Since the original iPad came out I've been thinking that I'd like to put together a small system to serve music and video to iOS devices in the car - and optionally outside of it during rest-stops, vacation, parties, etc.

My idea was to install SqueezeBox server onto a small PC running Linux and its own ad-hoc wireless network. The iOS device would connect to that network and running appropriate software, iPeng in this case, play back music. There are also a few decent video streaming apps now that such a system may also allow movie playback.

I haven't done much research into specific computers, but I'd always figured it would be one of the new mini systems. I was hoping for something with a 12V supply, but the one(s) I've looked at recently have 19v:

Zotac ZBOX Nano AD10: http://www.zotacusa.com/zbox-amd-e-350-apu-barebone-zbox-ad10-u.html

ZOTAC ZBOX nano VD01: http://www.zotacusa.com/zbox-amd-e-350-apu-barebone-zboxnano-vd01-u.html

The second one isn't available yet as it was just officially announced a few weeks ago. It's going to be cheaper than the first seeing as it's not as high performance. Saw a rumor of $130 for barebones price.

Any thoughts on booting such a machine from an SDHC card? I'd then use a 500B-1TB 2.5" drive for media storage. I have a 500GB hybrid Seagate drive sitting here that can't be used in my Macbook because it kills the battery too quickly.

I'd probably put VNC onto the system as well in case I needed to administer it without taking it over to a monitor and keyboard/mouse. Any opinions on installing Ubuntu for this kind of project?

Since the PC is 19V I won't be able to use a 12v-to-12v supply and the easiest thing to do would probably be to install an inverter allowing me to simply plug in the PC's power supply. I don't have any outlets in any of my vehicles already. It would be nice to get the system to properly shut down when the car is turned off and turn on when the car is turned on, so a relay of some sort will have to fit in here somewhere as well.

Any recommendations for other small systems?

http://www.mini-box.com/DCDC-USB

Programmable DC-DC converter with support for automotive mode (ignition sensing for motherboard shut-down). Input from 6v to 34v with output from 5v to 24v.

Seems like a good route so far.

I've got an Acer Aspire Revo R3610, which is small and neat. I'm currently using it as a Linux webserver. I don't know what the HD video performance is like, but it has ION. If you're streaming, you're probably not so bothered about that.

Until this weekend, if I'd wanted a small media box (and wasn't bothered about the fact that storage is not expandable), I'd probably have opted for the R3700, but I've moved away from Intel Atom. Read on...

However, I've just (this weekend) built an AMD E-350-based system (using one of these boards), and I think that the AMD chips are the way to go right now.

Aside: I've got mine built out as a NAS box, but I guess you're looking for something smaller, in which case the Zotac stuff looks pretty good.

Maybe a Fit PC is good for your needs? It runs from 12v, so it would be perfect for in-car use. As a matter of fact, the company even sells a 12 volt cigarrete lighter plug as an accessory. It also has a mini SD card slot, which you can boot from.

I have the Revo R3700 (Atom D525, 4GB). Ubuntu 64bit, with all the nVidia jazz installed and VDPAU enabled, 1080p H.264 decoding is very watchable. Watching Human Planet and Tron bluray rips skips a few frames here and there every 10 minutes, but most of the time is smooth as butter. I think some investigation and tweaking could improve things - its all playing over the network so I am wondering whether that has anything to do with it. I'm using VLC - I notice MPlayer is sometimes has better performance, so it might be flawless with that.

Anyway, I like the R3700 a lot. Definitely recommend something with ION2. I also hear that it works well with Windows.

Can you measure the power draw (current, or watts) at the wall plug (with or without drives) and post the results?

That's the most important specification for me, and practically none of the retailers provide it.

Thanks.

That one is cute. Lack of NVidia graphics means you'll be limited to running MS-Windows on it for HD media playback, at least for the next couple of years. Ditto for the Via based version.

I like the power consumption stats: 12W idle, 27W max.

I'm looking at new mobos / mini-boxes because of a KVM issue: I want to upgrade the KVM switch here to a USB/DVI-D version. But my Atom-based server has only VGA out (artificial marketing restriction from Intel for pure Atom systems).

So I either have to shell out $140 or so (incl. shipping) for a VGA-to-DVI-D converter gizmo, or replace the motherboard with something that has DVI-D (or HDMI) output. Nothing pure Intel will have that, so it's either AMD or Atom+Ion2.

The Ion2 graphics adds a bit of wattage though, but then so does the converter gizmo. So, looking for alternatives.

Thanks

If so then not everyone seems to have got the memo.

