More powerful router / BBC stations?

[winelight]

I've read a number of messages here discussing the fact that you need WMA for the BBC streams, and I'm interested to know if anyone has actually done this? Or is using a more powerful router successfully for this project that would in theory be powerful enough for WMA?

I'm wanting to build a WiFi radio for my car (yes, my car now has WiFi internet access) and this is going to involve quite a lot of work (hacking and intercepting the car's AV bus so I can control the router from the car's head unit, via an ATMega8 and the router's serial port, to select radio stations), so the less I can do on the WiFi router front the more likely I am to finish this before the car rusts away.

Any thoughts or comments (polite ones) gratefully appreciated.

[gerben]

The trouble was that playing wma required a newer version of MPD, which was too big to fit into the 4MB flash memory of the WL-520GU.

I believe the WL-520GU is powerful enough to play wma just fine. But going with a bit more powerful router would be my suggestion. That is, a router with more than 4MB flash, 16MB Ram, and 200Mhz CPU. Using the WL-520GU would require an external flash drive and some tinkering to install MPD to the external memory.

[winelight]

Ah right got it thanks.

There are other models in the Asus 5xx range with double the Flash and RAM. Would they be big enough, do you know?

Otherwise, presumably there is no inherent difficulty in using any OpenWRT-supported router as long as it has (or can be made to have) a serial port, and has a USB socket?

Is there anything else to look for please?

[winelight]

Ah - just seen your post in the other thread. A friend was showing me a Raspberry PI the other day.

That sounds like an easier way to go overall, really. Can't imagine finding a USB WiFi dongle with Linux support will be a problem. Thanks!

[gerben]

The Pi is also a bit smaller, making it easier to fit into your car.

The downside of using a USB wifi dongle is that the Pi is not that fast with usb, so expect a bit of a penalty with using a wifi adapter. But that won't be a problem in your case, as you don't require a lot of bandwidth or cpu for playing wma streams.

Good luck, and let me know if you have any more questions.

PS I assume the questions from your second-last post, about the routers, are no longer relevant.

[winelight]

Thanks again. Yes the router questions are now irrelevant.