HEXUS reader goes hands on with Logitech Squeezebox Duet

The hardware - 02

Now for some hardware photos.

Note that the final unit has a rubber cover over the (as yet) unused expansion/accessories port. The port has several potential functions once the software is further developed to take advantage of it.

Squint and you can just make out a tiny ‘M’ printed in the middle above the battery compartment on the left (final) controller.

There is a SD card slot tucked in there. The only use for it right now is for dumping error logs for debugging and for storing screen grabs.

Although it is completely software-controlled, it's said to be SDHC-compliant and able to handle 32GiB cards. I wonder what you could do with the SD port and the right software?

The only real difference is that the final hardware has a small, metal, vertical antenna at the top left. This is the visible part of the re-designed wireless pickup.

The only thing that the headphone socket does right now is let you hear the sound effects for button-presses and scroll-wheel motions. Music playback is planned but Logitech isn't saying when it will be arriving.

The IR transmitter is also non-functional - the software isn't there yet. IR will probably be used to tell amps to turn on. Although you could, perhaps, use the controller as a universal remote, the scroll wheel and relatively small number of hard buttons would limit its usefulness.

Other cool things about the controller:

• It has a built in accelerometer. At the moment it is just there to detect when you pick it up but it could be used in the future for gesture control (or anything else the community/developers can think of)
• There is a Flickr screen-saver built in
• The whole 'SqueezeOS' is Linux-based and uses an ARM processor. Specs are here: SqueezeboxController - Slim Devices : Community : Wiki and here: HardwareComparison - Slim Devices : Community : Wiki
• The interface is written in Lua

Factoids about the receiver:

• The internals are based on the Squeezebox 3 (or Squeezebox Classic as Logitech is calling it now)
• Because of the lack of display and other factors the power brick is now 9V - so the DAC is changed as well. There is no firm conclusion whether or not the new DAC is better. The digital outputs share exactly the same path and characteristics of the SB3 though.
• There is a very cool multi-coloured status LED on the front of the unit embedded in a button. Colour codes: SBRFrontButtonAndLED - Slim Devices : Community : Wiki