Using a Pocket PC to Wirelessly Stream Music

[michael_w]

I figured I would share what I've managed to set up tonight after being far too bored.

Basically what I've done is set things up so that my pocket pc is connected to my home network through bluetooth and it is streaming any media on my computer over to my pocket pc which is now connected to my 2 ch system. Why wouldn't I just use a cable from the soundcard you ask? Because that would be the easy way ;) Also, my pocket pc as a source is almost comparable to an entry level dvd player as opposed to my noisy and terrible sound card. Plus it's cool because I can now stream the 3000+ songs from my computer to anywhere in my house.

I won't get too into details unless people actually care to set up something similar themselves. Just a fair warning -- This wasn't really a simple task. It did take me a while with so many finicky settings. Also, it would be really handy if you've already got a lan setup with file sharing and things of that kind. If not, not a big deal as it's easy to do.

I first connected my pocket pc to my computer through bluetooth with activesync as well as setting up a bluetooth network connection. From there I installed z2's PocketLAN and Pocket Hosts.

Long story short you have to fiddle with Pocket Hosts to set a static ip for your pocket pc and then connect to your network with PocketLAN. Once you've managed to connect to the network you'll be able to see what's shared on that computer and use it as if it were on the pocket pc. You'll be able to watch videos, listen to music, look at pictures, or just do some simple ftp stuff.

I figure this way I can take the whole jukebox / background music idea to a higher level of sound quality even though it will still be mp3's ripped at 320kb/s.

If anyone wants to persue this I can attempt to explain what I've done in more detail.

[Kris Siegel]

If you have a PocketPC with WiFi, it's even easier. You can connect to a networked PC to stream music from it, or setup iTunes to share your music on the PC and download WiFiTunes and play whatever you want.

Bluetooth I thought only has about 1mbps bandwidth so it may not work so well streaming music over bluetooth where as 802.11B has 11mbps and 802.11g has 54mbps.

My Dell Axim x50v has an interface to connect to a television so I can stream videos with it too over WiFi (just as long as they're not too big, lol) :D

[Shizelbs]

Okay, thats pretty rad. I might have to pick your brainses later. I recently lost all my stored data on my PPC, so I am due to reinstall everything. This would be good timing.

[Shizelbs]

Question, what device controls the playback? The computer or PPC? Can you pause, rewind, skip tracks, and all that junk with the PPC?

[mldennison]

another question, how are you connecting to your 2-ch rig? guess i would just like to know what is doing the mp3 de-compression and what is doing the d/a conversion?

looks like a nice setup, my girlfriend is always complaining that she cant play any of her iTunes songs when she is at my house so something like this might work well. plus i have been thinking about getting a palm/pocket pc for a while now...

[michael_w]

Thank you Kris I'll have to check out that option. Right now I prefer to use bluetooth because it uses much much less battery power from the pocket pc but it might work better for videos if I were to use wifi.

The pocket pc does everything. I use TCPMP, a program similar to windows media player but better, to play back everything. All the home computer does is transfer the raw mp3 file over the bluetooth connectin. Think of it as having the song on the actual ppc itself.

I continued to fiddle last night and ran into some problems. It would play a few songs and then drop the connection between the ppc and my computer... I'll see what I can do tonight to try and fix this. Maybe my bluetooth dongle is a crappy one or I was too far away.

I just thought of something. Last night I had Azureus running with about 15 torrents active using around 500kb/s of bandwidth. Maybe the network just got overwhelmed with connections and dropped the bluetooth?

FWIW ther is another program called Orb that does basically the same thing but in an easier way. I tried it for a while but didn't really like the results. I found it to be really unstable and just not fun to use in general. Another thing is that with the bluetooth / lan way you're using internal bandwidth so for those who might get close to hitting their bandwidth limit won't be affected because it won't be using your ISP's bandwidth.