Topic: Linux Jukebox & Darwin Award Nominee

[pigiron]

Like everything else, it started out so simple before morphing into a gargoyle 

Thought I'd dabble in 24/96 after the SD722 arrived... but how to play it? Looked at burning DVD-Audio, but I don't do Wind'ers and Linux is probably gonna be running late to that party... but hey, why not slap together a Linux jukebox to replace the Squeezebox on the stereo rack?

Hit the internet for some research... pull out the credit card... plug parts together... install Linux... compile, compile... tweak, tweak, tweak, tweak and more tweaks at that "holy crap; I gotta get up in 5 hours" time when it starts to like this sucker may work!

The vast majority of those "tweaks" were because I wanted to run the sucker "old school". Meaning it should operate like a piece of stereo equipment instead of some computer... remote and 2 line LCD... instead of keyboard, mouse, and for sure no glowing display to disturb those oil lamp jams!

With a smile, I unplug all the peripherals and jerk the bugger off the "test bench" for the first time. Squirm some room on the stereo rack to get some "real" soundwaves instead of using those puny ass PC speakers on the  bench... mash the power button.......... and it doesn't boot... ARGH!!!

Put it back on the "bench" and connect just the display to get an idea on what's going on... hmmm... there it is... BIOS is complaining:

      "Keyboard Error:   Press F1 to continue"     

Fast forward.... got everything working.  It's yummy 

[udovdh]

Like everything else, it started out so simple before morphing into a gargoyle 

Thought I'd dabble in 24/96 after the SD722 arrived... but how to play it? Looked at burning DVD-Audio, but I don't do Wind'ers and Linux is probably gonna be running late to that party...

http://dvd-audio.sourceforge.net

[pigiron]

Wahoo!  Looks like the code slingers have been burning some midnight oil.

Thanks for the link... totally missed it when I searched around.

[udovdh]

Wahoo!  Looks like the code slingers have been burning some midnight oil.

Thanks for the link... totally missed it when I searched around.

Works great and with the mkisofs patch it's very easy to produce basic DVD-A discs with audio at diferent samplerates and bitdepths.

[BobW]

Linux Rocks !

Can yell me more about the LCD display, drivers, and UI ?

I'm starting to tear down a box and want to put it to good use.

[Lil Kim Jong-Il]

Yeah, what Bob asked.

And what chassis did you get for your stereo rack?  Can you post a picture?  Is it fanless?

[pigiron]

Linux Rocks !

Can yell me more about the LCD display, drivers, and UI ?

I'm starting to tear down a box and want to put it to good use.

Thought about keeping notes of what all I was doing, but honestly, it'd be a book by now. But at 1K feet:

The LCD is the 631 http://www.crystalfontz.com/products/631/index.html, but I wouldn't recommend it... it's possessed with "ghosting" and is really weird 'cause it actually looks a lot better at 45 degrees... can hardly read it looking straight on. Playing with the contrast may help with that last part, but I'm probably gonna jerk it out in favor of vacuum fluorescent.

The "heart" of the application is IrMP³ http://irmp3.sourceforge.net/. This and all it's subcomponents were where most of the "tweaks" were. Had to pull some stuff out of CVS to get what I wanted, and "massaged" the code in other places after that. But it's just what I wanted... drill down thru the directories of tunes using the remote (a cheap universal Sony via LIRC, but you can make damn near anything work)... mash a button to fire up a concert... filename or metadata scrolls across the LCD with the remaining time ticking away on the line above that... works just like a CD player with a CD-TEXT disc spinning and the added bonus of internet radidio (found a moded mpg321 for better function on that). Oh yea, it's also got about 200G of flac that you can stack up without leaving the barkalounger... yea boy. OBTW: flac123 doesn't do 24 bits, but the mod isn't hard. Let me know if you want it.

Hardware... only the short version here... I was real worried about fan noise, so I started with a VIA momboard, hit kernel.org and made my own super stripped down Linux/Busybox distro that was gonna run out of ram... shouldn't say "gonna" 'cause I got it playing tunes... got IrMp³ firing... got the remote working... pretty much had it all there... but then I just got too damn impatient... that and I made the BIG mistake of going to my favorite electronics store for "just one thing"    Walked out with an ABit microATX, Semparon, memory stick, and an Antec Aria wrapper http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=15130 along with that "one thing". Just to test out the concept don't ya know 

Actually, this works quite well. You can't hear the cpu fan, and the big ass power supply fan is really pretty quiet... probably somewhere around refrigerator loud... even at low volume on the stereo (which rarely happens) it disappears.

