Student:      Tan Gao

Advisor:      Dr. John A. Board, Jr.

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Duke University

Keywords: streaming, networking, distributed computing

 

 

Duke Ubiquitous Multimedia Engine (DUME) Project

 

The purpose of this project is to develop a prototype of a commercially-viable wired or wireless multimedia system suitable for a modern networked home.  The project is divided into two parts: software programming and hardware prototyping.  DUME software includes a suite of client-server programs to provide streaming functionalities and a number of interfacing programs to make it web-integrable as well as user-friendly.  The client-server model is implemented with custom socket[1] programming.  With security in mind, we included an option for data encryption and decryption using "OpenSSL" Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).  Our hardware mainly consists of an all-in-one Cool RoadRunner II compact computer, which is used to install and run part of the DUME software[2].  A server machine running DUME streamer is able to communicate with a remote device running DUME player.  Specifically, users may search for and play streaming music in real time via a web browser interface, which may run on a variety of networking devices.  Our design takes into consideration of both wired (Local Area Network, or LAN) and wireless (IEEE 802.11b) networking standards.  The interfacing hierarchy integrates HTTP web server, mySQL database and file server.

 

 

Figure 1: typical home networking environment

 

 

Figure 2: illustration of DUME control interface