HTPC oook. SOFTWARE for MP3 player,

hello
i am in need of building a STANDALONE mp3 player

the hardware i have at hand is a pII 350 (passive) suitable ram, o/b graphics and sound, and psu.

anyway...moving on....

what i would like is....

something which DOES NOT require the use of a monitor.

however, i do wish to utilize a character LCD, a 4x20 LCD.

i would like it to boot up, (time doest really matter, as long as it doesnt take longer than 2minutes/3)

i push a button and it plays!
lol

and i would like the top row of the screen to display the track thats playing, and the other three lines to display next tracks.

is this possible?

is there a linux distro out that does this?

thank you

 

Windows with Winamp can do it. As long as you have the right drivers/plugins for your LCD and a hardware control panel.
Look around as I know people have built "remote controls" for winamp in the past.
You will of course have to do your set-up with a monitor but can run headless later.

Again, any linux could do this as well. But I don't know much about that.

your question boils down to player software, LCD software, and (I'm guessing) hardware/software control of the player.
the last part is easy with almost any mp3 playing software that uses hotkeys.
you just have to configure an input device to the hotkeys in software.
I hope that made sense.

 

Read this for a good interface for controlling winamp. I'm also sure you'll find the correct type of LCD output plugin here.

Will this run on a PII? I'm not sure, but good luck with the linux project. Might try and old version of windows+old version of winamp.

Just keep in mind

But if you don't have a monitor who cares how fast it boots just as long as it loads right?

 

hey
i didnt realise winamp needed so much!
although thats most likely for winamp 5 with all the fancy skins,
as far as i remember, winamp3 ran perfect on my old k6-2-266
doesnt matter about boot time, as long as the damn thing runs!
i do intend to make a winamp remote, just once i find some suitable switches, will 'reset' switches do the job?
also, is there any way that i can speed up the boot time on win98se on teh pII machine? im gna ram it full of ram as ive got a LOT lying around, numerous 256mb sticks and a 128too

thanx.

 

I had a play around with this sort of thing a while back. I used a dos based program called damp (http://www.damp-mp3.co.uk/) which worked ok.
Might be worth a look since it will boot up nice and quickly....

 

go back, winamp 3 was the biggest mess ever,
stick to winamp 2.97 if u can find it, or any other winamp 2... i had it running on an ibm P2-350 with 64mb ram and windows xp (but i then upgraded the ram to 192)
so windows 98 + winamp2 = sorted

 

I had a p1 166 with windows 95 running winamp2 with a 20x4 lcd controlled by LCDisplay

Ran great, fast boot times and it didnt really care if I flipped the main switch without clicking "shutdown".

I would recomend that you disable everything thing except for your sound driver and it will boot fast. Possibly try 98 with most of the extra stuff disabled.

 

I've had winamp5 running on a P225 with WinXP SP2 works fine for me, havn't used it for a length of time but still worked.

Could I surggest you get a touch screen lilliput, you can get a 7" for 150ish and then get a full screen winamp plugin and control it using that, also the Lilliputs normally come with a handy remote control.

Regards
GiGo

 

hey
well....i dont particularly have 150ish lying about otherwise i readily would! would buy an ipod if i had that kinda cash!
ok.

well ive sorted out which os and media player im going to be using,
but..how on earth do i get the lcd screen to display the information as i want?

also, is there any FREE VNC software, which i can use say a palm pilot or a PPC to 'see' the screen on the pc and alter winamps playlist?
thanx

 

You could use palm orb to make a palm look like a 20x4 lcd with a keypad to LCDC and use that to control winamp. Its a pretty cool program.

And if your having trouble with the LCDisplay plugin, its real simple, just add what you want on each line of the display to the output tab and it will work great.