Slashdot Mirror
iPAQ AutoMP3 Jukebox How-to
Ralph Cottenham writes: "tinytechnews has just put the finishing touches on its first how-to article; a complete MP3 jukebox in your vehicle with a sleek interface provided by the Compaq iPAQ. This article shows you how to use your iPAQ PocketPC to supply your favorite music wherever you go." A lot of the "how-to" work here is accomplished by adding an external hard drive to the iPAQ (running Windows, not GNU/Linux) with Addonics' PocketEX enclosure and an IBM diskdrive, but consideration is also given to various ways to pipe the sound into a car stereo system.
to change the mp3, why not use one of those IR remote controls connected to the serial port of the laptop? winamp has plugins for something like that. if you're not using windows, something else should be available.
:)
I'm thinking of doing the same thing, provided I can find a cheap laptop, as mine is still too new to stick in the trunk of my car. to control the player I would use a ir remote, with the receiver in one corner in the rear window, one of those LCDs 20x2 to view the song info somewhere in the dashboard, and the output connected into the cd changer inputs of my car stereo. so.. anyone having a cheap p90 for sale?
pedro cardoso
nipjc at ua dot pt
- too lazy to login and have a sig
For those who don't want to buy the iPAQ, Hard drive, and enclosure, you can just get the Archos 6G handheld mp3 jukebox and it's practically the same, without all the extra wires and crap. It can send music to the car stereo in the same way as the setup outlined in the article.
it's a lot cheaper, too.
Archos Website
east_bay_pete
.....How-to? How-to what? Spend a lot more time and money than necessary?
I know we're supposed to be moving away from desktops and to handheld devices but what if there was a way to reuse an old AMD 450 as a car mp3 system. The biggest problem is rapid startup and shutdown while retaining state and without corrupting the filesystem but I'd be willing to buy the extra components if any still existed for desktops.
I have no problem navigating a 10-disc changer without looking at it while driving... why should MP3s be any harder? (Apart from the sheer volume of course).
Kenwood now make a $450 headunit that will play CDROMs of MP3s as well as regular CDs, anyway, so the utility of a lot of these things is fading. The UI is a bit basic so far, and they don't have a changer that can deal with data yet, but it's a good first step.
Or, the PhatNoise (http://www.phatnoise.com/CAS.htm) when it's finally done, gets you an MP3 changer compatible with your existing head unit, which is especially handy if you have one of those 'built into the whole dash' things, like Audi, Alfa and Vauxhall do.
--
the telephone rings / problem between screen and chair / thoughts of homocide
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
Seriously. This is a major waste of an iPaq. If you have enough disposable income to buy the ipaq and all the other kit, then just buy the cheaper portable mp3 players. Hey, if you still want the ipaq, you can still have it, and take it with you without having hook and unhook it from your car every time you take a drive! Woohoo!
The enemies of Democracy are
Ogg/Vorbis recently changed the license for much of their stuff (the libraries, etc.) from GPL to FreeBSD in order to facilitate the incorporation of Ogg/Vorbis into hardware. This was done because of the legal complexities of incorporating GPL firmware with hardware and was fully endorsed by the free software foundation. As one who generally makes use of the GPL (and has even written a GPL-like Free Media License for other forms of artistic media (films, music, etc.), I found this to be very interesting ... a vindication that no single free license fits all, and a strong indication that the Free Software Foundation can be very flexible in supporting whatever measures enhance software (and hardware) freedom, even when it means putting the good of the community before their own pride.
Given the interest hardware manufacturers have expressed in OggVorbis (remember, they could well take the brunt of the hit when the royalty demands for MP3 start rolling in), I would be very surprised if many, perhaps even most, hardware players aren't supporting both MP3 and OggVorbis in the near future.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
A better way, in myopinion, is to add a 1U rackmount server case to the trunk and put a celeron or duron system with a few 20 gig hard drives and your os of choiceto server up the MP3's. I remember seeing an article in Maximum Linux (now out of business) that explained how one person did it with a database and all. It just would look A LOT cooler than the I-Paq.
"If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people in the world?"
