Jukebox-pc

[Lord Berzoid]

First of all disregard any spelling errors, English is not my main language

Well, a friend of mine is transforming a barn he has in his backyard in a place we youngsters can relax without annoying our parents, and it is all coming together nicely, except one thing. How do we get music there. And since We got a big mp3 collection which we don't want to burn to cd's, we have come upon the idea of building a jukebox PC.

My friend has some old PC's laying around so we will be using one of those.
I don't know the specifications but I know that it will be enough for what we need it to do.
That is playing MP3's from a hard drive, playing CD's from a cdrom drive and using playlists so we don't have to walk over to it each time to play another song, we have to be able to make playlists by using the input devices .
I make a sketch of what I had in mind using MS-paint

We will be using the chassis of the case to mount the PSU,HDD, cdrom and motherboard.
The casing will be build from MDF wood.
The things I haven't figured out are these:

1. Heat: we want the system to be as quiet as possible, so in this sketch I put the air intake in the front and the outtake in the back, but I don't know if I can rely only on hot air rising for coolling this. I don't know either if it would be enough to just strip the casing of the PSU and removing the fan to cool it. The CPU will keep his fan.

2. Input: We could just hook up a mouse and a keyboard to this box but I'm wondering if we can't solve it with a more stylish solution. I'm thinking at buttons above the cdrom drive by which we could control this thing.

3. Software: for this one, I don't have any idea what we could use. We could put Windows 98 on it and install winamp but I don't know how to control this without a mouse and keyboard.


Enlighten me.

 

[nst6563]

Nice idea there. However, as I have to point this out. An intake is an intake. An outtake is what is at the end of shows and films that are unintentional or funny and also often called bloopers . What you're referring to is an EXHAUST.

now that I have that off my chest...you CAN control winamp with a cheap remote control. OR you can get a USBIRD device and use a program called GIRDER to program the computer to use ANY remote you want.

the other option (and this may not be for you if you're building on the cheap) would be a touchscreen film that can be put over the screen.

The best option you have to expel the heat would be either a LOT of vents in the top, OR a single QUIET 120mm fan. With old hardware, it prolly doesn't need to spin at anything more than 7v can provide, and at 7v, most 120mm fans are very quiet...if not inaudible.

 

[Lord Berzoid]

thanx for the reply.

think I will make the intake and exhaust by
a) drilling a lot of small holes in the wood
b) using mesh if I find some

as for the input, a touchscreen is just to expesive for this small project that will be as cheap as possible.
And I would more think of buttons on the front instead of a remote.

I came upon an option:

A winamp plugin called COM-control that lets you control winamp with buttons conected to your serial/parallel port.
downloaded it and made a setup that I could use with the jukebox:



materials:
# 9 pins d-sub connector female (or 25 pins)
# Cable
# 4 Buttons

with this setup I can do almost everything, almost. I imagined what I would do with it; I can open winamp, open the add file to playlist screen, browse up and down folders, open folders using enter, choose a song using enter and it is in my playlist, only problem, when I want to add the next song , the folder in which the previous track is situated is opened and since I don't have a key to go back to the main music folder, I have to stay in this folder.
Solutions:
-put all the mp3's in 1 folder (impossible with the 3000 mp3's we have)
-finding a way so that when I open the add file to palylist dialog it open the main music folder
-finding a shortcut for "Parent Directory" (don't know if it exists), and linking it to a button in winamp port control

btw, the file structure will be like this (seems the simplest to me)
C: (Windows)
D:
--Music
----- artist
---------(album)
-------------- artist - title.mp3

 

[nst6563]

hAHA! I never knew winamp had that com port function in it...I only use it at work for playlists...I hit play when I walk in, and never touch it afterward

I figured the touchscreen would be too much, but a cool idea otherwise.

That comport function looks promising. If you have 2 com ports (as most older machines did) then you could have twice the number of buttons?

My vote is for either a remote and the USBIRD/GIRDER combo (fairly cheap) or the com port control for winamp.

As far as the exhaust is concerned: If this is in barn or converted barn, then chances are the dust is of a higher level than in a house. Therefore, I'd recommend some sort of air "filter" in the front air vents. This can be as simple as a stretched pair of panty hose (very effective). As for the exhaust, I wouldn't put it on the very top, but on the BACK at the top. And if it were me, I'd put a very slow moving 120mm fan in there, with a wire mesh or simple fan grill. Reason being is you'll have the heat generated from the components below, as well as the heat output of the monitor. A slow moving 120mm fan is both inaudible, and effective at removing that amount of heat. Plus, you can get any ol' 120mm fan for cheap nowadays. I paid $7 each for 2 Thermaltake "thunderblade" 120mm fans. At 7v, I can't hear them, and they still move enough air to cool the rig in my sig sufficiently.

 

[Nivram]

You could always put a keyboard with a touchpad (similar to what a laptop has) in it too, similar to this.
(that's just an example, there might be a cheaper place out there).

You could even build the cabinet where there's a drop down door in the front, under the monitor screen, where you mount a keyboard like this, and have the cd-rom behind that, so you have to have the keyboard tray door down in order to access it. Should make for a fairly clean look to the front of the cabinet.

 

[nst6563]

The touchpad is a good idea...'cept he really wouldn't need the keyboard part since just about everything he's doing can be done with the mouse.

I have an older synaptics touchpad that's about 2 inches square, and you could actually mount something like that flush with the front and it wouldn't look too bad depending on the color scheme of the rest of the cabinet.

 

[Lord Berzoid]

well, first of all, I'm not planning to buy anything for this project.
The thing is we're building this thing from scraps of hardware we found lying around and are trying to do something useful with. And it would be nice to have it look neat, but 30 dollars (+shipping) is just not worth it in my opinion.

Anyone sees any problems in my sketch?

as for mine:
1.Heat: will probably have a big intake in the lower part of the front , either with mesh or drilling lots of holes, panty as a filter. exhaust above the monitor , with filter too. outtake fan at the back of the computer compartment. PSU mounted with fan.

2.Input: will probably use the 4 parallel mounted buttons, if I find a way to go to parent directory (help me out here,shouldn't be too hard to find)

3.Software: Microsoft Windows 98 SE, winamp, com control. Thinking of a way to use a winamp visualization as a screensaver after 1 minute of inactivity.

 

[nst6563]

regarding the heat, it's difficult to say just how much heat will be put off until we know what the hardware is. If it's a Pentium 233MMX and a 14" monitor, we're not talking about much heat at all. Nothing more than a single 120mm exhaust fan on low speed couldn't handle. As long as you have enough vents in the lower front to let air IN, then you won't need anything else but that single 120mm fan (with the obvious exception of maybe the PSU exhaust fan blowing out the back).

as for the buttons...can you utilize two com ports? Or can you assign something for 2 buttons pressed together?

 

[Lord Berzoid]

regarding the heat, it's difficult to say just how much heat will be put off until we know what the hardware is. If it's a Pentium 233MMX and a 14" monitor, we're not talking about much heat at all. Nothing more than a single 120mm exhaust fan on low speed couldn't handle. As long as you have enough vents in the lower front to let air IN, then you won't need anything else but that single 120mm fan (with the obvious exception of maybe the PSU exhaust fan blowing out the back).

as for the buttons...can you utilize two com ports? Or can you assign something for 2 buttons pressed together?

Well, I'm planning to place the PSU against the back and to use the fan as exhaust. I will probably be using a second exhaust fan to cool the pc section.

For the buttons, I can use the same principles twice, however I have all the functions I need with those 4 buttons.
I will ask on the winamp forum how I can have a shortcut to go to the parent dirrectory