Archive for March, 2013

Raspberry Pi Media Player

Sunday, March 17th, 2013

I wonder if I could build a Squeezebox-compaitble media device out of a Raspberry Pi.  It would mean I could get as many as I needed.

Raspberry Pi, $50ish, with case, etc.

That has sound already.  If it’s crappy, plug in a $100 Total Bithead.  If you want to go whole hog, get a $500 Headroom Micro DAC and Headroom Micro Amp.  You’ll even get a big knob and all the nice ports on the front.

Way less than a Transporter, but no shiny displays.

If I could get “good enough” sound for $50, with a DIY software set from the Internet, that’d rock.  It’d rock especially hard if I could make it do the software sync, too, but that might require changes to the Logitech Media Center.

EDIT: After thirty seconds of searching the Internet, yes, it can do this.  Someone else has done the hard part, even.  Neat.

 

 

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Logitech Media Manager and Perl 5.16

Sunday, March 17th, 2013

I have some Logitech Squeezeboxes.  Some of the older Slim Devices ones, too, actually, but they work together well.

The nice people at Logitech have dropped the Squeezebox line to make a new cloud-based product.  Not my cup of tea.

Problem: The Logitech Media Server software is old and balky, and installing it is a pain on new systems, because it includes binary versions of Perl modules.

Solution: Install perlbrew for the squeezebox user, install a supported Perl version there, and tweak the #! lines to use that squeezebox user’s perl install.

The right perl works fine, and since it’s in ~squeezebox, it won’t get screwed up when SuSE upgrades.

WAY easier than trying to fix the idiosyncratic Logitech Media Server software!

 

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