Asus Internet Radio- User Manual

Build Your Own Wifi Internet Radio – Craig A. Lindley – Last Update: 08/21/11

I am writing this article while setting in my living room listening to music over my Wifi network
streamed from a radio station in Europe. With my iPod Touch, I can select the station I am listening to,
I can see the name of the artist and song being played, I can control the volume of the music and can
even mute the music altogether if I get a phone call. And I can do all this without having to touch the

W

ifi

I

nternet

R

adio (WIR) I've just finished building. Ah, life is good.

I had never listened to Internet radio so I didn't know what I was missing. Since completing my WIR it
has played continuously whenever I am at home. With WIR you are not limited to radio stations you
can pull in over the air from your location. Instead, you have access to hundreds if not thousands of
stations world wide playing a wide variety of program material including music in every genre, news,
talk radio, religious broadcasts, sports, comedy and probably other things I haven't yet discovered.
While flipping through the stations on my WIR it occurred to me that this is just like the listening I
used to do late at night with my Father on his short-wave radio. I had the world available at my
fingertips then and with WIR I do again.

When I caught the urge to listen to Internet radio I first thought of buying a ready made unit but after
some research on the Internet I decided I should build one instead. Besides saving money, building
instead of buying a WIR would add substantially to my creds as a serious maker and as everyone
knows, makers are the new rockstars.

In researching WIR I came across mightyohm.com (see Resources) and its WIR build. I would like to
thank Jeff at mightyohm.com for providing the information and encouragement needed to build a WIR.
The WIR Jeff presented was based on a repurposed ASUS WL-520gu router (with a USB interface)
which can be purchased at Amazon, eBay or NewEgg for around $30 after rebate and sometimes even
cheaper. A USB sound card/adapter is also required. In the finished configuration the USB sound
adapter plugs into the USB interface of the router and converts the streamed digital audio into analog
for subsequent amplification.

With the Internet music production component (the repurposed ASUS router) defined, I went about
designing the rest of the system to fit my personal requirements. Since I wanted the WIR in our living
room it had to look nice and fit in with the other living room furniture I built in the past. This meant the
cabinet needed to be made of dark hardwood with black highlights. Next, I wanted a radio with a built
in stereo amplifier and speakers but without a display or knobs and I also didn't want cords running
from it for connection to my existing stereo system. In other words, I wanted a stand alone unit
requiring nothing more than a power connection as this would allow me to move the radio anywhere
(inside or outside the house) where Wifi and power are available.

I thought a lot about speakers and speaker enclosures during the design process. Fidelity was important
to me but so was saving money. I had the option of buying individual speakers (a woofer and tweeter
for each channel) and designing a cabinet to house them but good quality speakers are expensive and
designing speaker cabinets is an art I have little experience with. It was then I remembered I had a pair
of Radio Shack Realistic Minimus 7 speakers which I have had for years that have always sounded
good for their size. Even after deciding to incorporate these speakers into my WIR I still had another
decision to make. I could either include these speaker enclosures in my WIR cabinet or I could

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