MPD on my new Alix single board computer

[nyc_paramedic]

I just wanted to share my experience with running MPD on my newly acquired PC Engines ALIX 3c2 single board computer.  Maybe someone would be interested in the same...

So, I originally had MPD up and running on a Dell GX110 (P3 733Mhz ,128MB RAM) computer I had found in the trash. The PC sat in the corner of my listening room serving up FLAC via USB to a USB DAC.

There were several reasons for wanting to replace this unit:

It was a very ugly beige.
It drew almost 49 watts from the outlet, according to my Kill-A-Watt meter. (Electricity is very expensive in NYC these days)
Most importantly, with two fans, it was loud. The machine had a very audible high pitched whine that I could easily hear when listening to classical music.

I wanted something silent, small, very energy inefficient, and relatively inexpensive.
 

I have been happily using a PC Engines WRAP SBC (single board computer) that is running Monowall firewall software for the last couple of years, and was happily surprised to see that their new ALIX offerings based on AMD's Geode low power CPUs were sporting USB ports.

The Alix SBC (http://www.pcengines.ch/alix3c2.htm) has a 500 MHz AMD Geode LX800, 2 mini-PCI, 1 serial, 1 ethernet, 256MB RAM, and two USB ports. The whole unit, in it's case, is approx. 8x5x2 and runs on a small 12 volt, 12 watt adapter. The board was $125 USD from Netgate.

After a little bit of research I found out that there is a distribution called Voyage Linux. Basically a stripped down Debian for embedded machines that keeps Debian's apt package manager. After a quick note to the developers they were more than happy to send me a kernel compiled with sound, USB, and ALSA modules --their included kernels compiled with firewall and wireless networking in mind.

After I set up Voyage Linux on a  512MB partition on a spare CF card, installed the kernel and ALSA debs, apt-getted the MPD and ALSA packages, and set up my bedroom desktop to export my music files via NFS, I was up and running.

MPD works beautifully with no clicks, skips, or pauses. Files are buffered 100% to RAM  before play. I control it over WiFi  with a Thinkpad  on the couch via GMPC. Top shows no more than 8% load. The unit draws no more than 6 watts from the outlet. Even though it fetches FLAC files via NFS, changing songs is almost instantaneous.

Thank you MPD!

Disclaimer: No affiliation to PC Engines. Just a happy customer.



 

[Qball]

good to hear . This is still something I want todo one time. (I now use a noisy mac mini for this).

[mowses]

The old question when it comes to flash drives. Does the Voyage Linux write to the flashdrive or does it reduce the acces to the drive to the possible minimum?

Apart from that 6 W sounds pretty damn good!

[nyc_paramedic]

The old question when it comes to flash drives. Does the Voyage Linux write to the flashdrive or does it reduce the acces to the drive to the possible minimum?

Apart from that 6 W sounds pretty damn good!

From what I understand, the file system is read only. You have to issue the command "remountrw", thus making the CF temporarily writable  in order to edit any config files or use apt get to install any packages. So, I keep all of of the mpd files (playlist, pid, last state) on the NFS disk.

I have to correct my wattage figure; didn't realize I have my alarm clock plugged into the same strip. The ALIX alone draws 3 watts when playing FLACs with mpd.