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Empeg in March
BladeRunner writes sent us a link to a news.com article with a bit more
news on the empeg.
For those of you who live in a shell, the empeg
is the StrongArm/Linux based car MP3 player that is making
me want to break several of the 10 commandments.
What commandments does it make you want to break?
Get a fucking job.
Not to mention coveting your neighbour's house, his field, his servent, his handmaid, his ox or his ass. OK, it does say "nor anything else that is his" but it's way down the list.
Please,
;-)
make yourself a favor: switch back to the original bash, or even better, download yourself a copy of tcsh...
(just thinking about remembering the days where I was a user on an AIX system with a scary sysop that would make zsh as the only available shell to the user, is enough to make me want to switch back to windoze
I wish empeg would market a portable version of this, possible without the audio features.
I be looking for a portable server that runs linux.
I don't want a Monitor or screen, so most laptops are out.
I want something that is rugged, will fit in my laptop backpack (w. the laptop) and run linux.
I need at least 16GB of storage, as this will be what I store all my email, workfiles whatever on.
I'm tired of having my work spread among a bunch of geographicaly separated little servers (work: NT workstation/95 laptop/Home Linux box. I want one server that goes everywhere, everything else will be an X-Terminal or game machine.
I can't avoid windoze, but where possible I'll map everthing to a samba share on the portable server (can several non-simultaneous email clients map to the same Outlook Express/Netscape Messenger files on my portable SAMBA server).
Thanks!
... I already have a factory stereo with steering-wheel controls and shit in my Grand Cherokee Limited, and I'm not about to give that up...
However, I'm _extremely_ interested in a headless unit which plugs into a pre-existing stereo, and preferably controllable via emulating the manufacturer's cd-changer controls.
Now _that_ would be cool.
But I'm sure theft, coveting and maybe worshipping the car as a god are covered...
I've already got a CD changer, and I don't want to give up my head unit because the empeg doesn't have an AM radio receiver.
It would be great if I could put this in the trunk, pass the CD changer input through it, and have the display up front (via a cable, presumably).
This would also solve the theft problem...
These things are going to be extremely rare no matter how popular linux or MP3 gets. Unless of course somehow you get one of the carmakers to ship them with the car, not likely iin the next 5 years at least.
To a thief, this thing is going to look like a cheap Radio, only 4 buttons? and a little screen, no CD slot, no Tape slot..
Then there's the car its in, Rob do a car poll, I'd bet that most slashdotters dont drive the latest BMW or Porsche model.. and Slashdotters are the target market, hell, they're the ONLY market for the Empeg.
I assume this means the USB kernal code is nearing final...
I want to connect it to my home network when my
car is in the garage, and ftp and telnet to it.
Just mount an IR interface in the garage and the car. Simplest would be the slow $30 serial IR devices with a range of several feet. IrDA would be faster but has tighter tolerances. Also have to find a place where the lens would not get too dirty -- windows have obvious advantages unless they have a heat-reflective coating.
Or maybe a wireless modem. Particularly if you're in a Ricochet-serviced city...
But shape is odd for my laptop bag (kensington saddle bag).
I could probably squeeze the empeg in but large HD versions are way more expensive, plus I don't need an FM reciever.
Perhaps if I could find a laptop "kit" that I can dump the keyboard/lcd from and put dual 8GB laptop drive in?
Or what about a PC-104 computer w. an IDE interface......
Doesn't radio accomplish that?
Nope, it means that the data transfer software is gonna be Win32 based (at least at first).
I have a late model chevy truck. I just removed the cd audio player (slot feed type).
:)
Then I installed a slot feed cdrom in the dash in its place...little custom modifications to mounting area, put a industrial board pc under the dash along with a 4 gig laptop drive, and put an extention (crossed for netcard to netcard use) to the ethernet to right under the edge of the dash, right beside they diag connector (to confuse service people of course). USB, Bah hah, why would you want that?
I then added a $90 display and a keypad from the pc maker, added a little sweat and linux and I was finished, plus I can work on my code and add features, so ok its never gonna be finished.
I can rip cd audio, play cd audio, rip and play cdaudio-though its iffy doing that-and its a little touchy playing cdaudio when your rolling over rough stuff too, play mpegs right off cdroms I have burned-this works ok even when moving over fairly rough terrain, and I can store those onto the hd too at will and play them...it will hold about 1000 songs on the hd. I have a development system in the house a laptop, so I can go out and send updates via telnet and ftp, but you could just run a 300 foot network cable to a house pc, or make it removable.
Industrial PC (6x8") $500
64M ram dont know already had it, say $30 ???
