Have A Face For Radio?

The help of fellow members of the Austrian technology collective/hackerspace [Otelo] allowed [Georg] to develop a networked audio streaming board, with less than $20 worth of components. Dubbed the OggStreamer for obvious reason, it’s designed to relay audio from a mixing board to an Icecast server (an open source implementation of SHOUTcast) in real-time. The board is based on the STM8 Discovery kit and the Xport Pro. It features stereo input, an onboard OGG Vorbis encoder, and (to top it off) is running uClinux. We think it’s very well thought out – but don’t take our word for it… the OggStreamer won second place last year in the Lantronix XPort Pro Design Contest, and [Georg] has documented it extensively (pdf).

19 thoughts on “Have A Face For Radio?

  1. This certainly did not cost only 20 euro. STM8 is at least 10 euro (with shipping). Plus OggEncoder about 25 euro. Plus BOM 12 euro. I’m not sure that connectors are included there so this might be additional extra. Plus XPort Pro that is in 40-50 euro range.

    So I do not know from where this 20 euro is taken from but it looks more like 100 euro to me.

  2. Just to clarify, the Bill of Materials (page 11 of PDF) includes components in addition to the Xport. Totals up to 12.99 euro worth of components @1K units. Even with the cost of the Xport and without the volume discount, it seems very feature-rich for the price.

  3. stupid moderation ate my post (there was link in it to nslu2 wiki) ….

    OggStreamer doesnt run uclinux. Xport Pro does, but project didnt use its capabilities, otherwise they would just get rid of the microconteroller and connect encoder directly to the Xport.

    Price is also false. Its $13 excluding pcb, Xport Pro, and for >1000 of each part.
    I cant find vs1053 ANYWHERE for under $10.

  4. Line in, egg beater, processor, ethernet. Wired all the way, not radio. Radio radiates, audio streams are directed. Even listening to a stream of a real station over the web, and retransmitting it at the other end is NOT radio.
    Credit for having metering in the line, instead of a smasher.

  5. Sorry for the missunderstanding – as described in the Doku – The $13 refer to the PCB and Parts EXCLUDING the Xport PRO, Assembling and Housing in Quantities of 1k.

    The VS1053 costs 2.48 Euros in 1k Quantities, ordered directly at VLSI

    (http://verkkokauppa.planeetta.net/epages/Planeetta.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/vlsi/Categories/%22Circuits%20and%20KITs%22/VS1053)

    Nevertheless we are opensourcing the software soon – if anybody interessted in becoming this thing a community project, contact me at georg@otelo.or.at

  6. Just to add the $13 was kind of “special” calculation to make the thing attractive for the Design Contest (cause cost optimization was also evaluated …)

    @Kris Lee you are totally right – building this thing as hobbiest is around ~$100

  7. @Drone

    There are NO USABLE integer only encoders out there, the only one I know (intel primitives something something) runs at 1/4 of the speed at 300MHz ARM. Do you know any other “low-cost codec chip” that can encode ogg in hardware?

    As for the project, Xport PRO has IO pins you can program directly, so in the end this could be only Xport PRO + VS1053. Still Xport PRO is like $60.

    What could be done to make this more universal and not dependant on XPort is to develop V-USB ATTiny2313 dongle talking to VS1053. That way any platform with USB host could stream encoded OGG audio.

    @Georg exactly, in 1k Quantities. Only places I could find VS1053 in small quantities (below 250 units) was wait for it … 16 EUROS. Of course I can get samples, but the price for hobby/diy is sad.

    WTF is with moderation, my comment with link is still missing. This is retarded, I cant post a link to adafruit …

    Topic is called “MP3/OGG/whatever hardware encoder with mic”, google will give you a direct link.
    There are people in that forum talking about similar projects – streaming OGG encoded audion over network/wifi. One of them is called “Locus Sonus Audio Streaming Project”

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