Home Hacking Projects for Geeks

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9

I wake up at about 6:30 A.M., but Howard Stern starts at 6:00. I’d like to

listen to his whole radio show every day, but not so much that I’m willing

to give up half an hour of sleep. There are also times when I’d like to back

it up a few seconds to replay some funny thing someone said. My TiVo has

a button to rewind eight seconds—if I could add that to all the radios in my

house, it would be perfect.

If it were a TV show, I’d just set up TiVo to tape it every day, and then start

watching the show from the beginning at 6:30. Radio is better than TV in

the morning, though, because it doesn’t require as much attention. I move

around the house while I’m getting ready, and I have radios in every room,

and even in the shower. So whatever hack I build to time-shift radio needs

to work with whole-house audio.

Whole-house audio is a great idea: you can listen to your television, radio,

CD player, or Oggs/MP3s anywhere in your house. Unfortunately, most of

the whole-house audio solutions available today are intended for serious

audiophiles. I appreciate sound quality as much as the next guy, but it’s not

worth it to me to spend thousands of dollars to listen to a perfect reproduc-

tion of the Howard Stern show while I’m in the shower.

So in a nutshell, I want to time-shift live FM radio, and control and listen

to it from anywhere in my house. Figure 9-1 shows how the components ...