Peter

Good links, but both of those have much higher power consumption than with modern Atom chips. Eg. the current Jetway server is better than either of them. Bummer.

The AMD based boards also seem to be measuring in the 30-40W (idle) range, though nobody seems to be measuring things properly with a small PSU etc.

Mmmm.. found this encouraging article link: Upcoming Intel Atom boards with DVI.

Now I just have to find one of them somewhere.

Thanks for the tip on the Linux driver status, I wasn't aware of their state. However, this will be A-OK with me, as I'm only concerned with disk and network I/O performance. This will be strictly used for streaming, running headless.

I'm going to try that here (Zotac HD-ID41), probably this week. I've got a Class-10 4GB SDHC card, which should hold enough to boot to a GNOME desktop. Write performance is likely to be abysmal, but we'll see.

Not right now: I don't have a Kill-a-Watt and I gave back the one I'd borrowed. I'll see if they carry them at the Maplin near work tomorrow.

They did.

With 1xSSD (OCZ Agility 3), 2x500GB (WDC WD5000AAKS), 2x1TB (WDC WD10EACS and Hitachi HDT721010SLA360):

60W during startup; about 50W with the disks running, otherwise idle. About 26W with the disks spun down.

Please update with your results. I've seen there's a fork of Ubuntu called EasyPeasy specifically targeted for low power consumption. It might be worth my while taking a look at that.

I'm pretty sure I'd seen a Debian fork of some sort recently that minimized or eliminated disk writing (to the boot drive) as well.

Ran into hardware troubles yesterday and today -- something seems to have "gone bad" on the mobo of my main test system, so there's a bit of a delay on this project.

Also, I've decided I cannot cope with Ubuntu's latest abomination (11.10), even with the "GNOME Classic" (hah!) GNOME3 based desktop override (KDE4, anyone?).

So trying again later with Debian.

Cheers

Mmm.. dunno how useful this is to you or not, but I just now did "cat ubuntu-11.10-64bit.iso > /dev/sdcard" and then booted my ZBOX HD-HD41 from the SDCARD ("Live CD" mode). It took perhaps 60-90 seconds to get to the desktop, but runs fine (and quick) once there.

That same box boots to a (more minimal) desktop from SSD in under 30 seconds on an older Ubuntu.

I'm posting this note from within the "Live SD" environment.

Cheers

Okay, booted from the SD card "Live" system again, and it took pretty much exactly 2 minutes from bootloader to functional desktop. That's on the ZBOX, so a lot of time was spent decompressing the compressed installation image.

I imagine that a properly installed system on the SDCARD, read-only, should boot to a desktop in under a minute.

Cheers

Under a minute is good, 2 minutes not so much. 10-30 seconds would be much much better. I'd probably prefer to sacrifice any kind of GUI for faster boot time, so long as I can still get what I need up and running: Squeezebox server, SAMBA, WiFi in ad-hoc mode.

Squeezebox Server's primary linux version is listed as "Debian/Ubuntu" so I should be able to get a GUI-less Debian install all set up. Which will likely result in posts to the forum since I've never done that before.

EDIT.

I'm going to write down a few things I know I'll want to accomplish with the Debian install so I don't forget and so I might get some feedback or pointers to guides.

In no particular order - re-ordering for ease of installation would be another recommendation I'm open to.

1. Set up WiFi in Master Mode so it acts as an access point instead of a client. Fall-back is to to create an ad-hoc LAN. Specific SSID and a specific IP address

2. Set up DHCP server to assign static IPs to specific devices by Mac address and others dynamically on the WiFi connection.

3. Set up wired LAN port to be DHCP client, allowing me to plug the system into an existing network via this port. This port should obtain DNS and other information via DHCP. The machine would now be hosting its own LAN on WiFi and be part of another LAN on wired.

4. Set up a bridge to allow connections on the WiFi LAN to access the internet. Is this going to be possible?

5. Set up SAMBA and a couple of shares on the hard disk so that I can access them from wireless clients connected to this machine.

6. Set up same shares so I can access them from other machines on the wired LAN. Is this going to be possible?

7. RSYNC so I can create a schedule to back up all the music from my NAS. This box will then contain a mirror of the music share on the NAS. The schedule can be accomplished on the NAS where I already have other scheduled backup tasks.


The machine will only be occasionally connected via its wired port. This is sort of an "at home" or "visiting" use. Normally it would be used in a full portable manner and would only be running WiFi and wouldn't have access to the internet.

I realize that by using such a setup with an iOS device, if one has a data plan on that device, it would in fact be advantageous to run the network from the iOS device in a sharing/tethering mode and run the PC as the client. This would allow both systems to talk to each other while still being able to use the iOS device's 3G radio for internet. iOS can't use its 3G radio for internet when it's connected to a WiFi network as a client itself.

