On 28/12/12 15:50, Chris Green wrote:
I want a compact, low power Linux box to use as a NAS and audio streamer (probably running mpd). This is a slightly odd mix of requirements, does anyone have any suggestions of what to look at?
How about just adding either a USB audio interface or even an HDMI audio breakout to one of the low power platforms ?
Not sure if RPi is the best choice for a NAS regardless, isn't the ethernet interface hanging off the USB bus and therefore CPU bound ? I'd say with both network and storage hanging off USB the CPU might become a bottleneck....not tried it though.
Either that or you may find a cheap nettop type device, not as silent or as low power as a RPi but without the clutter of external storage etc hanging off it.
Or (now this is a bit bonkers but it might work out)
Pick up an O2 Joggler from ebay (£50 or so) It already has analogue audio out so job done there
Plug some USB storage in the side, this is your media archive and has a boot partition for Linux (easy enough to do on a Joggler..I've had mine booting ubuntu before) There are a few well documented fixes to work around the aggressive thermal throttling and improve the sound output.
Now have it auto start a GUI mpd client like ario or impc or whatever is your preference and works best on a touchscreen.
Now you have your mpd server and it has a local front end...madness or genius ?...you decide.