Philip Fibiger

Well, it looks like the experiment to use the NSLU2 NAS device as a music server has come to an end. My NSLU2 bit the dust a week or so ago, refusing to come back from a reboot and offering up some random beep error codes. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back, but there were enough other problems with the setup to force a change.

Mt-daapd was great, but clearly still in development. It still didn’t have iTunes playlist support (although it is on the way), and due to the anemic hardware in the NSLU2, it was pretty slow to browse music from the Roku. Twonkyvision may have been faster, but had even greater compatibility problems. Having all of my music on a network drive, but running iTunes on my local PC was great for serving music to the Roku, but was terrible for using iTunes. Network latency made it difficult to do even simple operations, like adding more than a few songs to a playlist at a time. Syncing iPods was also incredibly time consuming (a playlist of more than a few gigs would take half an hour or more to crunch through). Finally, there was some weirdness while connecting two ipods at the same time (this may be a general iTunes on windows problem).

When I built this system, the Mac Mini didn’t exist. I don’t know that I would have thought it cost effective at the time, but it really is the perfect solution. I got a new NSLU2 under warranty, just so I could copy the files from one of the 160gb external drives to the other one, now connected to the Mac. Once I’m positive I’ve gotten all the data off the network device, the 2nd drive will also attach to the Mac, providing a backup for all the data. The mini is silent, it may consume more power than the NSLU2, but it’s a much more robust computing platform. Both iPods will connect to the mini via firewire, so syncing and creating playlists will be seamless again. I can use it as a general purpose server, serve video from it, it can even be a backup desktop. I’m looking for some good backup software, so I can use it (with the expansive external drives) as a backup solution for our home network. It’s configured to log in as the music server user on boot and load itunes. Any time a music cd is dropped into the mini’s drive, it rips it and adds the files to the iTunes library, and then spits the disc back out. Any time I notice a cd sticking out of the drive, I can just pop another in..I think I’ll make it through the rest of my CD collection a lot faster.

We can connect to the mini either through VNC or a KVM switch. It is really tiny, taking up only a fraction more desk space than the NSLU2 did.

Finally, with automator, collecting new music will be much easier. There are already examples of automator workflows that grab all mp3s off of a webpage, download them to the desktop, and automatically import them into iTunes.

I had been looking for a couple of years for a home music solution that would let me play my mp3 collection through my stereo without having computer(s) turned on. My ideal solution involved a NAS (network attached storage device) attached to my network, so that any of the computers in my network could manage the collection through a local copy of iTunes pointed to the server.

My initial research led me to the Turtle Beach Audiotron. It is/was the only the only digital audio receiver that could read files directly off a NAS via Samba. This was key, but the big hangup was that it can’t handle iTunes playlists (oh, and it’s discontinued, but there are still some units floating around ebay). It didn’t do wireless either, but that can be fixed with a ethernet->802.11b bridge.

After some more looking, and some posts to the Roku Forums, the solution seemed to be a Roku Soundbridge M1000 (or any uPnP media server at that point, but the choice of the Roku becomes important later), a Linksys NSLU2 NAS device, a USB2 hard drive, and a piece of software called the Twonkyvision UPnP Media Server.

The NSLU2 runs linux, and can be loaded with modified firmware to free up some memory space to allow you to load other software on it. The package is called UNSLUNG, and it’s relatively easy to set up.

Twonkyvision works ok w/ the NSLU2, but the features of the media server and the Roku aren’t as robust as the Roku and iTunes. It turns out Ron Pedde has written a full-featured DAAP (the iTunes audio rendezvous protocol) clone called mt-daapd that runs on the NSLU2. It doesn’t have iTunes playlist support yet, but Ron is actively working on it and mt-daapd will parse iTunes playlists in the next couple weeks.

So right now my PC runs iTunes to administer the collection and to create playlists. All iTunes data (mp3s as well as the xml playlist file) is stored via the network on the USB2 hard disk connected to the NSLU2. My computer can be shut off, and the Roku sees mt-daapd as an iTunes install ready to serve music.

I wrote up some instructions on how to get these particular pieces to work together. Here is the NSLU2 & mt-daapd HOWTO.