Pass Port Wireless to WIFI Audio reciever

WD External Drives My Passport Wireless
1

I was wondering if i purchased the Wireless PassPort Drvie and loaded all my music on it, would the Pass Porrt drive be able to connect to a WIFI Audio reciever hooked up to a stereo in my boat via aux input.  

I would then want to access the PassPort with my phone, tablet, etc… to view the list of song and play them.

i guess the question would be , how is the music pushed to the WIFI Audio Reciever? by the drive? or phone/tablet?

I was thinking of building a RaspberryPI 2 Media server to accomplsh this, but curious if this would work.

LInk to WIFI Audio Reciever. (DNLA Compatible)  

http://www.amazon.com/aLLreli%C2%AE-Wireless-Music-Receiver-Adapter/dp/B00R1BKKYW/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1435690990&sr=1-1&keywords=wi-fi+music+receiver

Thanks for any help given…

2

Yes, what you are suggesting will work.

Some caveats though:

  1. A boat is a pretty hard environment for a traditional spinning hard drive, which is what the MPW uses. I remember thinking the hull of our speed boat was going to split open banging over waves at speed. I had similar experiences heading out scuba diving and snorkeling. You would want to make sure the MPW was very well protected from sharp knocks and high G forces. You could replace the internal hard drive with an SSD, but this would void your warranty and require some knowledge to do. I’m pretty sure someone has already done it though. Search around here if you want to try.

  2. You can’t do what you want with the My Cloud App, which will only play music on the device you connect with (at least I can’t see any way to make it send music to another device). You will need a third party DLNA Controller App. I tested your scenario using ArkMC Lite. I can’t recommend any one particular DLNA Controller App, but there are lots out there. I was thinking Infuse and PlayerXtreme, but they are video players. I’m not sure they play straight audio files. There are a few Apps suggested in the description of the WIFI Audio Receiver.

  3. DLNA is actually a bit flaky, not all features are supported by all devices, and not all devices support features well. Not all file formats are supported by all DLNA devices either. So you need to select an App that supports the formats you want, and to check that the WIFI Audio Receiver supports playing those formats as well.

  4. Setting up the Wi-Fi connections initially will require a little work, but once established should work fine. However, no guarantees on a boat that may have unshielded electrical interference. Not to mention, will you have the appropriate power sources on the boat to power the MPW and WIFI Audio Reciever?

  5. I couldn’t find a User Manual to confirm the actual capabilities of the WIFI Audio Reciever.

There are three components in a DLNA music streaming solution. Sometimes more than one component is located in the one physical device. In your case, you will have one device for each DLNA component;

A. Your Phone/Tablet will be the DLNA Controller. It is used to select music from a DLNA Server and push it to a DLNA Renderer.

B. The MPW will be the DLNA Server, storing all your music.

C. The WIFI Audio Reciever will be the DLNA Renderer. It receives the music directly from the MPW and decodes the digital signal, converting it to an analogue signal, which is then output to the connected stereo in your boat.

To make it work you will need to connect both your Phone/Tablet and the WIFI Audio Reciever to the MPW Wi-Fi hotspot. They will then be able to see each other. It looks like the WIFI Audio Reciever also supports a Wi-Fi hotspot, so you could have the Phone/Tablet and the MPW connect to the WIFI Audio Reciever hotspot instead, but I can’t test the WIFI Audio Reciever capabilities, and I know this works on the MPW. I know for example that the MPW will support eight connections to its hotspot.

With the DLNA Server turned on in the MPW Dashboard, using a DLNA Controller App like ArkMC Lite, you will be able to select the music from the MPW DLNA server using your Phone/Tablet, and either have it play on your Phone/Tablet, or direct it to the WIFI Audio Reciever.

I tested this standalone with my HTPC (DLNA Renderer) and iPhone 4 (DLNA Controller using ArkMC Lite) connected to the MPW (DLNA Server) and it all worked fine. I wasn’t sure that the iPhone would see the HTPC without being on my home Wi-Fi network, but it does. So the MPW acts not only as a Wi-Fi hotspot, but also as a router.

It is a pity that the WIFI Audio Receiver doesn’t appear to support an external USB hard drive, or act as a DLNA server, as you could then just plug in a normal USB SSD drive and use your Phone/Tablet to control what to play.

Give it a try and let us know how it goes.

3

Rod pretty much covered it, and I was about to add get a large capacity flash drive and plug it into amp, but from what Rod said, that would not be possible.  Look, the MPW really isn’t built for this kind of mistreament.  The amp likely accepts audio in, so get a mp3 player and tap out of the headphone jack to amp  – get a used one that is “expendable” – and if you want to go first class, get a used iPod off of eBay.  There must be plenty of them around ; even ones with flash memory vs a hard drive.

