[kwlug-disc] Distributed Sound system - Questions and presentation offer

[Raul Suarez]

Hi,
First things first:I remember that a few years ago Richard Weait gave a presentation on setting this up. He showed some hardware devices to receive the sound in each room connected to the amplifier or speakers.I can't remember what those devices were, does anyone here remember?

The whole storyI am in the process of setting up a distributed sound system for home. I want to be able to play music on different rooms either the same music of different music on each room.
I want to be able to play my own music as well as streaming services such as Google Play or Spotify.I want to do it as inexpensive and energy efficient as possible.
I am almost all set and I can offer a presentation if I ever get it to work exactly as I want or at least to show the pitfalls I found
This is what I have done up to now:First try- I have an old headless computer connected to my sound system running VLC on start up
- I use VLC Mobile remote on the android to control what is playing on that room.Pro:- Sergiane is happy enough with this set up. It is a small home and cranking up the volume you can hear in every room.- Very easy to set up with little to no technical expertise, very easy to use.Con:- It only controls one room and only the music on the laptop. While VLC can access UPnP servers, I haven't found an Android VLC remote app that allows me to select the DLNA source.- It is only practical if there is only one person at home or we both are in the same room and want to hear the same thing.
Second try- I also have a RT-N54U router that I set up as a DLNA (UPnP) server with my music on a USB Drive- On the laptop I installed "rygel" with the playbin plug in which allows me to serve as a UPnP rederer (it plays music it receives through UPnP- On the android phone I use Bubble UPnP and can select local music or music from the DLNA server and play it on the phone or forward the music to the laptop renderer.Pro:- As I change rooms I can select a different renderer for a "follow me" experience (e.g. my Chrome cast)- I can also play music on my games room using the PS3 getting the music from the router Con:- I can only play content provided by a DLNA server. Google play music, Spotify and others do not provide DLNA- I cannot play the same content simultaneously on two rooms- A bit more complex to use as the user needs to select the server and the renderer. (Very small learning curve)
Third try (in progress)- There are a few Android applications that can get any thing that is playing in the phone and send it to one or multiple a DLNA renderers (AllStream, AirAudio)Pro:- I get all I want and need for nowCon:- The phone needs to be rooted to work properly- The user needs to controll the player and controlling the upnp forwarder app.
ToDo: - Root one of my devices and try AirAudio- Try leapcast on the old laptop to "ChromeCast" from the phone to the laptop.- Get Raspberry pi devices to work as sound endpoints for different rooms
 Raul Suarez Technology consultant Software, Hardware and Practices _________________ Twitter: rarsamx http://developerpractices.com http://rarsa.blogspot.com/ An eclectic collection of random thoughts
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