Play audio streams on OpenWrt (Internet Radio)

I own some old ADSL modems that are no longer suitable for modern networks. OpenWrt can be installed on them, but they are limited by hardware to 100 Mbps LAN and 54 Mbps WiFi. Therefore, using these devices as routers, network attached storage or anything else that requires high transfer speeds is no longer wanted. Fortunately, OpenWrt comes with many software packages available to install using its included package manager.

One of the tasks that are suitable for most low-speed OpenWrt routers is audio playing. However, there are some hardware requirements. You need a router on which you can install OpenWrt firmware. It must have at least 8 MB flash storage memory and, the most important: at least one USB port. I haven’t heard of routers with audio output, yet there are plenty with USB ports (for GSM modem or USB storage). With an USB sound card and proper software, you will be able to play audio from any OpenWrt router. In this post I will talk about internet radio streams. However, if you have an extra USB port or you plan to use a hub, you may also play music files from USB drive.

USB audio card plugged in the USB port of the router

Add and configure WAN port on OpenWrt

OpenWrt is a Linux based, embedded operating system for networking devices. Besides being open source, it is highly configurable and versatile. This post will show how to configure one of the LAN ports as WAN input (for xDSL routers, which have the WAN internally connected to the modem). There are no opensource drivers for ADSL op OpenWrt and this feature is therefore unavailable. It doesn't matter anyway, since DSL limited in bandwidth and is losing its popularity.

Many DSL routers are in fact more powerful platforms, with improved hardware, than ordinary routers. If you want to connect the router to wired LAN internet this is what you should do. I've done this on a router with a development snapshot installed (the difference is that development versions do not come with web interface preinstalled). If you have a regular release, you can skip LuCI installation, as you already have access to the web interface of the router.

Show last updated date in Blogger posts

Although this is not the kind of post for this blog, I decided to write about this because there are opinions saying it is impossible to show updated date in Blogger posts. Blogger offers support only for the date when a post is published. You can, of course, edit the post and change published date, but that is not what most people want.
The method that follows is completely automatic and it will print the last date when you used the post editor on the specific post. It makes use of data stored in blog feed, because, although there is no tag for updated date in Blogger (something similar to published date tag data:post.timestamp), the updated date is stored in your blog feed. I first noticed this when I registered my blog on Tapatalk and noticed that updated posts appeared on top of the list.