And while you are fiddle-futzing with the music, keep your eyes on the “road” for other boaters!  And NO TEXTING WHILE DRIVING!  :laughing:

4

Yeah I was thinking a smart phone, especially an Android with a microSD card, could hold a lot of music without the MPW. An iPod would be even simpler. Either could stream to the WIFI Audio Reciever as well, if they had Wi-Fi and that was preferred.

But I was just answering the question asked, and I wanted to test the configuration myself, as I haven’t tried using the MPW as a music server while travelling yet.

Of course if the “boat” is actually a large cruiser or yacht, then maybe the MPW is appropriate.

5

Just get a cheap mp3 player either dedicated or an android device (tablet / phone). With a 32GB flash card you can fit in a lot of music. They have built in players and there is zero messing about.

6

Or perhaps look at a Ravpower Filehub v2 or v3 (not the v1 as it doesn’t have DLNA). They take SD cards and form a wifi hotspot, have a built-in battery, DLNA server and also have a USB port that you can plug in a portable hard drive (like a My Passport, or maybe a portable SSD). Access is either via DLNA or SMB, and would possibly fit the bill quite well.

7

Everyone, Thanks so much for the feedback and Rod, thanks for testing!!

I knew i could use the phone directly to the wireless Audio reciever, but i didnt mention i wanted to store movies on the Wireless pass port drive also.  I dont think all that will fit on the phone…   I wanted to be able for the kids to connect to the drive and play movies on their Nook’s, or tablets…  so i was hoping i could store all my music too on the dirve also…

Thanks for the 3rd party apps suggestions, i did not know they existed…

The stereo aux input is hidden so wanted to do the wireless thing for that connection…

So, i sounds like in a nutshell, the DNLA capabilities is what makes this all work…

I can now take ALL my movies and music with me to the boat, vaction, long road trips without having to choose and copy what i think we will want to watch and hear…

Mike, I wont be fiddleing with the music, my kids will be,  this is so i dont have to keep changing the CD player all the time, they can do it themselves now  :-)  ,  piece and quiet for dad…  well, at least they wont be bothering me while i am clearning the boat…   Is there an app for that  !!  :-)

The boat is a large cruizer , so the bouncing shouldnt be an issue, ( I knew there was a reason i spent all that money on a big boat  :-) )

The distance between these components will actually be 20ft or less, i am using wireless becuase of accessabilty and lazyness…  :-)

I have the power requirements all figured out, there is a terminal strip right by the existing stereo i can use 12VDC to USB cable.

Any more comments/ideas are appreciated, but i think i will be buying my Wireless Pass Port drive and Wireless audio reciever and giving this a try…  maybe this holiday weekend if i can these in time…  i will post back and let you know how it goes…  Thanks again everyone…!!!

8

If you get a MPW, be sure to download the complete user manual from WD support.  It is somewhat easy to set up, but not a no-brainer situation.  You may find it easy to set up using a tablet or phone – I did.  BTW, you did not tell us if you have Android or iOS mobile devices, so can you tell us?

Wanting to stream music and video is important info, because a small mp3 device could handle music files, but video requires more storage capacity.

Some basic info regarding streaming from MPW for you: 

The MPW is a DLNA media server, and as such only handles certain types of files; for the most part this includes popular mp3 music and mp4 video files.  A complete list of media types is shown in the specs of the MPW.  If you have mkv movies, it would be a bit more complicated to stream them from MPW to play under your constraints. 

The native app for the MPW is the My Cloud app.  It is a real good app for streaming to a mobile device, but cannot stream to other devices  easily.  For this, I use other apps,  For Android devices I use the free Avia app, and for my iOS devices I use Belkin MediaPlay, also free.  These are great apps that can do more than be used with the MPW, and as an added Plus, both apps can handle Playlists which is an important feature for me and others.  The MyCloud app cannot play from playlists – another major shortcoming of this app.

Get a hi-capacity external battery bank for MPW (well over 10,000 mAh size).  Anker and RAV Power make nice ones.

9

Sorry, my devices are:

Samsung Galaxy S5 phone  (Android)

Dell Laptop Precision M6500 - Win7

Lenovo MIIX 2 11 (I5 processor)   (Win 8,1) purchased in Dec2014

Nook (HD)  (Android)  about 3 or 4 years old…  these are not really necessary to work, but would be nice.

For connecting, I’m no novist, but have an IT guy I can lean on… :slight_smile:

The point you make about MKV files is significant… I have about 1 TB of MKV’s i want to access via the MPW.

