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[scriver]

And yet the incredible hulk could be argued to be a loosely based sequel to the Ang Lee Hulk movie.

[Jopax]

Iron Man was first tho, and the first with a post credits teaser for the Cap movie, which makes it the first in the MCU.

[wierd]

I had a WTF today, after realizing that hobbyists have created enough kit to make tiny internet radio dongles/receivers for home stereo equipment-- and wondering why such devices do not exist on the open market as finished products.

Spoiler: Long and involved breakdown of the hobbyist kit available to do this (click to show/hide)

OK, first up, there exists a fairly cheap WiFi "SD Card reader", that is fairly infamous. The Z-Sun card reader.

https://www.amazon.com/Memory-Reader-MicroSD-iPhone-Android/dp/B00U70J9UA/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1510671542&sr=8-4&keywords=zsun+wifi+card+reader

Long story short, this thing's security is a complete and total joke, with telnet left open with a hard coded username and password direct to a root shell. Dont buy this thing for any reason other than as a very inexpensive SoC for doing fun projects with.  It is also fully supported by OpenWRT, and the wifi chip in it supports multiple wifi connections simultaneously.  See this nifty little page about it.

https://wiki.hackerspace.pl/projects:zsun-wifi-card-reader

Its main claims to fame are: Fairly powerful for its size, has a microSD card reader, pretty neat Wifi capabilities, USB port powered, VERY TINY.

Ok-- now, armed with that-- let's see another bit of fun hobbyist kit: The micro USB hub board.

https://www.tindie.com/products/mux/nanohub-tiny-usb-hub-for-hacking-projects/

Taken with the teardown pics on the hackerspace page for the zsun, you can clearly see how these two things were almost made for each other.  I strongly suspect that if you unsolder the card reader from the zsun mainboard, then attach this hub board instead, you could then attach the card reader's header to port 1 of the hub, and another USB device to port 2 on the hub, and both could be controlled by the zsun SoC, simultaneously.

With me so far? Good.

Now, let's look at one last, final bit of hardware kit. Syba USB audio dongle.

https://mightyohm.com/blog/2008/10/inside-the-syba-sd-cm-uaud-usb-stereo-audio-adapter/

You can clearly see where I am going with this. Unsolder the USB connector, then directly solder the board to the mini hub's remaining USB header, and stack it on top of the SDCard reader. 

The zsun should now have both an SDcard slot, and a USB audio device attached.

Now the software:

On linux, there are kernel drivers for this audio device, and those drivers are available for openwrt.
https://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/usb.audio

Next, we install the Music Player Daemon
https://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/usb.audio#mpd

then lighttpd (and php!, and MySQL)
https://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/http.lighttpd
https://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/php
https://jimtech.wordpress.com/2016/06/19/openwrt-mysql-server-install/

then finally, put netjukebox on the lighttpd server.
http://www.netjukebox.nl/install.php

Give it a sexy 3d printed case to close it all up in, and you have local storage for MP3/OGG files, a wifi ethernet card to connect to the local network (even the internet for internet radio, since MPD supports doing that, and netjukebox will let you add such internet streams to the play list!), and you can hook it up to the AUX stereo input of your home theater system, and control the whole thing using the web portal.

As far as I can see, such things could exist in the 50$ pricepoint, and basically be just COTS assembled kit in fancy injection molded shells, without ANY software development. Just plug it into the USB port on the back of the home theater head unit, and put a stereo patch cable on. Done.

There must be some reason the dont exist already.

[Helgoland]

Maybe nobody's realized there's a market for that stuff. Or maybe there's no market.

Y'know, you could just make a kickstarter (or produce a couple yourself) and see how they sell.

[Rolan7]

I'm easily overwhelmed by anything AV related, to the point that things like Chromecast deeply confused me (I just watch things on my computer...) but I'm trying to understand.

What's the benefit of this device over an outdated phone with a SIM card, a Raspberry Pi, or even I guess a Chromecast or similar?

[wierd]

Ok.  You know sites like https://www.iheart.com/ ?

