{"id":333,"date":"2008-10-09T18:16:01","date_gmt":"2008-10-10T01:16:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mightyohm.com\/blog\/?p=333"},"modified":"2015-09-26T11:11:12","modified_gmt":"2015-09-26T18:11:12","slug":"building-a-wifi-radio-part-1-introduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mightyohm.com\/blog\/2008\/10\/building-a-wifi-radio-part-1-introduction\/","title":{"rendered":"Building a Wifi Radio – Part 1, Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article is the first of a series that will document the development of a low cost, open source wireless streaming internet radio receiver.\u00a0 All construction details, including schematics, source code, and even the design process itself will be documented on this blog.<\/em><\/p>\n

Comments and (constructive) criticism are welcome. <\/em> Click here to post a comment.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Table of Contents:<\/h3>\n
    \n
  1. Building a Wifi Radio – Part 1, Introduction<\/a> (you are here)
    \n<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. Building a Wifi Radio – Part 2, Choosing an Embedded Platform<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. Building a Wifi Radio – Part 3, Hacking the Asus WL-520GU<\/a><\/li>\n
  4. Building a Wifi Radio – Part 4, Installing OpenWrt<\/a><\/li>\n
  5. Building a Wifi Radio – Part 5, Let\u2019s Make Some Noise!<\/a><\/li>\n
  6. Building a Wifi Radio – Part 6, A Conversation with Mpd<\/a><\/li>\n
  7. Building a Wifi Radio – Part 7, Building an LCD Display<\/a><\/li>\n
  8. Building a Wifi Radio – Part 8, Adding a Tuning Control<\/a><\/li>\n
  9. Building a Wifi Radio – Part 9, A Few Odds and Ends<\/a><\/li>\n
  10. Building a Wifi Radio – Part 10, Building the Box<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Some background:<\/h3>\n

    According to Wikipedia<\/a>, in 1993 the first internet radio program began distribution.\u00a0 At that time, radio programs were manually downloaded to be played later on the user’s home computer; the user experience was far from that of listening to a traditional<\/a> broadcast radio receiver.\u00a0 It was not until several years later that streaming radio<\/a> became common, giving birth to internet radio stations<\/a> that could be listened to much like traditional radio, but with several advantages.\u00a0 Most notably, internet radio stations were (and still are for the most part) largely devoid of on-air advertising, and stations anywhere on the globe could be received by anyone with access to the internet.\u00a0 Over time, improvements in audio compression (such as MP3<\/a>) and larger end user bandwidth improved the fidelity and reliability of internet radio.\u00a0 The birth of common standards like Shoutcast<\/a> made it possible to listen to many stations with a single player program, like Winamp<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    Today, most music playback software supports streaming radio in some way.\u00a0 iTunes<\/a> features thousands of streaming radio stations and even supports Shoutcast streams<\/a> so that users can easily add additional stations of their own.<\/p>\n

    The beautiful thing about streaming radio is the huge diversity in programming that is available.\u00a0 Many college radio stations have a streaming server, like KDVS<\/a>.\u00a0 Digitally Imported<\/a> hosts many electronic and dance music streams that give the listener the choice to listen to specific genres like ambient<\/a> or gabber hardcore<\/a> (whoa)<\/em>.\u00a0 Broadcast radio usually lumps all electronic dance music into one category, much to the dismay of their listeners (who probably tuned out during the commercial break, anyway).\u00a0 Gems like Slay Radio<\/a> specialize in music you would never hear on broadcast FM, like Commodore 64<\/a> remixes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    In the past couple years, products have started to appear that mimic the form and function of a traditional radio, but play internet radio instead.\u00a0 Good examples of these are the Roku SoundbridgeRadio<\/a> and the ASUS Internet Air<\/a>.\u00a0 Remote speaker devices, such as the Apple Airport Express<\/a>, require a PC to receive and relay streaming radio but achieve a similar end result (but don’t really look much like a radio).<\/p>\n

    The Wifi Radio project:
    \n<\/strong><\/h3>\n

    I have been wanting to build a streaming radio for some time.\u00a0 I frequently work in my garage, where I occasionally use my Macbook<\/a> to play music through a small amplifier and bookshelf speakers.\u00a0 The problem is that my laptop is not always set up in the garage, and greasy fingers are not a good thing to have around a white laptop, period.\u00a0 I could simply buy<\/a> an internet radio, but I couldn’t stomach the $150-$300 price tag on most players for such a luxury.<\/p>\n

    So I decided to build one instead.<\/p>\n

    I started the design process by drafting an outline of desired features, and then breaking them down into wants and needs, while trying to keep the project scope under control.<\/p>\n

    Requirements:<\/em><\/p>\n