Is FreeBSD up to this job?

[Jeremy D. Pavleck]

I'm beginning to agree it is now overspec'ed. But only because I'm
thinking now (thanks to input from you folks) about making a marketable
version instead of one for my own pool hall. 
When I say jukebox, I mean ones like these:
http://www.gameroomantiques.com/CDjukebox.htm
http://www.wurlitzer-jukebox.com/showroom-omt.html

Big showy pieces of eyecandy. A gorgeous hunk fof aluminum, with lights
and bubblers, etc etc. My original thoughts where definately overkill, but
it was for my own amusement, so it didn't really matter, ya know? Know I'm
thinking of making something I can mass produce down the line.

I had some time to reflect on the design, and my main problem I was facing
was the visualizations of music. Initially I thought I'd need a fairly
high output video card to be able to properly display the vis. in close to
real time. My current rig @ 1024x768 with a Radeon 8000 can only run the
Winamp vis full screen at 40fps with a noticeable delay in the music beats
and the vis interpretation on the screen. Drop the window to a size where
it hits 70fps or so and the music and vis stay in tune, so I figured a
more powerful vid card was the answer.
But I forgot that a standard TV resolution is only 640x480, so I should be
able to get away with a lot less then top of the line. 
I'm going to try to test all this by using the 1Ghz Nehemiah Mini-ITX
board ( http://www.mini-itx.com/store/default.asp?c=2#p243 ) with 256mb
ram. 
Install a RAID card and setup 1 20Gb drive RAID 1 array and 1 100Gb RAID 1
array. 20Gb raid for FBSD and the 100GB RAID for media files.
Then pick up the bill validator, buttons and what not and see if I can't
make it work sans enclosure, which will save me a ton of cash. 
Someone suggested trying Freevo, so I'll see if I can't hack the interface
of it to see if I can achieve what I want. If I was more of an artist I
could mockup the overall look of the display I'm going for, but I'm not
(I'll see if a friend of mine can tackle this part). 
Instead of worrying about making it idiot proof by using a lot of diffrent
hardware like CFlash and such, I'll just use a small UPS that you can pick
up for 30-40$ these days and just have it tell the system to do a clean
shutdown when power is interupted.


******************
Jeremy D. Pavleck
jeremy at pavleck.com

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On Fri, 19 Sep 2003, Roman Neuhauser wrote:

> # 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...)
> 
> -- 
> If you cc me or remove the list(s) completely I'll most likely ignore
> your message.    see http://www.eyrie.org./~eagle/faqs/questions.html
>