[LAU] Small Rotter / remote icecast box thoughts.

[Len Ovens]

On Fri, 31 Jan 2014, drew Roberts wrote:

> Already sent to the Rivendell users list several days ago but so far nobody
> seems to be doing exactly this so I thought the wider linux audio community
> might have some valuable insight.
>
> Looking for ideas / thoughts / discussion / advice on:
>
> a small box to put in remote locations.
>
> it will:
>
> have a tuner card(s) or an external radio(s)
> record the input from the radio via rotter (other?)
> send to an icecast instance for remote listening.
> be low power and inexpensive.
> Hopefully be able to handle more than one station on the same box.

So does this ask about both the box and hardware?
Hardware: Hardware depends on the audio IF. If The IF is pci(e) then you 
need sort of a standard mother board. The lowest power ones I know are the 
Intel Atom boards about 6 inches square, and seem to have good latency 
performance at low power. There is one in particular that only needs 12v 
in and figures the rest. but there are also atx power supplies that are 
about as big as the atx power socket that only need 12v as well. If you 
are willing to use USB audio IF (I don't know of any USB radio cards, and 
the chances of getting more than one reciever on one card lies with pci(e) 
cards).
Try 
http://www.audioscience.com/internet/products/tuner_cards/tunercards.htm
Only problem is these will cost more than the rest of the system. Everyone 
figures radio stations are a license to print money, and they want some.

Software: Question: are you wanting to monitor live audio from the 
receivers or listen to the archives? Achive listening would be easiest 
with an http server, just list the files and download what you want to 
your favourite player. Live would be streaming and jack would do that best 
as it could take the same audio going to rotter and stream it. WHat I 
don't know is how well the streamers work with jack. I have only used IDJC 
for that, but that is not really set up for remote operation so much as 
live shows, so it would be overkill. Also it would want X and libs.


--
Len Ovens
www.ovenwerks.net