There is a very nice iPAQ distribution called intimate which is semi-based off of the Debian distribution (yes you can even add the debian-arm source to it's sources.list file). This "intimate" distribution can be operated off a microdrive (or nfs-root using wireless which I'm doing). Check out this page for some screen-shots. At the bottom you'll see that this is a great candidate for mpeg playing. At my university, I use the wireless network for my ipaq to stream mp3s using a distribution mounted remotely using nfs!
a test/install/H3600/install.html. Do what it says, then use ipkg to install the package "intimateboot". Finally, take a look at this page: http://ipaq.secret.org.uk/intimate/install.html. The current base is at about 200 megs uncompressed. There should be a new version coming out in the next few days with a smaller base, but a much more dpkg-conforming installation process!
Instructions for loading Linux on the iPAQ can be found here: http://familiar.handhelds.org/familiar/releases/l
--
Free Mac Mini
Buy an empeg (or Rio Car, as they're called these days). Look here. 60 GB of MP3's (or WAV's or WMA's with the next update) in your car or at home. I own one and it's the best value for money I've bought in a long time.
Very kind of you to say so. Cheers. Just shows what happens if you're bored and cynical enough : )
- Replace your car steering wheel with a fly-by-wire system using a force-feedback gamepad.
- Replace your suspension with a liquid N2 cooled ceramic HT superconducting magnetic levitation system.
- Replace your wipers with dozens of tiny robots that constantly crawl across your windscreen blasting dirt off with teeny lasers ripped from CD players.
- Replace your engine with a cold-fusion reactor
Etc. etc. etc.Can you say "Overkill"?
The slashdot 2 minute between postings limit: /.'ers since Spring 2001.
Pissing off hyper caffeineated
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
All you need is a 486DX 100 lying around. That's my MP3 box, complete with a 3.2 gb drive (I can handle up to 8 with the bios card ;)
Use MPXPlay for the software, works like a charm, even with high bitrate MP3's
Controll it with a numeric keypad.
-B
~...Don't trade our love for Tea and Sympathy~ - Jars of Clay
I found that a good solution is to make up a playlist long enough for the journey I'm making, start it off, then just let it play.
"Dark Side of the Moon" is just long enough for my drive home at night - from "... bumbump Bumbump BUMBUMP" to "As a matter of fact, there is no dark side..." is roughly the 44 miles at motorway speed, at 8pm...
Why not buy a MD player with LP4 compression? I know this doesn't play MP3's but you get a very small and sexy machine with long playback time on only one battery and 4 albums on one MD.
Of course, it doesn't beat mp3's compression but the cd-mp3 players out there at the moment don't handle knocks very well and look very cheap and plasticy.
As soon as I've saved up, that will be what I'll be doing. Yes it would be nice to run mp3's from an ipaq but the battery life on one of those things is low enough as it is, without hammering it playing music.
--
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
I am a co-author of "Scream" which is a front-end for madplay in the familiar distribution of linux for the iPAQ.
a m/
Scream is written in python, utilizing pygtk and libglade. I've just added Icecast support with Shoutcast support forthcoming.
Scream is available at http://cvs.handhelds.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/scre
Over the weekend, I used it for 3+ hours in my car on a roadtrip usingt a cassette adapater available at Radio Shack (tunes on microdrive). Worked well for my purposes.
License is GPL.
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess? - Joshua (Wargames)
I'm using WinMe of all the horrible things, just because it was quick and simple (anyone can build a player like mine). I use WinAMP with a Joystick plugin and the resumer plugin, and a removable hard-drive bay with an old 6GB drive. The only things I needed to buy were:
- $150 BookPC (had most stuff on board)
- $60 Celeron processor
- $20 2 Removable Hard-Drive Bays
- $30 Power Inverter
- $10 tape adapter
I already had a spare 1GB hardrive for the OS, a spare 6GB for the songs, and a couple of 32MB DIMMS lying around.A device like the iPAQ player is nice, but for $1000, I could totally Mack-out my Winblowz standard machine, which fits under the seat in my Corolla. And, it doesn't require you to look at it! I just alphabetically sort my playlists, and use the joystick to traverse tracks 1 or 10 at a time; a lot safer while driving! If I ever want a display, I can add any RCA video-input screen later, and it'll just be for convenience, not required.