Skip to main content

more options

Introduction

"We developed a wireless receiver capable of receiving and playing audio transmitted over an 802.11 Wi-Fi network"

project soundbyte

For our ECE 4760 final project we developed a wireless receiver capable of receiving and playing audio transmitted over an 802.11 Wi-Fi network. Our system was constructed using an Atmel ATxmega256A3U microcontroller and a RN-XV Wifly module made by Roving Networks. We send music to the microcontroller from a computer program running a custom streaming algorithm that incorporates feedback from the microcontroller. When the data is received by the microcontroller it is interpreted and output as an audio to a 3.5mm TRS female connector that can drive any line-in connection. Our streaming system was capable of playing 8-bit mono songs at 44.1kHz or 8-bit stereo at 22.05kHz.

Our original motivation for choosing this project was to create a receiver that could work with Apple Airplay (a proprietary protocol used by Apple to stream data from iTunes, iPhones, etc. to supported speakers). Though we were not able to create a receiver capable of streaming audio over Apple Airplay due to the incapability of available hardware Wi-Fi interfaces, we were able to create our own music streaming system. Additionally, our current system creates a strong basis off of which to work if we do decide to eventually tackle Apple Airplay for a more advanced class (or on our own!). Lastly, streaming music is just a really cool thing to do and is very useful and fun. We really wanted to develop a project that would have some practical use and not just an impressive design.

Doug_pic

Doug rocking out to music sent over our the MAD Dog Streamer

Mark_pic

Mark getting pumped about the streaming music