Laptop ide hd $200 (got lucky on laptop drive price, so yours could be a lil more)
Display and buttons $90
ide cdrom $90
Linux $0.00
Time $priceless and happily used up
And so its spread around the truck a lil bit...the design is mounted where I want it and the display is too, I coulda mounted it anywhere really, and the cdrom is just a frill to fill the hole where I already had a cd player (trunks come to mind).
It the cube in an untra thin half rack design
The USB code works on intel, at least well enough to do a little bit of control. They probably use serial to do most of it. I think ether would have been better
Follow the I saw the prototype thread...
OH yea, what pray tell did they use here? An expensive da convertor? I doubt it, probably a sound card chip, I used an industrial computer with crystal sound personally...as explained in the make your own thread.
I just went and found that...I think I will go back and get a high quality 4 channel da for mine, thats a good idea, after all mine is an industrial pc unit and can accept those
I've seen those high-end systems, those are usually double-DIN sized. Empeg is single DIN.
But anyway...
You could have some fun with a quickcam, have linux do some sort of pattern recognition and yell at anyone unfamiliar who peeks in the windows...
I always thought gesture recognition would really be neat, have your car/computer pick up on sign language.
Not unless they've left the ivory towers & entered the Real World. Now is the time that it finally pays to be a geek.
Um, dude? That's nature telling you to MOVE.
I hope by "storage" they mean solid state technology, can you imagine a fragile (yep they really are...) hard drive in a car - you hit a pothole, or someone rear-ends you even mildly and the end result would be a monumental head crash. Is it an industry standard HDD or something proprietary?
Read:
Big bucks kiddies...
Are you sure you're still a geek? Maybe you've turned into a droid and just don't know...
Where is it written that you must drive a clapped-out Toyota Tercel to be a geek?
I'm sorry, I hack cars too - I guess I'm not allowed in the club. Darn.
'nuf said. I'll believe it when I see it.
I live in a shell...
--
A cool display.
Just have the empeg flash a "Microsoft Windows CE" logo if it detects someone trying to steal it.. The crook will put it back and run off.
Honestly, Rob, I don't see how coveting thy neighbor's wife is going to help you get one of these.
...you don't spend any time in your car anyway.
;-)
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
I think it's on rails so you can remove the entire unit - a habit it would be useful to acquire.
This thing almost makes me want to learn to drive...
i saw linux... but what's this about windows based software? title downloading? phooey...
It's rated to -20 degrees C (non-operating), and (I think) -5 operating. Colder than that and they recommend taking it inside. Surely this applies to any other in car audio system, too, though?
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
We're up to at least six now. Surprise, surprise, the search function doesn't go back to the first two in October 1998--the archives have been wiped. Those two were on or just before 19 October, when both CmdrTaco and someone else posted the exact same link. Then there was one on 27 January, one on 8 February, one on 3 March, and this one on 12 March. Possibly as many as two of them have posted anything new...
-- GRR: Newtware, PNG Group, AlphaWorld Map, Info-ZIP, Google cluster infrastructure,
I really think people who can't count should refrain from reading slashdot, the topics are likely to be over your head.
A quick look through the archive shows that two stories on the empeg have been posted. Both were links to news articles about the empeg (Slashdot News for Nerds, remember?). You were off by forty, which makes your percentage error 1000%.
Now, readers may have mentioned the empeg when commenting on other stories related to mp3s, but you can hardly hold Slashdot accountable for that.
Hmm, what's this? The fourty-second time empeg has been promoted on /. this month? What's up here?
Yeah, yeah. I figured you'd catch the 42 as a reference to Douglas Adams and not an actual number of posts (which I realize has only been two or three), but...
Yes, but I'd rather listen to MP3 lossiness instead of AM or FM lossiness any day. Plus AM and FM both have really awful noise filtering, and there's no way to pre-queue audio for when you drive under a bridge or into underground parking.
-- I avoid spam by accepting only OpenPGP encrypted or signed email at this address. Clear-signed, RFC2015, heck, even
hrm? what on earth is wrong with zsh? it's more configurable, and more filled with practical little features, than bash, and, like bash, it derives its scripting language from sh, rather than the braindead csh. The first thing I do on all my new accounts is change my shell to zsh and import my .zshrc from another box...
Why not just use that money to buy a laptop with a decent sound card, buy a car-CD/Cassette adaptor, and your off and running. There might be a problem stabalizing your laptop, but for $999, I'll find a way
--Ivan, weenie NT4 user, Jon Katz hater: bite me!
--weenie NT4 user: bite me!
"Computers are nothing but a perfect illusion of order" -- Iggy Pop
I think it'd be pretty awesome to have a windup version of a portable MP3 player than can play 35 hours of music.
It'd make hiking a lot more fun.
Considering the problem with people breaking into cars just to steal the stereo... (Happened twice with one of my friends!)
If these things become popular enough for theives to recognize them, won't they be even more likely to be stolen since they're so expensive?
Removable faceplate empegs?
