Touchscreen BoomboxPC

leerpm writes "Someone has managed to put together a Touchscreen BoomboxPC. It can function as both a boombox and PC. They mention plans to make it run Linux too, by making it dual-boot to Debian."

Comments

Image mirror

[nuclear305]

Here's a tasty mirror of the images...since everyone loves pretty pictures! Image1 Image2 Image3 Image4 Image5 Image6 Image7 Image8 Image9 Image10 Image11 Image12

Re:Image mirror

[mobby_6kl]

And here's the text:

Touchscreen BoomboxPC

Hitachi TRK-8200HR + Fujitsu Stylistic 1200 Color Tablet PC
currently running win98 (Debian dual-boot when complete) with MediaCar as the default mp3 interface, designing a custom skin for the 480x640 portrait display
currently 2g hdd, increasing to upwards of 20g
pcmcia LAN, upgrading to WiFi
internal webcam
4 USB (when completed)
custom wallpaper to keep original aesthetics

the powersupply for the tablet is internal, and wired into the outlet on the boombox, so you only have to plug in the standard AC wire for both units to get power. the tablet also has a battery for complete portablity.

functional as both PC and boombox. radio works, but the indicator had to be removed. the built-in mics will feed into the tablet, along with line-in and possibly radio so i can record radio to the harddrive, if i ever wanted to. the line-out of the tablet goes to the line-in of the boombox. the headphone jack on the boombox is unchanged, and the amplified external speaker jacks on the boombox had to be removed to make room for the power switch, standby and restart switches.

not sure if i'm gonna upgrade the speakers right away. most of what's left is building in the 4 USB ports, some bondoing, and repainting, most likely in shades of silver and grey.

Re:What about a car unit?

[CdBee]

well, you could include Windows actually - Microsoft allow customised builds for embedded projects, it's just that for an essentially stand-alone project the benefits of Windows such as they are, are largely irrelevant.

Any OS that can share files with a Windows desktop would be suitable, Linux obviously springs to mind because of good driver support and interface compatibility, but not so long ago the Be OS was being touted for exactly this purpose.
Be Inc went down after the CEO botched a chance to sell his OS to Apple Computer, but many of its software engineers now work for Palm's Operating systems division.

Possibly the latest builds of the Palm OS would be well suited also. A media device only really needs a player, codecs, and network & removable storage drivers after all.

Re:What about a car unit?

[raistphrk]

A BeOS stereo would be amazing. The thing would boot incredibly fast if nothing else. And since the OS was designed largely for embedded devices, I doubt much customization would be necessary.

Media Car

[anonicon]

While this little project is interesting enough, I caught a link from this piece to Media Car:

Media Car (mostly in French, but the screenshots do it justice)

It seems to be a do-it-all for multimedia software, but it looks bleeding edge enough to warrant wariness. I'd be interested in this if it could run on BSD or Linux and supported a remote.

Stylus

[j235]

What he fails to mention is that you need the stylus to touch the screen.

I have one of these Tablet PCs, and only the stylus can register clicks.

Re:All I can say is

[gutterslide]

1980 ;)

Re:But the burning question is....

[gutterslide]

yep. it plays midi, too. if you were curious. ;)

Re:I'm not impressed...

[gutterslide]

the touchscreen is not, non-fuctional. the icons you see are on the desktop, and functional. the start menu is displayed simply for the sake of the pic. this is a work in progress, i had no idea it would get spread all over the web this fast. the type of animation you're talking about is in the works. i'm working with another guy who is better at skinning than i am. the tape spinning is a good idea. and since you posted anonymously, i guess there's no reason i can't steal the idea from you. :D thanks!