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How to Use your Portable Devices to Remotely Play Music on your Stereo

Technology is evolving at a rapid pace. With new products, or better versions of older products being released every year, older products are rendered useless. Every household has an assortment of ‘outdated’ technology. Technology left unused for years, covered with layers of dust.

But often the usefulness of these ‘outdated’ products is only limited by our creativity and willingness to experiment.

I recently noticed an old Sony stereo system, and an old Dell Pentium III desktop lying around the house. At first I though about disposing of these, but then I thought better. I ended up with a setup that allows me to remotely play music on the stereo system using any device with wi-fi and a browser, whether it be a desktop, laptop, Palm Pilot, HP iPAQ, or a cell phone.

How it basically works:

The Dell computer, which is connected to the stereo system, acts as a server on the LAN. Other devices on the LAN can either stream songs to the server, or remotely access the server and launch locally stored songs on it.

The following explains how I accomplished this setup. It assumes that you already know how to setup a wireless router.

The following hardware was used:

- Sony Stereo System

- Old Dell CPU (500 MHZ Pentium III, 128 MB Ram, 6 GB Hard Drive)

- A Y cable (male stereo 1/8-inch plug to two male RCA plugs)

- An Ethernet cable

- Speedtouch wireless router

- Monitor

- Keyboard

- Mouse

Note: The monitor and mouse is only required when the computer is being set up. Once the software has been installed and correctly configured, the computer only needs a keyboard attached to it to boot up. If a laptop is being used as the server instead, the extra hardware is not needed.

The following software was used:

-Microsoft Windows XP Professional Edition

-VLC Media Player

-TightVNC server and viewer

Note: The same setup could be obtained using a different operating system, such as Linux or Mac OS, since the software required is available for these operating systems as well.

What I did, step by step

1) I hooked up the monitor, keyboard, and mouse to the Dell CPU

2) I powered it on, inserted the Windows XP CD, and booted off the CD

3) Following the onscreen steps, I formatted my 6 GB hard drive, and installed Windows XP on it

4) After the installation was complete, I plugged the computer into the router using the Ethernet cable

5) I launched up the browser, and downloaded VLC Media Player from http://www.videolan.org/

6) I installed VLC media player

7) I downloaded TightVNC from http://www.tightvnc.com/

I installed TightVNC

(During the installation, you will be asked to ‘Select Additional Tasks’. When asked, make sure to select both boxes. This will register TightVNC server as a system service, and start it whenever windows starts)

9) I set a password for the VNC server

10) I went to Control Panel -> Power Options, disabled hibernate and standby, and set ‘When I press the power button on my computer’ to shutdown

11) I went to the properties of the network connection, opened up TCP/IP, and set a static IP address. The IP I set was 10.0.0.5. The range for IP addresses differs from router to router. Consult your router’s manual, or the internet if you need to find out the IP range for your router. More instructions on how to set a static IP address can be found online.

12) Using the Y cable, I connected the computer to the stereo system. The male 1/8-inch plug goes into the audio out port on the sound card. The red RCA plug goes into the right “AUX in” port on the stereo, and the other RCA plug goes into the left “AUX in” port.

13) The stereo was set to AUX

After this, I unplugged the monitor and mouse from the CPU. I neatly stacked the CPU, with the keyboard, under the table on which the stereo was placed

If the power button is pressed, the computer boots, loads up Windows XP, and loads up the VNC server. Pressing the power button again shuts down Windows and turns off the computer.

This CPU is basically a server with a permanent IP on the network, which can receive streams from other devices on the network, and play them on the stereo.

HOW TO USE THE SERVER TO REMOTELY PLAY MUSIC

There are two ways to go about playing music

The first one

is streaming music. This means the music is located on some other device, but is played on the server over the network.

The following explains the steps I took to stream music from my laptop

1) I set my laptop’s static IP to 10.0.0.1

2) I installed the TightVNC viewer and VLC media player on my laptop

3) I launched the VNC viewer, typed in the server IP (10.0.0.5) and the password and remotely accessed the server

4) Using the VNC viewer on my laptop, I remotely launched VLC media player on the server. I then clicked on file-> open network stream, and set the address to udp://10.0.0.1 (Address of my laptop, where the files were located)

5) I launched VLC media player on my laptop, clicked on file -> open file

From the menu, I clicked on browse and selected a whole bunch of songs

I selected Stream/Save under Advanced Options, and in settings, selected UDP, and set address to 10.0.0.5 (Address of the server, where the files were to be played)

After this I pressed ok, and, the songs started playing on my stereo!

Using my laptop from anywhere in my house, I could remotely pause, play, forward, or change songs on the stereo.

Using VLC media player for Windows CE /Pocket PC, I can stream music from my HP iPAQ as well!

The second way

is to play songs locally stored on the server, by remotely accessing the server from another device.

The following are the steps I followed to accomplish this

1) I launched the VNC viewer on my laptop, and accessed the server as mentioned earlier

2) After launching VLC media player on the server, I clicked Settings -> Add Interface -> Web Interface

Enabling the web interface allows any device on the network to go to http://10.0.0.5:8080, and remotely control the music from there

Of course, I could have just used the VNC viewer to remotely control VLC media player, but enabling the web interface allows any device with wi-fi and a web browser to control the player. Therefore, even if a cell phone with wi-fi does not have a VNC viewer, it can use its browser to access the controls of VLC media player, and remotely control the music being played on the server.

Now you can use your handheld devices to control the music being played on your stereo system!

I hope this guide was helpful. If you run into any problems while setting this up, feel free to email me at hammadnaseem@gmail.com, with the subject “Wireless Stereo Help”.

NOTE: Anywhere in this guide, the word ‘server’ refers to the Dell computer

About the Author

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