My 90-year-old father-in-law had a gigantic collection of esoteric CDs in a large stereo cabinet that dominated a large corner of his living room. The most disappointing aspect of this old-school approach to music listening was the fact that with painful arthritis, the likelihood he would want to make his way over to the stereo cabinet, search among his CDs, unload his CD player and re-load it with some desired music, adjust his stereo volume, and then make his way back to his living room chair, was very low (in fact, never). After he finally admitted that fact, I set out to find a low-cost way for him to enjoy his music collection with a minimum of effort and with as little complexity as possible.

Obviously, the first step was to digitize his CD collection, a process that took about a week and that involved the insert, rip, eject approach all too common amongst those of us raised in the CD (or worse, cassette and record) era. In my case, Windows Media Player on a Windows 8 laptop sufficed: all CDs were ripped to max rate MP3 format, with WMP configured to auto-rip and auto-eject inserted CDs.

The second step was to build a low-cost “music server” that would work as seamlessly as possible with his one ultra-high-tech gadget, a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet. Furthermore, quiet operation was important as well, as this server would ideally run 24 x 7 so he could choose to listen to music at any time without having to walk over to his TV cabinet to turn on a small, out-of-the-way device. The approach taken to address the requirements of low-cost, quiet operation, and ability to work easily with his tablet involved the following elements:

• A TRENDnet TN-200 NAS enclosure (wired Ethernet only, which was connected eventually to his wireless access point). [Cost: $100.89]
• A discounted 128 GB SSD (even at max sampling rate, his MP3 collection only consumed about 50 GB, but the extra space will allow the addition of photos and family videos in the near future). [Cost: $93.99]
• BubbleUPnP/DLNA app for Android, allowing connections to both input and output DLNA-compatible devices. [Cost: $4.69]
• Pioneer DLNA-compatible wireless speaker. [Cost: $88.99]

Using the above elements, the entire legacy stereo cabinet and associated stereo equipment was replaced, freeing up an entire corner of the living room and removing a major eye-sore to boot!

The TRENDnet TN-200 unit is relatively ugly but very functional. Once it arrived, the top was slid off, the SSD slid in (the TN-200 can hold two 3.5-inch SATA drives, so a piece of packing Styrofoam was used to wedge the SSD into the unit), the top slid back on, and the TN-200 connected to the “ripping” network. The TN-200 setup program automates the steps to quickly create a mapped drive on a Windows PC/laptop, and once this was done, all the ripped music was easily copied to the TN-200. All that remained was enabling DLNA on the TN-200, as well as rebuilding the music library.

Out of about a dozen free and for-fee Android DLNA apps tested, the BubbleUPnP/DLNA app ended up working the best, from an ease-of-use standpoint as well as reliability and flexibility. The flexibility related to the fact that connecting to the Pioneer wireless speaker for output, as well as the TN-200 for input, was almost trivial and, once established, required no further effort, even after multiple tablet reboots, shutdowns, etc.

There you have it, a simple approach for an elderly person who is comfortable with using a modern-day tablet to easily and effortlessly listen to a lifetime’s worth of music without requiring stereo component gymnastics, including walking to/from his collection and bending over to wade through hundreds or more CDs, records, etc.

Was this the easiest or most cost-effective approach? No, not by any stretch of the imagination. I toyed with the idea of building some kind of Raspberry Pi solution but knew that not only would it not look as elegant but would likely require more fiddling over time. Given that my 90-year-old father-in-law lives three states away, driving over to reboot, rebuild, or otherwise maintain a more complex but less costly solution was not a realistic option.

If cost was not a factor, I’d likely have gone with some kind of Sonos solution. And of course, with human ingenuity and creativity being what it is, there are likely at least a thousand different ways to have approached this particular requirement (low-cost, low-noise, low-maintenance music server for use by a non-techie elderly person). But for someone who enjoys building a solution from parts (just because), finding reasonably low-cost solutions to problems, and minimizing long-term maintenance requirements, the approach described above might help a relative or friend in your life.

Parts list:

• TRENDnet 2-Bay NAS Media Server Enclosure (TN-200)
• Pioneer XW-SMA1-K A1 Wi-Fi Speaker
• Toshiba HDTS2 128 GB SSD
• BubbleUPnP/DLNA app

Also required if not already on-hand: Android tablet.