Is FreeBSD up to this job?

[Roman Neuhauser]

# judge at thend.org / 2003-09-17 12:33:30 -0600:
> My plan is to build a custom "jukebox looking" enclosure like everyone 
> is used to seeing in bars, poolhalls, etc. In place of the CD changer 
> I'd like to have a full PC (Thinking XP2800, 1GB RAM, 500Gb SATA RAID) 
> built inside, connected to a CD changer that I can control. This way I 
> can offer more then just CDs, but mp3s and videos as well. I'd like to 
> pick up a nice vid card (Say an ATI Radeon 9xxx Pro series with S-Video 
> out) and setup the S-Video side to stream videos/xmms mp3/cd 
> visualizations to 6 TVs spread throughout the place. 
> In place of the normal song selection screen you normally see, I'd like 
> to place a 17 or 19" LCD that only display 4-8 CD covers & song lists 
> at a time. 

    that whole thing is terribly overspec'd! do you know an mp3 player
    with such a spec? I don't.  Well, you mention playing video, so that
    might change things a bit, still.
    
    Anyway, if you want to present the user with CD covers, you'll
    either need X or something capable of displaying graphics on the
    console (Linux framebuffer, or svgalib, comes to mind). I'd go for
    a console solution: less overhead, both computational and
    administrative.
    
    You'll need searchable storage for the CD/song titles and whatnot.

> *Tell FBSD to listen to a bill validator 
> (http://www.videocan.com/bill_validator.html - currently waiting for 
> info from them about interface) for credit inputs, and display it as an 
> overlay on the screen (Let's say $1 buys 3 songs or 2 videos - display 
> would show that)

    Looks like you can plug that into an LPT port.

> *Once it's determined that there's credits in the machine have FBSD 
> listen to a keypad (telephone pad style) for input in the style of 
> XXXX, first 2 being album number, second 2 track number.

> *Queue up and keep track of songs to play. mp3s/CDs will launch a 
> visualization studio to display the music vis to the TVs, or launch 
> videos to play on TVs. 
> *When there's no activity, it will enter a screensaver mode where it 
> changes screens on monitor.

    All in all, I think that you need is a daemon that will collect data
    from the bill slot (parallel port?) and a keypad (serial port?),
    mysqld (the librarized version of the server might be nice), and
    something to play the music, mp3 / ogg (I'd go for Ogg Vorbis).

    Something along a 300MHz Celeron/Duron w/ 128 MB RAM would IMO be
    more than enough.

    BTW, I was thinking about doing something similar, with one of those
    micro-ATX boards, an LCD display (one of those found on CD players,
    you know :), a programmable remote controller, and NetBSD. Would
    make a nice "cd player". :) (I don't have the knowledge to do the
    "electricity" stuff, but a friend of mine has done this kind of
    things...)

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