WMA11b Information Page

What is it?

Photograph of wma11b device

What linksys say on their product information page:

The Linksys Wireless-B Media Adapter lets you bring the digital music and pictures stored on your computer to your Home Entertainment Center, without running cables through the house. Using a wireless connection, the Media Adapter displays your digital photographs on the TV for the whole family to enjoy. And your digital music collection is finally freed from those little computer speakers and can play in full glory through your stereo system.

Does it work with Linux?

Linux users will be disappointed to discover this device requires support from application software that only runs on Windows XP/2000. In addition the software requires the Microsoft .NET Framework to be installed. However, by replacing the software it can be made to work with Linux quite happily.

wmaslimp3 for SlimServer media servers

Based on wmamp, the new software wmaslimp3 allows the wma11b to be a client for SlimServers. This is my favourite solution because it brings ShoutCast intergration and allows remote control of the wma11b via a web interface. This is especially convenient if your wma11b is connected to a stereo with no TV available.

  1. Install and configure SlimServer on your PC
  2. Download wmaslimp3
  3. Configure your wma11b to use wmaslimp3 by following the instructions included or using the wmaloader utility. Some people have noticed that wmaslimp3 is missing ProgDirData.xml, a file mentioned in the README. You may download a copy of this file here. NB It is only required when the Linksys downloader is used and the byte count inside the XML file must match the file size of the image exactly.

Note: I'm not the author of wmaslimp3 so please don't contact me to request source code. The actual author has so far failed to release the code despite this being required by the terms of the GPL license. If you wish to contribute to the development of a slimserver client for the wma11b please take a look instead at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mytinker/ - ACW

wmamp for iTunes media servers

Jim at codeworker has written an excellent program that turns the wma11b into a client for iTunes servers. Even if you have no iTunes servers you can use the open source software daapd as an alternative. Check it out at www.turtlehead.co.uk. Note the software is alpha quality and unfortunately futher development is unlikely.

  1. Share music from your PC using daapd
  2. Download wmamp
  3. Install wmaloader to download wmamp to the device.

Current Work

These pages collect together other ideas and information I've gathered while working on the wma11b. I hope they will be helpful to people thinking of hacking the device, perhaps to achieve greater Linux compatibility, or simply because they are interested.

At present I'm looking at getting digital audio from the device, replacing the bootloader with either u-boot or blob, and compiling a new kernel. The bootloader is fully working but could be refined. The kernel (2.6.16) is progressing well.

Information

Hacking

Tools

Links

People are working hard to improve the original wmamp software at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mytinker/

There's some interesting discussion of the wma11b at http://toys.lerdorf.com/archive/1-Linksys-Wireless-Media-Appliance-updated.html

This is the Linksys product information page http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?grid=33&prid=554

Home of wmamp, the alternative application software for the wma11b. Note the Jim is no longer actively maintaining this. http://turtlehead.co.uk/category/wma11b/

By Andrew Wild | Visitor Statistics | Portugal Holiday
This file last modified Sunday, 25-Feb-2007 18:09:08 GMT