Internet Radio Device

I decided to use the pico-ITX computer mainly as an internet radio device. Ok, so this would be an under-utilization of the 1 GHz CPU, 512 MB, Win XP appliance, but I can't think of any other more interesting applications that I would need at the moment. Of course I can use it to watch streaming video, or play my mp3 collections, but internet radio (SHOUTCAST) would be its main purpose.

I googled and installed the following software
- Winamp : mp3, internet radio player
- CLamp : command line control application to Winamp's API
- AutoHotkey : a key mapping tool with surprisingly powerful scripting capabilties.

I also got myself a nice little numeric keyboard. With a simple script, I am now able to select radio stations, control volume, and shutdown the device with a single keypress. I have also configured XP so that it will autoplay the first internet radio station upon boot up. No user input required. On the power switch, wait 30s, you got the music. The audio-out goes straight to my hi-fi system auxilary input, so the sound is great.


The device doesn't need a monitor to boot up, but I linked the VGA out to my HDTV. I usually off the HDTV when I turned on the device, but if I wanted to find out the name of a particularly good song, I can check it out on screen.