MightyOhm.com

Hi all,

Anyone heard or completed their own NAS -> Internet Radio. For me it is the perfect solution for storage and playback - but are there any NAS devices (outside of the big ££££ bracket) that have enough umpf to do this?

Been searching high and low yet cannot find anyone else who has done this, I personally converted a Lacie Ethernet Disk (big rack NAS) to be a distribution server and fully funtional machine but that has a nice little mini board with a Via chip and the ability to swap out memory. I am after something much smaller (1 or 2 drive capacity) and neater to sit next to my HIFI & Router and cable into both.

Any advice or hints would be gratefully received

Mark

What about the D-Link DNS-323? No personal experience, but it seems like that one is pretty hackable.

Still, NAS devices are notoriously expensive. Your best bet may actually be to try and find an older mini-itx EPIA board (to be had a few 10's of £'s on ebay), and build a small NAS out of it. Add some memory, a cheap case and a couple of HD's and you're all set.

Jeroen

Thank Jeroen,

Toyed with the idea of an mini/pico + case just wondered if there was an off the shelf NAS that wasn't designed for a rack that had enough juice.

I know the cost for a NAS is high in comparison to other offerings but my thinking is my purchase choice currently for full WAF is a Sonos + NAS, next step down being a hack job + NAS like the one done here on MightyOhm but then I came to the logical conclusion surely a NAS hacked is the neatest, gets wife price approval (yet Sonos cost is perfectly acceptable...) and uses less power sockets

For anyone else in the future if I come across and/or make one from an off the shelf NAS I will drop the info here - worst case the wife wins with the awe of Sonos....

Mark

I played with a Seagate Dockstar recently, attempting to do what you have described. I almost got it to work, but the radio station sound was very distorted. I pick two of them up recently for $25 each delivered. It is a promising platform.

Could that be related to the usb soundcard you are using? I see that the Dockstar is an ARM CPU @1.2GHz with a comfortable amount of RAM/Flash (according to the web).

The fact you seemed to get that far fills me with a little more hope - I guess I should start searching differently and see who has turned their NAS into something else that can be vaguely comparable in usage.

Going to see if I can lay my hands on one those Dockstars in the UK though for a silly price

Thanks mtennant!
Mark

I was using the Arch Linux ARM distro. It is one of the standard versions available for the Dockstar. Debian is also available. I got the USB soundcard to play the test sounds available in ALSA, so it was working. I ran into a wall of ignorance after that. I was so close. I really am in awe of people that can make this stuff "sing".