As I said in another recent question, I've recently bought into the Logitech Squeezebox range. I have a Radio (bedroom), Boom (kitchen) and Receiver (music room). These are all pretty good but they only cover three rooms.
I can't afford another £100 per room so I'm looking to get creative for the bathroom and the living room. There is an unofficial Squeeze client that can make a computer act as a device music can come out of. It's great. I've got it running on my desktop now and can control it with my phone and sync it up with the rest of the house.
Obviously I don't want a desktop in every room (well, only a little bit) so I'm looking for a box that fits the following:
- Wireless networking (WPA2PSK/AES)
- Stereo sound card
- Some sort of storage that I can install Ubuntu Server/Minimal on
- It doesn't need USB for running but I will need to install from something... So USB is probably required too.
- Cheap. Around the £50 point would be ideal. Any more and I'll probably just go with a second hand Logitech device.
Edit: There are devices like the BeagleBoard and PandaBoard that will do the job, just too well. I don't need a dual core processor or HD video output (needless to say 3D video output). These sorts of things are what makes the BB and PB so expensive (actually they're quite cheap compared to a PC but that's not what the problem domain needs)
Given we're getting closer and closer to the release date, I thought it time I had better post this as a proper answer, as I can't see how I'm not going to buy a plethora of these. I will update when I can see how it performs.
Raspberry Pi
Onboard sound (of unknown quality), USB, low power and most importantly I could get away with the $25 version when that comes out.
I suspect the Raspberry Pi is going to revolutionise several [geeky] aspects of my life.