Thanks! I finally did it.

[beartard]

I just wanted to thank Jeff and Tinkernut for the inspiration. I'm finally building my own wifi internet radio based on the Asus 520gu router. I've drooled over all the brilliant craftsmanship exhibited by others who have been as inspired. Mine is nowhere near as beautiful, but I have a Nintendo-themed bathroom for which this is tailor-made.

What I used:
Junked Nintendo Gamecube case from a local video game store (free)
Asus WL-520GU router with Tomato USB firmware (already had)
El cheapo USB audio adapter from ebay ($4)
Insignia flat speakers ($9)
Old 2GB pendrive
7-port USB hub with external power ($4)
CrystalFontz 634 USB display (20x4) (collecting dust for years)
5V 4A power supply ($9)
A moto-tool and scads of hacked up cable and hot glue

What I have so far:
First, I bought an antenna extension cable and routed it to the back of the gamecube so I could attach the original antenna on the case. I also put in a power jack to match my power supply. Power is run to a terminal strip in the bottom of the case and from there to the router and the hub. My display draws a lot of power from USB, as do the speakers. I didn't trust the router to handle everything by itself so I bought a higher-current supply. The "brick" format was a nice plus. There's very little space inside the Gamecube, but I needed to mount the board from the USB hub above the router board. I used two pieces of perfboard glued together at a 90-degree angle as a pedestal. Everything needing to be mounted was done with hot glue. Not the most elegant solution, but it worked a lot better than drilling for standoffs and fabricating mounting brackets for some of the parts.

The radio begins playing when powered up. It shows its name (MusiCube WiFi), station, artist, and track on the yellow-green, 20x4 display. The display is controlled via LCD4Linux. I had no luck finding it pre-compiled or compiling it myself with mpd support, so I have it reading from a text file. The text file is updated with mpd output by custom shell scripts by me. Control is from my Android smartphone or Linux PC.

What I need to do:
Clean it up. So far, it's just to prove to myself that it works. The opening for the Gamecube front panel was slightly too narrow but slightly too tall. I need to fill in the extra space. I also need to paint my display's bezel. It's been in my junk box for about 10 years and it shows. I want to route wires from the router's buttons to the original Gamecube buttons. Tomato has the red button mapped to shutdown, reboot, umount drives, or turn off wifi, depending on how long it is pressed. I'd like to be able to use that feature. Then there's the whole pop-up CD tray that opens to show the ugly guts of my monster. I may try to put some sort of physical controls there in the future, but I'm in no hurry.

Again, a big thanks to Jeff and all the others who've posted their projects on the web. The ideas were awesome!

[gerben]

Look really great. Nice touch to use a gamecube(, and naming it muicube). Any pictures of the inside? What are you using the usb-memory for?

[beartard]

I'm embarrassed to show the inside but I'll see what I can do. The USB drive has everything on it. Only basic settings are in nvram on the router. All the optware and startup scripts are on the drive. That way, I can just have a drop-in backup if anything goes wrong.

[beartard]

Alright, despite better judgment, here is a pic of the guts. There is still much to be done, but this gives the general idea.

[gerben]

No guts no glory, right
Doesn't look that horrible, though. It indeed fits just barely. Thanks for sharing.