|  | May 22, 2008
The "GTA-PC" April 14, 2007
The "Digg" Case January 19, 2007
The "ITX-Laptop" December 07, 2006
The "Tortoise Beetle" October 02, 2006
The "DOS Head Unit" August 31, 2006
The "Janus Project" August 05, 2006
The "Leela PC" June 26, 2006
Nano-ITX in a Football May 17, 2006
The "EPIA Alloy Mod" April 11, 2006
Neatorama's Collection of Case Mods |
| | | | February 18, 2006
The "Rundfunker" October 24, 2005
The "ITX TV" October 06, 2005
The K'nex-ITX August 05, 2005
The "Waffle Iron PC" July 21, 2005
The "Supra-Server" July 18, 2005
The "Mega-ITX" July 07, 2005
The "Encyclomedia" May 25, 2005
The "Accordion ITX" May 16, 2005
The "FileServerRouterSwitch" May 15, 2005
The "Mini Falcon" May 13, 2005
The "Bender PC" May 11, 2005
The "BBC ITX B" May 10, 2005
The "Frame" April 20, 2005
The "Jeannie" March 09, 2005
The "Cool Cube" January 30, 2005
First Nano-ITX Project? January 17, 2005
The "iGrill" January 15, 2005
The "Gumball PC" December 15, 2004
The "Deco Box" December 03, 2004
The "TERA-ITX" |
| | | | October 06, 2004
The "Coealacanth-PC" September 17, 2004
The "Gramaphone-ITX-HD" August 26, 2004
The "C1541 Disk Drive ITX" August 25, 2004
The "SEGA-ITX" August 13, 2004
The "Quiet Cubid" August 06, 2004
The "BMWPC" July 14, 2004
The "Moo Cow Moo" July 02, 2004
The "Mini Mesh Box" June 17, 2004
Jukebox ITX May 24, 2004
The "ERN005PC" (KANA) March 13, 2004
The "Underwood No. 5" February 04, 2004
The "Humidor CL" January 23, 2004
The "Attache Server" January 22, 2004
"Racing The Light" January 21, 2004
VIA's Flat Panel DevKits January 20, 2004
The "Ambulator I" January 19, 2004
The "Borg Appliance" December 19, 2003
The Gingerbread Village Server December 04, 2003
Custom PC's XmasTreePC December 01, 2003
"Windows XP Box" Full alphabetical archive on right hand side of page... |
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The "Rundfunker"
Introduction
The Rundfunker is a tabletop mp3 player that scans the WLAN for local audio sources and is able to play shared audio-files. It has a built-in 2-way speaker system, a LCD display and a very simple yet powerful user interface. The device is independent of any external peripheral equipment - all hardware components are integrated into the appealingly designed housing including an exclusive aluminium front panel. All you need is 12 V DC power supplied e.g. by a mains adapter. The Rundfunker is driven by various parts we developed from scratch - such as a customized Linux, operating software implemented in Java and a circuit board for connection of hardware (LCD display and buttons). The idea of the Rundfunker was born at the FH Augsburg, University of Applied Sciences. Our 5-man team (Mathias Bauer, Christoph Beckmann, Christian Leberfinger, Stefan Loibl, Jan Peuker) has designed and implemented the entire software and has made it available as open source. Moreover we constructed two fully functional prototypes - all in all we worked about 5 months on this project.
The idea of developing a WLAN radio emerged from the desire to combine the advantages of a FM receiver with those of a personalised collection of music on a PC. A FM receiver usually is compact, portable and uncomplicated in use. Unfortunately the programme of the radio stations is not everyone's cup of tea. The mp3 files on a personal computer could be an alternative, however they have the huge drawback of normally being located on a more or less immobile computer. Thus they can hardly be heard beyond the four walls of the room the PC stands in (without annoying the neighbours).
Our Rundfunker is an elegant solution for this circumstance. It is a radio-shaped mp3 player that offers wireless access to all mp3s that are shared in the local network and thus isn't subject to the volume-restrictions of the popular mp3 USB sticks with unhandy tiny buttons that nowadays have a capacity of only few gigabytes. Via WLAN the Rundfunker can deal with huge audio-libraries with hypothetically unlimited size.
Rundfunker is mobile, yet not made for real portable use like Walkman and co - it shows its strength within the reach of the wireless home network: The device doesn't have to make do with an ultra-compact housing like an iPod, but consists of a cubic box (dimensions: 21×21×18 centimeters) that holds enough volume for the integrated 2-way speaker system, an exclusive aluminium front panel containing easy to use buttons and a clearly arranged LCD display.
A typical use case for the Rundfunker would be: the study in the upper floor has a PC with a hard disk filled with your most precious and well-sorted songs e.g. recorded from your old vinyl records. Your Rundfunker is situated in your kitchen and can play these mp3s via WLAN. The listener has various possibilities of influencing the playback. By means of the easy to use interface he can choose his favourite album or genre or simply browse through the entire collection of mp3s.
A power supply is the only thing you need to take the Rundfunker into operation. To enable the Rundfunker to play your songs, you can use the comfortable web interface and configure your IP-address and your shared audio-sources. You can also use the Java-Applet in the web interface to operate your Rundfunker by remote control.
Motherboard
We decided to use a completely passively cooled VIA EPIA motherboard. We agreed on buying the MS 10000E LVDS, because it offers serial and audio ports shaped as pin headers, a PCI slot and has a built in compact-flash connector that we use to boot Troubadix, our specially customized Knoppix derivative. Unfortunately, the 12V DC-DC ATX power supply unit we ordered didn't fit onto the board, because it interfered with the massive cooler of our EPIA. We first thought of using an ATX power extension, but fortunately our university's locksmith was able to perfectly mill the cooler the way we needed it. WLAN connectivity is offered by a PCI card - having quite a big antenna on the Rundfunker's side was our very intention and fixing it directly to the PCI card was the easiest way to achieve this aim.
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