Olive Media player deal-this is a SB alternative without wifi

[GeorgeO]

Olive O3HD Music Server - Holiday Sale | Media Servers | San Francisco, California 94103 | AudiogoN - The High-end Audio Community

 

[guls]

Doesn't have a digital out though.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

For some of us, wifi is the whole point of Squeezeboxes. If I could run a couple of cables, I'd have no use for one at all!

 

[asliarun]

Olive O3HD Music Server - Holiday Sale | Media Servers | San Francisco, California 94103 | AudiogoN - The High-end Audio Community

I've been trying to identify the right Squeezebox replacement for a while as well.

I think the o3HD is on sale because it will be replaced by the Olive One, which is an Indiegogo community funded project, and pretty much has all the specs that the Squeezebox has.

Guls, the O3HD has USB out though, so you should still be able to connect this to an external DAC.

Personally, I've taken a gamble and placed an order for the Minix Neo X5. On paper, it ticks a lot of the boxes I was looking for - it runs Android, is fanless, is powered by dual core Cortex A9, has wifi, bluetooth, and LAN connectivity; has 3 USB ports and SD card support, comes with 1GB RAM and 16GB SSD inbuilt, has Optical S/PDIF and HDMI out (it is capable of 1080p video output as well).

And all this for $93 which seems like a pretty good price. I'm planning to stick an external hard drive or USB pen drive or large capacity SD card, and use it as a media server.

There are some really good DACs available in the $100 - $500 range as well, that I'm thinking of connecting to this little box in the future if all goes well.

My lovely Squeezebox Classic still goes strong, so this is more of an experiment.

Let's see how it goes.

 

[aashish351]

A good alternative to squeeze box is the vortexbox which you can install on any old pc. It is headless, means no keyboard or monitor required. Connects to your Wi-Fi. Controlled from the web interface from another laptop. Controlled from android or iphone by the same Logitech media server app. Can be connected to your hi fi via a dac or internal sound card. Rips and tags CD automatically. Serves other dlna and network players.

The Linux based os is free. I built mine in a small form factor cabinet for a total of 12k with a 1 tb hard disk and an Intel atom motherboard. I am surprised it is not so popular on this forum. See my diy thread for more information.

Sent from my GT-P3100 using Tapatalk HD

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

...If I could run a couple of cables, I'd have no use for one at all!

Because I can't, I'm certainly interested in what might, when necessary, take over in the future.

A while back, was wondering if Squeezeplug might fit into this picture somewhere. Rasberry pi + wifi dongle + ODAC? The idea would be a displayless box, like the Squeezebox Receiver. It would be a box to loose in the background somewhere. On the other hand, the olive one, would be on foreground display. It's better looking that a Squeezebox Touch!

EDIT... Oh, just saw the link to the minix. Maybe there's no need to cobble anything together!

 

[asliarun]

Because I can't, I'm certainly interested in what might, when necessary, take over in the future.

A while back, was wondering if Squeezeplug might fit into this picture somewhere. Rasberry pi + wifi dongle + ODAC? The idea would be a displayless box, like the Squeezebox Receiver. It would be a box to loose in the background somewhere. On the other hand, the olive one, would be on foreground display. It's better looking that a Squeezebox Touch!

EDIT... Oh, just saw the link to the minix. Maybe there's no need to cobble anything together!

Thad, while I haven't played music from the Minix Neo X5 yet, I did watch an HD movie from this device yesterday. This device (it really is a full blown computer that runs Android) is really quite something for just 93 dollars! Setup was a breeze, pretty much plug and play. I had some difficulty with controlling it at first, but I bought the Logitech K400 keyboard with an integrated touchpad which worked on this device just fine. By the way, this keyboard is quite nifty too.

I'm going to have to figure out the music bit sooner or later as well. The fact that I can download Android apps for what I need to make it a music server is very useful as well. No need to write scripts, command line etc.

I really want to make this a music server after I get a DAC but that might take some time. Will keep you posted. As such, I can highly recommend this device and this keyboard. If nothing else, it is cheap enough to be a highly entertaining experiment.

 

[harshakoratala]

Hi arun, can we add an android wifi tablet as a wireless screen/remote to this device? So that instead of a keyboard , use the tab as the controlling device....

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

There are probably combinations of the Squeezeplayer software that could achieve this.

My PC runs Squeezeserver; I have a Squeezebox duet; I can control the duet from my Android phone, and I can also use the phone as a player, either self-controlled or controlled from my PC. I only have one Android device so I can't experiment to see if one can control another, but, given the way that the Squeeze stuff works, I'd be surprised if it couldn't

 

[asliarun]

Hi arun, can we add an android wifi tablet as a wireless screen/remote to this device? So that instead of a keyboard , use the tab as the controlling device....

There's supposed to be an app called RKRemoteControl (or remote control for RockChip CPU based Android systems). People on other forums report that this worked for them, but I couldn't make it work, and I tried two different versions of the app as well.

I gave up after that. In any case, the software based remote control is quite laggy from what I hear. The Logitech K400 works quite well on the other hand. The Android device even understands buttons in the keyboard such as "power off", "esc", arrow keys work to navigate between icons, etc. The touchpad works quite well too. If at all (and I'm nitpicking because I'm used to old Thinkpad build quality standards), the keyboard could have been built a bit better. Then again, for the price, it is okay.

P.S. The touchpad works both as a laptop touchpad, and also supports multi-finger gestures. For example, if I move one finger downwards, it will move the cursor down, wheras if I move two fingers down, it will scroll the screen the way it works in a tablet.

 

[madbullram]

Thad, while I haven't played music from the Minix Neo X5 yet, I did watch an HD movie from this device yesterday. This device (it really is a full blown computer that runs Android) is really quite something for just 93 dollars! Setup was a breeze, pretty much plug and play. I had some difficulty with controlling it at first, but I bought the Logitech K400 keyboard with an integrated touchpad which worked on this device just fine. By the way, this keyboard is quite nifty too.

I'm going to have to figure out the music bit sooner or later as well. The fact that I can download Android apps for what I need to make it a music server is very useful as well. No need to write scripts, command line etc.

I really want to make this a music server after I get a DAC but that might take some time. Will keep you posted. As such, I can highly recommend this device and this keyboard. If nothing else, it is cheap enough to be a highly entertaining experiment.

did you try it? I am thinking of using this as transport for streaming music from NAS