That's all normal, run of the mill stuff for a Linux box.

But really, what you just described sounds a lot like a decent wireless router with USB (eg. ASUS RT-N16), running Tomato/USB (Linux).

-ml

Pretty much, yeah. Except in a nice little package that holds a ton of memory and disk for running Squeezebox Server - it will have either 2 or 4GB of memory and either 500 or 1000GB of disk space, plus of course the SD card for booting. It's worth the extra cost to get everything in a small little box rather than hacking together an existing router into perhaps my own box.

Well the disk space is simply a USB drive plugged into the router.
But if you feel it really should have GB of RAM (??) then a bigger box will likely be needed. And the USB routers don't tend to have the fastest I/O paths, either.

ISTR that there are a few "router" distros for Linux with nice web GUIs. I wonder if one of those, but on a small Atom or AMD box, would have a good enough web setup to make this as easy as a DDWRT router?

Actually, google search seems to suggest there might be some nice "NAS Linux" distros, too.
Eg. http://www.openfiler.com

I have no experience with those, preferring to roll my own, but something like that might be best for your requirements.

Cheers

I've done a little more "google research" now, and one trend that's obvious is how nice little open source router/NAS distros tend to run for 3-4 years and then go totally commercial. Eg. ClarkConnect most recently.

They're still a great way to get started, especially for MS and Apple fanatics :), and they generally have much, MUCH better web GUIs than a general purpose Linux distro would offer.

But the reason I still "roll my own" using normal distros, is so I can continue to customize and upgrade them to my heart's content. And not be at the mercy of "did they include this feature", since a full distro generally has *everything* except the nice web GUI. Big time sink/investment with this route, though.

Cheers

I use OpenFiler. It works well, but the fact that it's built on rPath means that it's a pain to use for anything else, to the point where I finally just installed VirtualBox on it for other things that I needed, while keeping the native IO speed for OpenFiler itself.

The worry about going with such a distro is then getting SB server to install, possibly having to compile it myself and then hunt down dependencies, make mods, etc.

Originally I was thinking of simply using Ubuntu 11.10 and calling it a day.

If you find it easier to configure that stuff via GUI, you can set up your linux box to boot to desktop until you get your installation to a stable state, then disable the GUI stuff by changing the default runlevel in /etc/inittab, upstart, or whatever your selected distro uses. Alternatively, if you have an ssh server running on the box, you can also 'ssh -X' into it to run things that use a GUI.

Mark you have brought up an interesting point I hadn't considered before. I was planning to administer the box via SSH and/or by connecting it to a KVM and using it as a normal desktop (if I installed a GUI).

What I hadn't planned on was web GUI access to anything other than SB Server. Having a nice Tomato GUI on there would be awesome though.

Anyone know the best approach to accomplishing this? In other words, all goals. Using the ZBOX PC, with a fast booting and complete enough Debian install to support the requirements I've already covered, plus install a Web GUI like Tomato? Or Tomato itself if it could be added on top of Debian to control everything I would otherwise have to edit by hand in various config files.

Perhaps Webmin would do some of the things you want to do.

Thanks John. I've been looking at their site for a few minutes and it seems pretty robust. And complicated because of it.

Just added rsync to the list of requirements.

VortexBox is a Fedora-based distro that already includes SqueezeBox server and a web UI for managing shares and similar features. It doesn't include a web UI for routing, but I suppose that could just be done on the command line as I was planning to to originally with Debian. 15-20 bot times are quoted by the maintainer - that would be very nice.

Apart from that I found some router distros with two notable examples being:

Untangle: http://www.untangle.com/routing-qos

Zentyal: http://trac.zentyal.org/screenshots

No idea how easy it would be to get SB Server on either of those.

You can create webmin users and then enable only the modules that you will use for those users. That way, you'll only see a small fraction of the functionality that's available.

Now that sounds promising.

I'm heavily leaning toward using Vortexbox at the moment for all the music-streaming related integration it already has, plus the ongoing development and support for Squeezebox server specifically.

I could install webmin on an alternate port and then likely have more web-based administration than I'd know what to do with.

I'm playing with a 1.6GHz Fit PC with an 8GB SSD at the moment using Ubuntu Server and OpenBox window manager. It will boot from cold to the app running (it's a touchscreen frontend client for my broadcast control system) in just under 30 seconds. That's with 12 secs of BIOS and no tweaking on the OS side. Although I can't seem to get Bootchart to run on it, so tweaking will be a bit more involved than it otherwise would've been.

