Abstract for group InternetRadio


1. Description

The project aims to deliver radio from the internet to the user
through the Altera DE2 boards.  The Altera board would fetch radio
from a pre­programmed radio station from http://www.shoutcast.com and
plays it using the on­board audio controller.

2. Methodology

The nios would pass in a URL of a particular radio station in
http://www.shoutcast.com (for example:
http://www.shoutcast.com/sbin/shoutcast-playlist.pls?rn=783&file=filename.pls)
which delivers radio in the format of a mp3 playlist.  The on­board
ethernet controller would be used with nios to establish a TCP
connection to receive packets of the mp3 stream.  The packet stream is
then buffered, and decoded using a third-party mp3 decoder library.
The resulting audio is fed into the on-board audio controller which
converts the stream into audible sound.

3. Work Distribution

3.1 Task Description

The project can be readily modularized into three main tasks: Ethernet to mp3
stream, mp3 decoding, and stream to sound conversion.

3.1.1 Ethernet to mp3 stream

The 'Ethernet to mp3 stream' task is responsible for taking in a URL
of a radio station from www.shoutcast.com and automatically establish
a TCP connection which converts the radio into a mp3 stream to be
decoded by the mp3 decoder.

3.1.2 Mp3 Decoding

This task takes a mp3 stream and converts the stream into a format
that can be read by the on­board audio controller.

3.1.3 Stream to sound conversion

The conversion is responsible for taking in a processed audio sound and outputs
audible wave.

3.2 Responsibility of Tasks

The following is a table of the task responsibility taken up by each group member:

Task\t\t\tKai\t\tMichelle\tSing Wang
Converting the URL
into a mp3 stream\tResponsible\t\t\tAssist

Decoding the stream\tAssist\t\t\t\tResponsible
into a format that
can be read by the
audio controller

Converting the audio\tAssist\t\tResponsible
into sound

4. Major Milestones

The preliminary milestone dates for the project is as follows:

February 19 (Week 0) Start of Project
February 26 (Week 1) Research Completed
March 19 (Week 4) Individual Coding Done
March 19 (Week 4) Individual Code Testing Completed
April 9 (Week 6) Merging of Individual Codes Done
April 12 (Week 6) 75% Demo
May 30 (Week 9) Code Testing and Final Draft of Report Completed.
May 8 (Week 10) Final Project Completion