[PLUG] House Audio Linux-style?

Andrew Munkres amunk at pdx.edu
Wed Jan 22 23:18:01 UTC 2003


You could put a sound-capable computer in each room.

On Mon, 20 Jan 2003 22:59:31 -0800
Kyle Accardi <sandbox at pacifier.com> wrote:

> Anyone networked their house with cat5, then used the network to distribute 
> audio?
> 
> Wanted:
> 	
> Distribute analog?/digital audio from both a central audio source (like a 
> dvd movie) and a local source (person in the kitchen wants to listen to the 
> radio instead of the movie)

You could connect the local analog sources to an audio input of each sound card.
(This is the usual way of playing audio CDs on a computer.) If you want to
distribute that local source to the other rooms, you could use a program like
liveice or darkice.

http://star.arm.ac.uk/~spm/software/liveice.html
http://darkice.sf.net/

For streaming video from a DVD, try VideoLAN. ( http://www.videolan.org/ ) It
claims to be able to do that, although I've never tried it.

> Local amplification.  The kitchen speakers need lots of eq which is only 
> feasible using line-level.

Many (most?) sound chipsets include an amplifier, albeit not a very good one.

> 
> Source selection.  The main stereo is in the living room, the mp3 server is 
> in the basement (visual browsing of mp3s would be very nice).
> 
> As few always-on devices as possible.

I don't see why you'd need to leave any devices always on, except that you
might want to leave them on to avoid having to turn them on and wait whenever
you want to use them (especially the server).

> 
> ==
> 
> What is currently working:
> 
> A wireless notebook can browse the basement fileserver and select mp3s for 
> the kitchen, but cannot change sources (like to FM radio), nor can it affect 
> the living room receiver (unless I attach the notebook's headphone jack to 
> an aux input).

In what way do you want to affect the living room receiver? You could set it up so that the receiver gets its audio signal from a computer in the living room, and then control that computer from any of the other computers.

> 
> Currently the kitchen speakers cannot be linked to the living room receiver 
> because of aforementioned eq issues, so they are powered from a seperate amp 
> in the basement.  This is temporary until I can find or build a small 
> reciever to live in the kitchen.
> 
> I've run cat5 to every room in the house (except the bathroom).
> 
> 
> Since I don't think that a dedicated notebook for the kitchen will be 
> happening anytime soon, nor a small lcd touchscreen, I thought a Handspring 
> Visor could occasionally be synced to the mp3 database and used to select 
> tunage, given an IR detector in the wall.  Problem is, I don't know what 
> such an IR recvr-->Ethernet device would be named, so as to google.

You could get a PDA and a CompactFlash-based Ethernet adapter for it. (Of
course, with a PDA you'd have the same problem as with the notebook -- its
amplifier, if it had one, wouldn't be good enough.)

> 
> I've been trying to hash this out for a while and am having trouble defining 
> my topography.  Not sure even what's possible.  Hoping someone here has done 
> something similiar and can help bang my head in the right direction.
> 
> 
> This is a nice thing,
> http://www.gspr.com/integra/nas23.html

It looks ok for a "turnkey" solution, but I think that a normal computer with a sound chipset can do most things that it can do. (Are there any sound cards that support digital audio in/out?)

> 
> I've got a ThinkNIC to which I've added a 40G HD, but it makes noise, 
> generates heat and would require a monitor. But maybe a very small 5" lcd 
> one...  Since the official website is currently useless, see here if 
> interested http://www.hack-a-nic.com/intro.html

To avoid the noise and heat of the HDD, you could netboot it ( see
http://www.ltsp.org/documentation/ltsp-3.0-4-en.html ) or you could use a
different kind of storage device, such as those that PDAs have.




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