Time Capsule as 'server'

[dtp521]

I'm looking to buy a squeezebox and connect it to my apple time capsule (which holds a copy of my itunes library). The theory is that as its always on and I can access the songs without turning my macbook on. Is there a way to install squeezecenter onto time capsule to make this work (or is there another fix)?

Thanks

[mortslim]

I have no idea how to answer your question, but...

I was looking into getting a Time Capsule myself because I had a bad experience with an HP NAS (called the MediaVault) and I have also read that there are problems with the Windows Home Server software, so when I heard about the Apple product, I have become interested in it.

What are your experiences with it (of course other than for use with SqueezeCenter.

[dtp521]

Time Capsule is great and did everything Apple said it would. Setting it up as my home router was easy, using the storage capacity with both my 5 year old compaq laptop and my one month old macbook pro works like a charm. I think time machine is doing what it needs to do but haven't confirmed it is backing everything up as it is meant to.

Now I just need to work out if I can/how I can connect a squeezebox to Time Capsule without having the laptop open.

[timmerweb]

Bump on this, as I'm very interested in getting an answer too.

I suspect the answer is basically "No" for the time being, since the way I understand it, there is no way to install the server software on the Time Capsule, so unless you have a computer that can always be on running the server software, you're probably out of luck.

If so, I think that's a terrible shame and a major feature gab in the Slim Devices products. People are moving more and more away from desktops to laptops, which obviously aren't appropriate for running server software like the SlimCentre. Common server-type operations (eg file and print servers) are being moved to closed-box appliances like the Time Capsule.

The solution is for the Squeebox to be able to directly access NAS devices using a standard protocol such as Samba or WebDAV, and not require any server software at all. This way any NAS device could be used and the need for an always-on desktop would be eliminated. My only desktop computer is positively ancient and well over-due for retirement.


-Tim

[bpa]

I think putting SC on Timecapsule may be a bad idea because SC can be CPU intensive (e.g. searches, scanning transcoding) and the Timecapsule can also do routing which would probably suffer when SC grabs the CPU as the Timecapsule only has a 500MHZ ARM processor with 128Mb RAM.

[pippin]

I think putting SC on Timecapsule may be a bad idea because SC can be CPU intensive (e.g. searches, scanning transcoding) and the Timecapsule can also do routing which would probably suffer when SC grabs the CPU as the Timecapsule only has a 500MHZ ARM processor with 128Mb RAM.

There's a lot of NASs out there with much less capacity. If TC has any scheduling worth the name this should not be an issue.
But is it possible to install any 3rd party apps on TC at all?

[bpa]

There's a lot of NASs out there with much less capacity

Agreed - but very few NASs have 4 ethernet ports and act as a Wireless 802.11g base-stations as well. The few that do seem to have wireless connectivity issues as soon as users put extra load on the system for which it was not designed (e.g. install SC).

All I am doing is sounding a warning - if you get SC on board a TimeCapsule - don't be surprised by routing/throughput issues if it is your main router for a home network.

[denmennis]

There is an issue with TC and SB. People are having connection problems that have yet to be worked out.

[lreinstein]

I am in the process of setting up TC and a 500GB USB drive hooked up to it. My goal (not there yet)is to create a music server using iTunes on my Mac to organize files and tags, and of course serve as a Squeezecenter for my SB3.

The TC setup fairly easily as promised. And, attaching the USB drive to it allowed the drive to be readily recognized on the network. My idea is to use the USB drive as the primary music server and have Time Capsule the backup.

Anyway, one of the odd and disturbing issues is the transfer speed from the TC to the USB drive. You would think it would be at really fast USB speeds, but it must somehow require the Mac in the loop so that it is very slow....maybe 0.5MB/s. Strange.