DLNA Media Server Framework for Embedded Systems

Abstract

ABSTRACT DLNA MEDIA SERVER FRAMEWORK FOR EMBEDDED SYSTEMS by Ajitabh Prakash Saxena Master of Science in Computer Science California State University, Chico Spring 2011 Devices such as cell phones, set-top boxes, televisions, etc., are generating digital entertainment content at an alarming rate. The challenge is to access and share the content across these devices. Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) and Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) specifications enable seamless sharing of digital content across these devices. Many companies developed software development kits for rapid development of UPnP and DLNA compliant devices. This project identifies some of the limitations of currently available UPnP software development kits with respect to their deployment on embedded systems. The project also addresses these limitations by implementing the UPnP specifications with major emphasis on its deployment in embedded devices. The project considers factors such as memory footprint of SDK, portability across multiple operating systems, abstraction of services, debug ability, development cost and performance. A simple DLNA media server was also developed using the SDK and some open source components. This effort was undertaken to prove that the framework can be used to develop a DLNA compliant media server that can be effectively deployed on embedded devices. To test the portability across multiple operating systems the SDK was developed using Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 environment along with Microsoft platform SDK. As each development milestone was accomplished basic testing was performed on Linux and Windows operating systems. After significant work was accomplished the SDK was also tested on a MIPS based embedded system. Behavioral differences on all the three platforms were noted and analyzed.