Thursday, November 6, 2008

SqueezeCenter on the fit-PC Slim

It's a few weeks since I installed SqueezeCenter 7.2 on my mini Linux server. I'm delighted to say that it's working out great.

Music playback on my Squeezebox player is flawless. The responsiveness of the player and web interface is just fine.

My server is the recently released fit-PC Slim (512MB RAM), which I ordered diskless and fitted with a 250GB disk. It's running a minimal server install of Ubuntu 8.04 with a few services including SqueezeCenter.

In its current configuration, my fit-PC draws just 7 watts.

I think that's pretty terrific. I expect to get the power consumption even lower whenever I get around to disabling the WIFI adapter in the BIOS.

I only have one Squeezebox, so can't comment on the ability to serve multiple clients, though I have played to the Squeezebox and my laptop simultaneously without glitches. Also, no problem streaming music while performing other background tasks, like copying on new music files and transcoding from FLAC to mp3.

I reckon the fit-PC is a really great fit for SqueezeCenter.

6 comments:

  1. Thank you for this note. I bought a Fit PC Slim to act a Squeezecenter client (running Squeezeslave and feeding an external USB DAC) and it works extremely well. I didn't know if the Fit PC had the guts to run as a Squeezecenter server. The idea of a totally silent Squeezeslave server running on little power sounds very inviting.

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  2. Its been years since I have worked with any variant of Unix. So...how important is it to be Unix proficient to make this thing work. What is the UI? A command line shell like C-shell, a windows UI? The fit-pc definitely appealing as I am hosting Squeeze Center on my Dell laptop which is a 50W hog...7W sounds much better.

    Thanks,
    Steve

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  3. Hi Steve. You can buy fit-pc with Windows XP or Linux pre-installed. The Linux option gives you an Ubuntu Linux Desktop system (i.e. Gnome). I ordered the diskless version and chose to install a server system with text console only, but no reason why you have to go that way. There's a good user forum for fit-pc, so you can have a look at what others are doing. And you could always try an Ubuntu live cd on your laptop to get a feel for that.

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  4. Do you think I can run SqueezeCenter on a barebone (diskless) 256MB RAM Linux Fit-PC from a thumb drive (8GB)--I will connect through the Ethernet port to the network. I've an Apple Time Capsule (500GB) and would need such a diskless server to run just SqueezeCenter for my SqueezeBox Boom 3. In other words, will such configuration be enough to run SC? Thanks.

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  5. Hi Maurizio. I have seen some accounts of running SqueezeCenter (or maybe SlimServer) on the older fit-pc model which had 256MB RAM, so it may be possible. I can't comment from my own experience. I reckon it could a bit tight though. The difference between the "barebone" (256MB RAM, diskless, no wifi) and the "diskless" (512MB RAM, diskless) fit-pc slim models is only $25. Personally, I'd take the bigger RAM.

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  6. I know it has been a month...

    I am running squeezecenter on a 512MB RAM (headless) fit-pc with XP. I also run iTunes on it and now sync my iPod with the fit-pc too. It still draws 6-7W which is very cool. I even had it running with softsqueeze at one point, though whilst it was getting going the sound broke up really badly, and it was enough out of sync (maybe 1/10th second) with the neighbouring room that I gave up on that idea. Another room would be fine.

    I am sure fit-pc could do the whole memory stick thing if you had the know-how - Although I could not persuade mine to boot off a USB key it is said to be possible.

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