SqueezeEsp : The cheaper squeezebox in the world

[bgiraut]

Hello,

This post to present my new DIY squeezebox renderer base on ESP8266 2$ board and 4$ I2S DAC.



I have begin to implement the first slimproto protocol commands but it all ready play music from LMS after only few hours of work.
It shoud be quite simple to add buttons or remote control and may be a LCD display with touch screen control.

It can be a base for a portable squeezebox because it can be powered via 2 simple battery or LIPO battery and used with headphone.

Benoit,

[woodster]

Hi Benoit,

It looks really cool☺

Any chance of following the progress on github?

Hello,

This post to present my new DIY squeezebox renderer base on ESP8266 2$ board and 4$ I2S DAC.

[ATTACH]26167[/ATTACH]

I have begin to implement the first slimproto protocol commands but it all ready play music from LMS after only few hours of work.
It shoud be quite simple to add buttons or remote control and may be a LCD display with touch screen control.

It can be a base for a portable squeezebox because it can be powered via 2 simple battery or LIPO battery and used with headphone.

Benoit,

[markm9999]

A legend is born! Will absolutely be following this project!

[bpa]

How much RAM is available for audio buffer ?
From spec sheets it looks like only about 64kbytes ?

[bgiraut]

@woodster : it is a 'Proof of concept' for the moment but i will probably share the code on github soon. I use public library for Wifi management et audio decoding so I find normal to share this program with the community (https://github.com/earlephilhower/ESP8266Audio)

@bpa : You are right, ESP8266 is the low power embedded plateform. Actualy i use only 2k for buffering so I get some freeze that probably come from network congestion but i will try to allow more memory for buffering.
If the ESP8266 is to slow or do not have enought memory i will upgrade to his brother the ESP32. I have idee to switch to the VS1053 codec board that is dedicated to audio decoding. (http://www.vlsi.fi/fileadmin/datasheets/vs1053.pdf)

[bpa]

@bpa : You are right, ESP8266 is the low power plateform. Actualy i use only 2k for buffering so I get some freeze that probably come from network congestion but i will try to allow more memory for buffering.

With that small amount of ram - it is likely it will only be playing continously low bitrate MP3 streams. The SLiMP3 player has 1Mbyte of buffer.

[networx]

ESP32 with 520k SRAM should work.

Very interesting project, will follow!

[fizze]

I've got an ESP-WROOM-32 lying around, and always wanted to try the buddy casino mp3 (link ESP8266 version: https://github.com/espressif/ESP8266_MP3_DECODER ESP32 version:https://github.com/MrBuddyCasino/ESP32_MP3_Decoder) stuff and eventually get it to work as a cheap squeeze-client as well.
I went for the ESP32 because of improved power consumption and because apparently it works without extra SRAM.

Please push your code somewhere public, github, bitbucket or whatever, so that the community might eventually help port the complete squeezebox protocol. I think that the esp chips are suited well to run this kind of workload.

[s2kiwi]

Very interesting. I've had great results with that DAC on raspberry pi zeros so will watch this one very closely. Top effort mate!

[Jyvindar]

Great project

I thought about porting / implementing the slimproto protocol for ESP devices a couple of times. I would like to contribute to this, if you would publish your approach somewhere.

Cheers,
Jyvindar

[brjhaverkamp]

This indeed looks awesome.

What DAC did you use?
My personal usecase would likely be speaker based. With a MAX98357A or similar.

Did you get further with the slim protocol?
Let us know. And please please open a github for the source, in whatever state it is in! We can all support improving it and and make this happen.

Regards,

Bert

[badboygolf16v]

Just like to say, I think this looks very cool too!

[fizze]

I used the mp3 decoder from MrBuddyCasino on an ESP32, without DAC, just to see how the quality was.
It's not bad, I guess it can be compared to FM radio with mediocre reception. Much better than I expected, anyway.

I tuned it to stream.mp3 on my LMS server, and this worked quite alright. There is quite some lag when controlling it due to streaming, but thats ok for zero effort I guess.

There is also this project https://github.com/karawin/Ka-Radio Ka-Radio and https://github.com/karawin/Ka-Radio32 Ka-Radio32 which further expands on this work.
There is also an Android app to remotely control the radio.
Maybe this can server as a starting point, since streaming and control protocols are already implemented?

Not sure how much memory is available when this is flashed though....

[Paul Webster]

That is impressive. Up to 320kbps MP3 plus a method to play other formats by adding more hardware and it is being actively worked on.
If the developer can be persuaded that LMS would bring a lot more options ... then maybe would help/advise on implementing Squeezelite/Slimproto.

[fizze]

Yes, the ESP32 is much more powerful than the ESP8266. And I did not get any stutters through WiFi, even without extra SRAM as buffer. Granted, I was next to the WiFi AP, but still...

I'd be happy if the ESP could work as a regular client without going through stream.mp3, as a first step. Not sure how much of the squeeze procotol would have to be implemented, but I guess the squeezelite and squeezeslave sources can give insights on that.