Slapped on SuSE 9.3 Prof in no time and recreated the apps I had on the VIA. Used the M-Audio Audiophile 2496 since the price dropped to rock bottom on that sweet thing and Linux loves it. Only other thing hung out the back is the wireless bridge. I'm on the lappy controlling it as I write this, playing a little Two High String Band that I just torrented (is that a word?) on it, while downloading a few more... Ain't life great? 

Actually the hardest part is what I first thought would be a no brainer. I really run a 19" stereo rack and trying to find a rackmount chassis to bolt in with what I want (removable RAID, quiet or no fans, screws in either the VIA or ABit, etc.) and still fit the cabinet depth has turned into a hunting trip. But that's gonna have to wait... the ARC preamp came in today... yahoo!!!

Enough of my crap... if you feel the need and got a few midnights, I say go for it guys! There's other solutions if you want to go the kbd, mouse, crt route... just search around. If you want to go with the remote method and get to the point of creating the IR receiver, I can bore ya with a cheap single part solution if you got a spare internal serial port. And if ya got any more questions, fire away.

Peace.

[BobW]

Yup, it's all about no KVM.
Please tell more !

+T and thanks.
And another +T in 12 for running SuSE, they rock, even since Novell bought them.

[pigiron]

Well, if you don't mind being bored, I can drill down on the IR receiver option 

This is probably the only "homebrew" piece of hardware you'll need... but it looks like the newer versions of LIRC have support for some "off the shelf" units such as the Evation irman http://www.evation.com/irman/index.html so even that can be "store bought"... but I haven't gone down that trail so I'm of little help with that.

Instead I took a peek at the serial port option... and from looking at some of the circuits like this one http://www.lirc.org/images/schematics.gif I realized that most of those components were simply to create the +5VDC for IC1 (the IR receiver chip). I think they did that because they wanted a "dongle" that hangs off the back of the box.

But my plan was to route it thru the inside of the box since I want to use a rackmount chassis. Both the VIA and ABit had the second COM port on header pins on the board instead of poking out the back making such a scheme possible...  and what's more, there's lot's of regulated +5VDC cruising around that area so why try to "create" another one?

So I just ordered the Panasonic PNA4602M from Digikey (PNA4602M-ND) IR receiver chip. It works great by the way... very sensitive and covers a wide angle.

Here's where I got lucky on the VIA... I already had this WRUSBY11 cable from Crystal Fontz http://www.crystalfontz.com/products/cables/index.html and the leads from the Panasonic chip could be jammed into one end (it's not a perfect fit, but it works)... and for the other end of the cable I found a +5V header pin on the board within reach of the boards COM2 Port header pins. An ohm meter confirmed (not surprisingly) that both the COM port pins and the other header pins with the +5V used the same ground, so it was good to go... and it did... the o'scope confirmed the signal "bounced" when I pressed a button on the remote... rock solid with no noise... and later the LIRC software provided the 2nd confirmation. So there it is... a chip and some wire... no diodes, resistors, capacitors, etc.

I tried to use the same setup on the ABit board, but alas, there wasn't a +5V header pin within reach of the cable... so I used a cable kind of like the WR232Y02 on that same Crystal Fontz page so that I could attach directly to the system's power supply. The other end of that cable had a connector using 0.1" spacing, so I soldered two header pins strips (something I had also ordered from Digikey) back to back so I could plug both the "power supply" cable and the "IR" cable into it. This is probably totally confusing, but basically I got my +5VDC juice directly from the power supply instead of off the board.

Of course, your mileage may vary totally... you could see some expensive smoke if something goes wrong   Both of the momboard's documentation was instrumential in finding the "spare" +5VDC header and correct COM2 pins. Also, be sure to look at the data sheet for the Panasonic PNA4602M as it's pinout is different than those chips shown on the LIRC pages... but the "Data" pin of the chip still goes to the Data Carrier Detect (DCD) pin on the COM port.

[macdaddy]

nice.

+t

[pigiron]

I've got the Squeezebox1 and it doesn't seem to do 24/96.

Got plans for it though... I'm think'n if I can mount it and an amp in a box that I can tote out to the deck, then plug in the speakers, it'll make some mighty fine outdoor jamz.

[MattD]

According to the Squeezebox people, the SB2 doesn't do 24/96 either. I logged a feature request with one of the developers, so maybe it'll be in some future release.