Streaming music may now come from somewhere in the cloud to an app on your phone and be sent to the client built in to almost every entertainment device you own, but there was a time when the bleeding edge lay in dedicated streaming device that connected to your existing set-up. One of the players in this market was Logitech with their Squeezebox line of products, and while the original hardware may have been discontinued it remains very much alive among its dedicated userbase due to the free nature of the Logitech Media Server software and implementations of the slimproto streaming protocol in players. Now you can create a network player on about as cheap hardware as it is possible to find, because [Bgiraut] has produced a client for the ESP32 and ESP8266.
The software can be found on GitHub, and comes with the warning that it’s an early proof-of-concept rather than a polished release. It has two options for playback that both require a little bit of extra hardware, an I2S DAC for uncompressed streams or a VS1053 codec module for compressed ones, but neither of those need be expensive.
You can find Logitech Media Server from its download page, and give this device a try. Meanwhile we’ve covered many Squeezebox implementations, including ones on the Raspberry Pi, and the PogoPlug.
Thanks [joyofdivisions] for the tip.
Glad to see Squeezebox community still going strong. I really appreciate Logitech keeping their server mysqueezebox.com alive, as I use the SB primarily for radio station streaming. In which case the server simply holds my favorites and does the redirect. SB is truly thin client as it can’t even memorize and hold in non-volatile RAM a dozen URL’s. This SB renderer project is a great way to keep the hardware alive. Thank you!
Better place to download Squeezebox client is http://downloads.slimdevices.com/nightly/?ver=7.9 . They are quite stable and much more recent than official builds
Cool!
I still own the original Slim Devices product, the Slimp3 (as well as three Squeezeboxes). It didn’t even have a case – just exposed PCBs mounted to a piece of bent smoked acrylic. Stories tell how the early devices were hand soldered.
The Squeezebox was all Slim Devices and not really Logitech at all. It sure wasn’t “Logitech with THEIR Squeezebox”. They merely bought the company, and things mostly went downhill from there. The original company insisted on very long lasting VFD displays, despite the significant expense. Logitech moved to LCDs that were reputed to fade and have limited life.
I always saw Roku as an early Slim Devices ripoff, but Roku was able to grow and continue as a company. Logitech’s resources should have greatly favored Slim Devices in that race, but it didn’t happen.
EMPEG was the same bag. Bought out, good ideas taken, projecct left to die.
Community still around some 18years and counting later (it may be even more)
Pretty sure they were OLEDs and not LCDs that replaced the VFDs. I love all three display types, just a shame that OLEDs have such a relatively short lifetime, although that is improving with recent developments.
Really cool!
I have a multiroom installation based on LMS and several old smartphones running Android Squeezebox clients and remote controls. But as the phones are aging, and don’t get updates anymore (even LineageOS abandoned them), I was thinking of switching to RasPis, but this is even better.
Are there no alternatives/workarounds/hacks to mysqueezebox.com for the squeezebox in the meantime? If the server really goes down, I will use my own rpi server…to fix it, but for all those with only the player device, it will be annoying – I guess.
Wow, this is exactly what I was waiting for, since Esp32 was launched !!!
I didn’t have hope for Esp8266 but I was pretty sure the client part would be portable on Esp32.
I already have a multiroom installation based on Squeezebox:
– SB radio in my kitchen
– 2 Squeezebox Duet in my 2 work space
– Music stored on my Synology NAS
– Squeezebox server on a RasPi 3 with Max2play (this RasPi was also used as player with an I2S DAC before I’ve found the Duets on a flea market).
I was missing a portable speaker on battery with integrated Squeezebox client in it. I’ve started building it based on Picoreplayer on a Pi Zero + I2S DAC DAC + 1.5$ cheap tiny 5V amp. But if it’s based on ESP it’s even better.
Anyone is welcomed to help with the effort; the code needs some added stability. From my end, I’m thinking of adding support for 1.54 SPI e-paper displays which are getting cheaper and cheaper on the usual Chinese merchants.
Yes, the fact that SB refuses to die and actually keeps getting better is a fantastic tribute to the community developments still alive and kicking behind the ecosystem. There’s even an Alexa skill for LMS now that provides access to every command in the GUI by voice. Long live LMS !
I started to discover the Squeezebox lineup with the Squeezebox boom and am a proud owner of a few. Thanks to people like ralphy, boomx2 (just to name 2) and the vast possibilities I’m one of those people keeping things alive.
So happy to combine custom clock helper and SuperDateTime on server side, with custom clock applet on client side, turning an 02 joggler into a stand alone music source of positive vibes. This device runs squeezeplay OS 3.03 for openframe, featuring LMS 7.8, most recent version of SDT 5.11.11. Added SMB sharing on the os and now can add songs to the audio library from a share. The whole thing runs from a memory stick (large capacity to hold the music library, super small form factor to make it a beauty) . A full week weather forecast on screen!
Other use of SuperDateTime in combination with the boom is also super. Turning the big knob when off shows the forecast from now until 7 days ahead, day by day.
With DLNA plugin on the server side and ‘stream what you hear’ on the laptop possibilities increase.
A pi zero will soon bring good speakers back to life. Still looking for a good amp to drive them headless.
Thanks to all the people keeping the slimp concept alive. May the joy you all bring through your creativity continue at least as long as TCP/IP over WiFi will exist!