File & Audio Server Project

[Giric]

This may not be a beginner project. If not, well, we'll just find out, won't we?

I have a new RPi coming tomorrow-ish. Assuming everything works, I eventually want to set up, as the title indicates, a file and audio server. I intend on (eventually) getting a powered USB hub since the HDD I have runs off of USB power, and I don't want to blow out the Pi.

What I want to do: access files and stream audio remotely to my Samsung Galaxy S4, Asus TF700 tablet, and any computer via the Internet.

What I know I need: SD card w/ Raspbian, Raspberry Pi, HDD with files, Internet connection (WiFi or Ethernet, the latter preferred), powered USB hub, router.

I know I need to set up the router to allow access on various ports to the Raspberry Pi, and probably set up a separate account in Raspbian to deal with the files I know I will want to work with on the HDD. I'll set up SSH and install a VNC server on the RPi so I have graphical access to files. I know I can modify files on the device using both of these, so a false file server idea can work there. (Not really a file server, but access to files) How can I transfer files between the two? Set up SFTP? How can I stream audio between the two? Can I use something like Winamp to call a playlist file on the RPi, sort of like how ShoutCast works?

Any help, thoughts, or ideas would be appreciated.

[Toxus]

Well, I tend to be a bit on the convoluted side, but I'll try to give you something to work with here. Accessing files can easily be done with WinSCP which is a SSH File Transfer client, SFTP is by default on with SSH iirc, another way could be to install some web-interface such as Owncloud or the like. As for media streaming, you can certainly do Shoutcast through the icecast2 and ezstream packages or even use MPD with the shout plugin and icecast2 to stream out your music. There's a couple tutorials on here and around the web about setting up MPD and Icecast which are very easy to follow.

However beware as Icecast puts a lot of load on the CPU with it doing it's re-encoding and I haven't found a way to turn that off, because of that load (and Apache's if you decide to add OwnCloud for a sort of web-interface for files), using X with VNC may not be very feasible. (not entirely sure as I tend not to use X on my Pi often.)

Hope it helps.