So while googling around I stumbled across MightyOhm's report, and I decided to build my own..
I'm really pleased with the outcome, so I decided to spend a couple minutes to write about it.
Hardware
Like MightyOhm I started with the Asus WL-520gU from the "local" HW store.
Next I used an microcontroller (AtMega16) to connect to a text-mode (4x16) LCD. Communication from the router to the micro is through /dev/tts/0 (serial 0) at 115200 baud (that's fast enough for a VU meter, if I ever feel the need to implement one).
I also used a couple of speakers (pretty crappy but cheap). In the end they turned out quite ok, they certainly sound a lot better than in the original plastic enclosures.
For the box I used some black anodized aluminum sheets which I had laying around. I eventually plan to do some additional painting (the sides of the sheets are silver - where they had been cut off, I colored them with a black felt pen but it's far from ideal).
Software
I installed Kamikaze as per MightyOhm's instructions, along with usb sound drivers, mpd - well, the main used software, mpc - for manual interaction, ntpclient for time synch, and radio - the display software I wrote.
Basicly it's a simple software.
It's supposed to:
But as usual the devil is in the details, so I had quite a few versions till it was right.(ended up with about 4000 lines of code - including libs - libmpdclient, inifile - I used).
I also had to follow these instructions to build an ipk package which I could easily install on OpenWRT.
As of 2010.01.22 the last version is 1.4.8 (source - ipk).