Those are internet radio sites.  They work by encoding a DRM free mpeg audio stream, and letting any device that understands that stream, play it back.  In the case of iheart, there are several simultaneously sent stream formats that you could use, the most useful being a shoutcast stream. You can add those stream locations as if they were files to be played by mpd, and it will happily connect to the internet and play them for you. EG-- you dont need their app on your phone, dont need a computer to play it in the browser-- Just pick it from the menu, turn off the phone, and enjoy. You could have hundreds of these added to your media library in the web portal, and just pick whatever you wanted to listen to. Access to hundreds of radio stations all over the place, FOR FREE.

OR,

Say you are in your living room. You have a fancy home theater system, and you would like to listen to some internet radio, or you would like to play an MP3 collection, or something similar, but you dont want to have to dig to get out media, or anything like that.  You would like to just plop on your couch/recliner, and pick the station/playlist of your choosing, and just rock that shit.  Alternatively, you are hosting a party, and want to have the theater system play a very, very, very extended mix-- Or even shake it up, and you let your party goers decide what to play juke-box style.

Well, a device like this comes to the rescue in all of those cases.

You whip out your cellphone, connect to the web portal, and make your selection. Magically, the song/stream plays through your home theater setup.

In the case of the party, you either set up the mix playlist in advance, and just tell it to play--- OR, you give your guests access to the portal, and let them go to town as they rock out at your party.

This is functionality that is similar to that found in home assistants, but without all the creepy as fuck tracking, without all the scary as hell EULAs, and with the capacity to use local centralized file stores. (Even a local NAS if you have one, since this thing could easily just mount a network file system, and play from there.)

There is definitely a market for it-- I frequently see posts to geek websites asking how to make things like this. The most recent was from slashdot.

https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/17/11/12/0439225/ask-slashdot-can-you-convert-old-ipods-into-a-home-music-streaming-solution

He specifically wanted something he could use to stream to his whole house, with a web interface. (Gee..... That's exactly what this is!)

[Rolan7]

Gotcha. My dad (an AV buff) does most of that with a fairly robust android device (which replaced a chromecast). But I don't think he's rooted it like his phones, and the price point is slightly higher IIRC.

He has an original Xbox with xbmc too, but he hasn't used it in a while heh.

Thanks for the explanation! I try to understand this media stuff but it just doesn't interest me as much as it does certain friends and family. I usually watch shows on my phone, while doing other stuff. I wish Netflix would let me close the screen and save bandwidth!

[milo christiansen]

$50? I bet you could get dedicated devices made for less than half that.

Maybe nobody's realized there's a market for that stuff. Or maybe there's no market.

Y'know, you could just make a kickstarter (or produce a couple yourself) and see how they sell.

^^^ Good idea, I would back it. Well, I would back it if I had internet besides mobile data.

[Baffler]

Isn't that basically just streaming with an extra step though? Most laptops can plug into TVs or external speakers after all. I don't know how many people would be willing to pay for the ability to use their phones to control a setup that's already probably wireless and never leaving the room it's set up in let alone their house anyway.

[Lord Shonus]

A Fire TV stick or Roku device does this just fine already, other than being controlled by a dedicated remote instead of your phone.

[Haspen]

Firefox what have you done.

[smjjames]

Firefox what have you done.

What did they do?

Also, minor wtf, autocorrect kept trying to change do into don't three times before giving up.

[Haspen]

Firefox Quantum just released and it even broke Classic Theme Restorer. It broke ton of add-ons I used. Nobody is like I had it set.

I can't even change tabs to not-on-top anymore.

Whyyyyyyyyyyyy

[overseer05-15]

Firefox Quantum just released and it even broke Classic Theme Restorer. It broke ton of add-ons I used. Nobody is like I had it set.

I can't even change tabs to not-on-top anymore.

Whyyyyyyyyyyyy

Because you should use chrome.

[Haspen]

Because you should use chrome.

I've been a Firefox loyalist since it had number 2 next to it, and I won't change

EDIT: I managed to fix most of thingies back to as they should be, tabs remain on top but I will deal with this heresy tomorrow.