It'd still be worth it to steal the harddrive...
Oh give it a rest already! its new stuff on it.. if you don't want to read it, DON'T but don't just post in here and bitch and complain about it.
Wouldn't this significantly reduce the amount of music you could have in the thing? If my memory serves, even the 2GB version has the equivalent of 35 albums worth of storage, and you can only handle 6-12 CDs with a trunk-mounted CD changer.
D
----
I'd like to get a dozen of these for a beowulf cluster. That would rock.
Bwahahahahahaha
----
----
"Oh, bother," said Pooh, as he hid Piglet's mangled corpse.
Microsoft is mentioned a million times.. Do you have a problem with this too? Linux is mentioned alot too.. hmm, what's wrong with that?
Then there's the car its in, Rob do a car poll, I'd bet that most slashdotters dont drive the latest BMW or Porsche model.
:)
At least the ones that aren't communists
You know, cool as it sounds, I don't imagine something like this being any good where I live (Minnesota). January gets to be -40 (F or C, doesn't matter) and I don't think there's a piece of hardware alive for under $1M that could survive that. I mean, really, HDs are touchy enough as it is, but between the cold and the vibration, I don't see it being practical.
I hope I'm wrong, but I doubt it would survive a winter where I live...
Chris
Chris
So Buddha walks into a pizza parlor and says: "Hey, make me one with everything."
I had the opportunity when Hugo was in the states for Linuxworld last week to have him over to my apartment. He brought along a completed prototype (what the production models will be built on) and we plugged it into our home stereo (nice bose system with a big klipsch subwoofer and lots of power) via its RCAs. The Empeg rules. We brought out a linux workstation and minicom'd into it via the serial port, he logged into the Empeg and proceeded to change a few options, show us the beta 3D visualization code and more. (You can _login_ to your car stereo!)
;-)
:)
THIS THING KICKS ASS.
The visualization is _very_ cool and the possibilities for expansion are amazing as well. If you have the cash, this is the toy of the decade. Hugo even went so far as to stand on it - it's that sturdy. This isn't a toy folks, this is a regular pull-out car stereo deck; it just happens to run linux and play mp3s.
Like someone else said, you better watch out for trees, this thing is mesmerizing.
I sound like a PR employee, but when you actually see it, you can't help but be a little giddy.
-Brian
I think you wanted to go to http://www.microsoft.com/ and got lost.
-- Keith
-- Keith Moore
This sig is the express property of someone.
Wait a minute ! An MP3 player that works in .. a car , you say !! This is incredible. What a first!
[cut to felix the cat with lines coming out of his head to indicate amazement]
MEEPT!!
Not fair. I drive a BMW.
;)
Okay, so it isn't the latest. It's a 1987. But I still take offence to that remark.
Seriously though, if you've been to the expensive section of your local retail hifi audio specialist, you would see a few high end tape decks (and a cd player or two) that hide the slot behind a moveable, full-sized LCD screen. It's very similar to the look of the empeg and thieves know what those look like. Just as pricy too. So, don't think that will save you if you get one (which I am going to).
Since it is a computer, you could conceivably wire it into being not only anti-theft, but the heart of your car's security system.
But then again, you might just lose it anyway. Never underestimate the stupidity of a petty thief. Pulling it out and putting it in the boot is still the best defense.
--Chris
becuase there is no such thing as a laptop with a good soundcard ---
unrealated --does anyone know if you could plug this thing into a real stereo that would be well, awesome.
-ben signing out
------- Oh damn.... the Sigfile escaped... -Great OM
What about the Cube? It's a little short on storage space, by your requirements, but it's kinda portable.
So, what does this give me that my 8-track doesn't already?
--
Beef
"Raging Moderate" of the
But what if you have no arms! Bad joke.. I know.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Umm.. Crooks are stupid.. They wouldn't care.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
See I would like a dual unit... I.E. interface up front, the server in the back with a 5 channel digital amp built in, and 4 hd's. I don't think it would be hard to do that.. Basically the interface would be up front with a semi dumb terminal to do all the selections and processes.. Then the rear unit could be hacked to do all sorts of things.. But that's just my 2 cents..
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Besides, his neighbors probably don't have one yet.
Mmmm, car mp3s. Now, for the first site to push mp3 music to this player over a cell connection. That would be sweet. Just tune in to www.carmuse.com. Yes.
Zagmar
Hugo Fiennes, the guy who invented this, was
in the year above me at Warwick University. He had a prototype empeg unit in his Mazda MX-5. I sat in the car and (saw|listened to) the thing working. It's tres cool.
Just take it inside with you at night. Walking in to work with it would be a little hard to explain, but geeks would admire you. But seriously I know people that do the same with portable CD players and such. Besides it's just one more thing ppl here in the midwest can bitch about.