power-over-ethernet

My First Raspberry Pi Project: Using Hifi Berry DAC to Emulate A Squeezebox

RPI-HB-DACRCA-300pxSome time ago I received a Raspberry Pi B+ as a gift. It had been on my amazon wish list, and for good reason. It looked like one practical approach to emulating the venerable Logitech Squeezebox, which to this day serves as the basis for music playback hereabouts.

Since we were not expanding our music playback scheme there was at first little motivation to got ahead with this effort. That is, until the analog outputs of our existing fleet of Squeezeboxes started to fail. Eventually the analog outputs become unusable, the result of failing electrolytic capacitors. Three of our five SB3s now suffer this malady.

So, not long ago I set to the task of emulating a Squeezebox using a Raspberry Pi 2 Model B, a HiFiBerry DAC and a 4 GB micro-SD memory card. To this core I added a suitable case, a power-over-Ethernet splitter and piCorePlayer. All in, this rig cost under $100.

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Power-Over-Ethernet Mythbusting

The .e4 blog has a good new post on power-over-ethernet, which I see as an often overlooked area of SOHO VoIP. It goes into some detail P.O.E. network switches, power management and mid-span P.O.E injectors. Just last week we suffered…

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The Day The Electrons Stood Still

It started out an uneventful day, the third day in an entire week that I expected to spend in my home office. That’s something of a rarity in recent times. I was enjoying it, catching up on matters around here, and addressing tech support calls as they arose. I was on just such a call when, to my considerable surprise, the power went out.

The sudden loss of power is not enough to disrupt my phone call beyond my own expression of surprise. As I’ve documented elsewhere, I’ve taken steps to ensure that critical infrastructure around here is on a UPS. To paraphrase Frank Herbert, “The electrons must flow.” In fact, it occurred to me that this afternoon was an opportune time to ascertain just how sound my planning had been.

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When The Lights Go Down

A couple of days ago Garrett Smith posted on his blog entry stating, “One More Reason Pure VoIP is Not The Way to Go.” He goes on to describe a weather event that took out his power, internet access, and therefore his VOIP service.

I was born in the Niagara Region on the Canadian side of the border. I lived for 15 years in Toronto as well as 10 years in deep Northern Ontario. I’ve known winter in all its majesty.

In my former life as a kite enthusiast I made the drive from Buffalo, NY to Erie, PA through many a winter storm. And they certainly do get blasted from time-to-time in that part of the country.

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