I did see that the specs did not list MKV, but i thought what determined what i could play was the APP that was running on my device (phone, Tablet, etc) ,   Is this not the case?   Are you saying the DNLA server has to be compatible with MKV files? I thought this would be just a hard drive to store any kind of files on…  you mention that its possible, but more needs to be done?    Can you please suggest your soulution…

Thanks for your help…

10

The DLNA server does need to support the file type that you wish to serve. The good news is that the MPW DLNA server does support MKV files. Page 61 of the manual. The list is pretty comprehensive.

Mike can explain all about the players that will work on your devices. He is the expert in this area. But you definitely should be able to find a DLNA player for each of those devices.

PS: I assume that you will only be pushing music out to the WIFI Audio Receiver, and that movies will be direct streamed to one or more of the devices you listed, with sound played on the device, or headphones, separate speakers or whatever. If so, that setup will be fine.

11

Nope, I am not an expert, but I do know that the apps I mentioned above work well for my devices.  I also steer clear of any files more exotic than mp3 and mp4 to play on my mobile devices.  My files are quality HD files, and they play well.  I don’t even try to play mkv on the tablets since too much processing power is required, so I just convert to mp4 (using Handbrake)for wireless drives, and by using my newer i7.quad-core PC I can now make mp4s a lot faster than on the older Win 7 PC – it now takes around 20 minutes from ISO file to make mp4.

Anyway, good luck with the MPW and don’t drop it in the water this summer! 

12

Thanks guys… you have been very helpful…

I will be purchasing my drive and reciever today!!  Hope to get it going this weekend…

Right now I play the MKV on these devices using PLEX.  it works fine, no issues…  I will give this a try… 

if I have problems, guess I will be converting MKV’s for a while… :slight_smile:

I hope I get this all together before the wife finds out I spent some money…  :-)

13

There are a number of player apps for mkv files and they all work OK (eg. VLC)

I have no problem with the files on my android tablets, mkv is only a wrapper which can hold most standard video codecs.

14

Rich >>>> There are a number of player apps for mkv files and they all work OK (eg. VLC)

VLC for iOS mobile devices hasn’t worked for quite a while — ever since they lost license for the mkv audio codec, so no audio.  VLC works fine on a PC,

15

JKAD48 wrote:

 

I hope I get this all together before the wife finds out I spent some money…  :-)

 

You own a large cruizer. The wife already knows you have spent some money!

The PLEX players for those devices may work fine with the MPW. I think they are capable of acting as DLNA Controllers and Renderers. I’m not sure as I don’t use PLEX, and it is a couple of years since I looked at it. Maybe they use their own media networking functionality like JRiver Media Center, which is what I use instead of PLEX. Although JRiver can also use DLNA, so maybe PLEX has that option.

If PLEX doesn’t work, there is Infuse3 for Android (and iOS), PlayerXtreme, and of course the free Apps Mike mentioned, Avia for Android and Belkin MediaPlay for iOS, if ever you need an iOS player. Plus there are a heap more player Apps out there. You just need to pick a good one that is DLNA Controller and Renderer capable.

16

FYI: Infuse is cool, but only plays video.  It accesses both servers and shares.  I like that.  Too bad it cannot play audio.  It should be a no-brainer to add.  I should write them a comment.

17

Yep, I knew that. :smiley:

I was assuming one App to play videos on the devices, and they may have to be different Apps for different devices.

Plus, one App to control audio selection and playback via the Wi-Fi Audio Receiver.

For video JKAD48 needs a DLNA Controller and Renderer, or just a player that can see drive shares.

For audio JKAD48 just needs a DLNA Controller that can select music from a DLNA server and direct it to a DLNA Renderer.

It may be possible to find one App that does both though, at least on the Android devices. Windows has its own challenges, but PLEX may handle that.

18

mike27oct wrote:

Rich >>>> There are a number of player apps for mkv files and they all work OK (eg. VLC)

 

VLC for iOS mobile devices hasn’t worked for quite a while — ever since they lost license for the mkv audio codec, so no audio.  VLC works fine on a PC,

There is no actual mkv audio codec, MKV can contain virtually any audio / video codec.

There is a possibility that for licencing reasons VLC may not decode a certain codec within the mkv container such as ac3.

Later:

The iOS version of VLC has lost the ability to play ac3 audio tracks due to apple enforcing a USA legal notice from Dolby. It appears that both the PC and android versions of VLC are not affected. 

19

Yep, that’s the way I understand it, too.  I just couldn’t remember it was the ac3 audio codec.  Unfortunately, all mkv files I have made use this codec, hence VLC mobile is now “useless” for me and many others.  That’s OK, I don’t make that many mkv files and when converted to mp4/m4v for mobile use they are fine.  Thanks for the more info.