50% CPU when decoding realtime). I currently have no USB audio device but I'm certainly going to order one. Sending the data over USB should have neglible impact on the box throughput as it is mostly DMA, so I expect it would work OK.

I've also tried to write the decoded PCM stream to USB device.
The stream was playable OK back on the PC (so it decodes correctly)
but my flashdisk was too slow to handle writing the PCM stream in real time.

Hi Nenik,

I have also compiled madplay (static link too) to my wl500g and tested with an usb audio devices(with C-Media's chip) + slimp3slave. Here is my result:

http://wl500g.info/showthread.php?postid=10953#poststop

If this combination work fine, I really hope it can be integrated with custom firmware.

[Thijsje]

Just received my usb 2 channel soundcard from conrad.
(dutch order info: 994248-8A 2 KANAL SOUND ADAPTER ZWART)

plugged it into my wl-500g and installed the asus software. After starting up an mp3 with mediaplayer the music came out of the usb adapter and sounded really good on my stereo. I'm sure it's not high quality, but I don't hear the difference. It's a lot better for me than plugging in a cable into my wireless laptop.

:-)

Thijs.