The one I have only has 1GB of memory, they sell a 'GTI' version with 2GB and a 2GHz CPU. Stick a 1TB 2.5 inch SATA disk in it and you're good to go.

Yeah. That's one area I've mellowed on over the past two years. I used to have my 24/7 mini-itx box do the whole firewall/router/AP deal for our network. But it never had a web GUI, and now I've gotten rather addicted to the ease of management that Tomato/USB on a router gives us.

So the firewall/AP/QoS are handled by the WNR3500L with Tomato, though I still do the fileserver/email/dhcp/www/DNS/etc.. by hand on the 24/7 server. For now.

Pulled the trigger last night and ordered the ZBOX and the DCDC power supply. That ZBOX is difficult to find in-stock at the moment, but Google product finder to the rescue there. I had to go through some 5 stores to find a combination of in-stock and one that would accept a Canadian paypal account (delivery is to the US because none of them had sane Canadian shipping).

I'll pick up some RAM locally as it's cheaper, and I'll toss in one of the spare 2.5" drives I have here now. I should have this started within the next couple of weeks.

http://shopbot.ca helps a lot when I'm looking for stuff within the country.

How about a pogoplug? Everything can run off 5V.

Underpowered, few peripherals, and lots of dangly bits needed to build it out into a system.

What Mark said.

I didn't find the DNS flexible enough on Tomato, so I went back to full-featured DNS/DHCP software (on Windows Server, as it happens, but I'm equally at home with BIND, for my sins).

Have you considered anything like a pandaboard?

Linux - Check.
Small - Check.
Audio - Check.
Video - Check.
Wifi - Check.
Ethernet - Check.

Uses a SD card for boot/OS. You'd have to use a USB mass storage device for your music if you're going to be storing a lot of stuff on it.

Consumes less than 5W @ 5V on full load.

Pandaboard = no SATA. Which means to use onboard storage requires USB hackery which means super-slow file transfers.

But otherwise it looks really nice.

For this project I'm not so concerned about a few extra watts since the system is not going to be on 24/7 and is primarily intended for running in one of our vehicles only while the vehicle itself is running.

The smallest and most integrated package I found was the Zbox Nano. At $215 shipped, it was also the lowest priced option. Can't forget that it includes a case and even comes with some mounting hardware.

Surely high speed transfers in car aren't really an issue if it's just for streaming to devices? Plus you can just pull the drive when you want high speed transfers to update music.

I saw afterwards that you'd already bought a solution anyway. Somehow I missed the post when I was posting!

In-car I don't need fast transfers. But when I connect the system to my gigE network to load up the disk or do RSYNC, I do want it to go as quickly as possible.

But speed aside, without an onboard drive controller it would be a bit of hacking and an entirely larger packge/case to fit everything into. I've also not seen any aftermarket cases that are as elegant as the ZBOX. I'm looking at enough customization from a software perspective, so I want the hardware to be as straight-forward as possible.

How are you liking the router? I'm using IPCop, but the mini-itx board I'm using is a little loud and uses more power than I like.

The router is great -- super wifi coverage (when wifi is "on", rare here), and it's cool and 100% reliable.

The mini-ITX box is fanless and dead quiet. Though it does get a little warmer than I'd like, so yesterday I removed the cover from its m350 case and things seem better now.

That's a JetWay JNC9C-455-LF mobo with 2GB of RAM, a PicoPSU, a 60GB SSD system drive, and a 750GB bulk storage drive, crammed into a fanless M350 enclosure. Vertical on a wall under a worktable.

Oh, and to finish a different thread: in the end, I got the VGA-to-DVI-D converter box for it, so that the VGA output could feed into our new USB/DVI-D KVM switch. Got the converter from monoprice -- works perfectly.

Cheers

WebUI from OpenWRT, LuCI: http://luci.subsignal.org/trac

Going to have to look into installing this on top of a different distribution.

This Zotac box is proving very difficult to get a hold of. I thought I'd finally found a place to buy from and placed an order last week. Not having heard anything from them in a week I wrote to them yesterday and again today to inquire as to the status of said order.

"Oh, we had a problem that we thought we'd be able to work around, but the short of it is that we're out of stock and won't be able to ship anything before November 10th"

Great.

Using the Google shipping/products page is proving to be somewhat frustrating as well. It's been wrong on pricing/shipping for almost every link I've clicked on and I've only been able to find the product in stock at 2 additional places of some 10+ links clicked.

Are these things actually selling in great numbers or did Zotac only make 10 of them for the whole continent?

Are any of these what you are looking for?

tanstaafl.

