This Friday, March 11th, Austin’s Dorkbot chapter is holding a science fair in conjunction with Ignite Austin for SXSW Interactive.
I’ll be demoing my Wifi Radio project and showing off various other projects. There is a list of presenters here.
General Admission is $10 ($0 for SXSW badge holders), but if you RSVP right now on Dorkbot Austin’s Facebook page there might be some free passes left.
Last night, I dusted off my Wifi Radio project and gave a 15 minute presentation about it at Austin Dorkbot 27: Electric Boogaloo.
Dorks who want to download the slides can do so here: Jeff_Keyzer-Wifi Radio Project
I had a particularly challenging evening because the hastily assembled wireless network in the ACTlab refused to hand out an IP address to the radio. After wrongly suspecting that the 802.11n network was causing problems (my home network is b/g), I discovered that if I set a static IP and default gateway, I could get a stable connection to the router. That process of discovery took something like an hour of tweaking settings, trying to remember iwlist arguments, how to set up routes, etc.
In the end I got it all working and gave a very successful demo of the radio. Whew!
@tinkernut just posted a video tutorial showing how to make a wifi radio for about $50 based on my Wifi Radio project.
In this episode of The Tech Junkies, Ben and Eric show how to hack an Asus WL-520gu wireless router into a music playback device. By loading the OpenWRT firmware onto the router and adding a USB sound card, it is possible to convert this cheap/powerful router into a streaming box to be placed anywhere your WiFi is in range. Now you can build your own shoutcast/icecast receiver for cheap and get music wirelessly to any room in your home.
Pretty cool video based on my original Wifi Radio tutorial.
To leave comments or download the video, visit The Tech Junkies Episode #6.
Gary Dion (N4TXI) created a Wifi Radio to match his entertainment center. His project is inspired by my original Wifi Radio project and shares several of the same parts (such as the Asus WL-520gU wireless router) and design philosophy.
Interesting features of Gary’s version of the radio:
More details, photos, and source code are available on Gary’s site.
Thanks to the Make: blog for bringing this project to my attention!