No, Amazon doesn't have the Zbox Nano AD10 model. It's always the first place I look, at least for comparison's sake.

No, he's hunting for the Zotac AD10 aka. "nano".

Bruno: no digital sound outputs on that box, other than HDMI.. is that going to be a problem?

Mmm.. this thread suggests that they've never really been in stock anywhere yet, except perhaps a single pallet load maybe.

-ml

How about NCIX -- they claim to have stock now.

I already put through a new order last night. From a place that also sells janitorial and food services equipment no less. And got a very quick refund from the original store too. Fingers crossed it ships within a couple of days. They say it's still in stock and my order is "processing."

And WRT digital audio, no, it won't be a problem. This system will pretty much live its life serving content and won't be itself connected to anything but network (occasionally) and power.

Well, that's another online store that f*cked up. "in stock" changes to "back order" two days after I order and no email or notice is sent to me. If I hadn't kept visiting the store and checking status I wouldn't have known about this. On top of everything, they also require you to call in to cancel orders. Although they were pleasant enough on the phone.

Processed order through NCIX. Unfortunately it's $30 more base price. Higher shipping. $4 recycling fee. And of course extra tax on the higher amounts. They do price matching but no one else in Canada seems to have a better price.

You'd think I was trying to buy a Nintendo Wii, or a Tickle-Me Elmo - back in their day.

Are you sure the fitpc2 couldn't satisfy your requirements? Their parent company has a distributor in Canada.

http://www.compulab.co.il/representatives/tracan.pdf

I've had to give the one I was testing back to its original owner, but all in all, I've been really impressed with it. It ran Ubuntu 11.10 desktop absolutely flawlessly without breaking a sweat. You could get a 1TB disc in it no problems. Given it also have built in wifi, you shouldn't need anything else plugging into it.

It actually would fit the requirements quite well, but it's about $100 more expensive. I know it already runs on 12v, so I could potentially save the money I spent on the DCDC-USB...

But I'd probably still need/prefer to buy it to clean the power up and, more importantly, to provide the soft-off triggered by the accessory line in the car.

It looks like NCIX has come through. The package, originating in Vancouver on the other side of the country, has now already made its way into the province. Tracking information still doesn't mention a specific delivery date, but in my books, it's looking like some great service so far. I also really appreciate how NCIX sends detailed reports of the order status as it changes within their organization up until the item has actually been "shipped."

I should have the DCDC supply sometime tonight as well, but I think I'll end up paying with the Zbox for the week installing VortexBox and seeing if I can find any information on getting the LuCI UI on top of it as well.

Even though it's early in the process, I have no doubt based on experience with the Squeeze and iPeng products that this will work famously. Which does lead me to wonder why some folks in the SB forums are so hell-bent on finding "alternative" products, prompted by Logitech's apparent lack of advancement of new Squeeze models.

When an iOS device makes for such a capable player within this ecosystem, I can't fathom changing over to a completely different platform, something as clunky as some of the options I've seen tossed about on that forum. If someone already has SqueezeBox server set up, and an iOS device, as many do, it seems like a no-brainer to give it a try. iOS devices aren't free, but some of the alternative products cost a lot more.

The server software has received a new name, and is now called Logitech Media Server. The really need to stop changing the name, but this newest version brings online UPnP and DLNA serving capabilities and support for photos and video. Supposedly they're going to use it to complement their GoogleTV-based offerings, so it seems like they're doing some in-house software consolidation. The changes also open the door for other products to make use of the very good underpinnings of the server. Let's hope however that Logitech continues to make sales so they can keep developing the software, since it's clearly the most valuable IP of the entire ecosystem.

Oddly, when I was sifting through uPNP/DLNA sofware for a friend, there seemed to be plenty of server side goodies available (both Open Source and closed commercial), but very little in the way of client software.

The gadget makers seem to be doing a good job of keeping the client side stuff under lock and key (no objections here).

Cheers

isn't airplay basically that on its head (and besides that i guess the airplay key crack means both sides are in the open now, somewhat)

Just wanted to post an update about the second store I tried to order with (the bait/switch in-stock/back-order situation).

I placed the order on Nov 2nd, cancelled on November 4th as they claimed they would not have stock for another 2 weeks.

I received a cancellation/credit confirmation on the 4th a little while after putting through the request. What I didn't notice was that the money was never credited back to my PayPal account.

On November 17th they shipped the system and it arrived on November 25th at my US mailbox. I didn't find this out until just a few days ago.

Now they're talking about 5% restocking fees, not refunding shipping, etc... Umm, no, I'm not going to pay for their cock-ups.