Is FreeBSD up to this job?

[Jeremy D. Pavleck]

Forgot all about Freevo, I'll have to see how easy it is to make it bend
to my ways (or, maybe the freevo developers would help me with it in
exchange for some press + % of profits if I market it)
Speaking of marketing it.... Someone said I should, which I didn't think
about before, so I'm sort of thinking along the lines of idiot-proofing
it. That way, if I do in fact decide to market it, I won't have a lot of
reconstruction and rewriting of things to do. 
Along those lines, what's the best way to boot fbsd? 
Maybe a 1GB CF card for the R/W area, and everything else on a read only
raid array for music, etc? When more music needs to be added, they flip a
switch (or connect a master console) which mounts the media fs as r/w? 
I worry about the MTBF on the flash card being to low, which means a lot
of failures. But I want to make it so you can kick the plug out of the
wall, and no harm is done.
Maybe a small UPS built into the jukebox that would do a clean shutdown if
a powerloss occurs? 
Using CF cards, I could offer fairly easy system upgrades. I'll send you a
new card, you plug it in and return the old one...
I suppose do to the "hey this is a marketable idea" suggestions I'm moving
from more of a "let's build a pc into a huge wurlitzer style box" into an
embedded system. My only real goal is to make this thing bullet proof. I
hate the way electronics are headed these days, (20gb seagate drive died
on my server, drive was 2 years old. Replaced it with an 8 year old 1Gb
that has yet to die on me. Then an IBM scsi2 drive died on me, and just
the other day my 4 month old fujitsu drive is telling me I better low
level it, because something is wrong) and don't want to be a part of it.
Plus, although this would be a sensitive electronic device many magnitudes
more complicated then a normal jukebox, if it can't be treated the same
way it will make me and the components used look bad. So any more ideas? 
Sorry for the lil rant, ideas just popping into my head as I type
this. Thanks again. 

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

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On Thu, 18 Sep 2003, David L wrote:

> This is just a long shot, but have you had a look at Freevo?
> 
> www.freevo.org
> 
> It runs on FreeBSD
> 
> David
> > Hi gang,
> >  I was looking at purchasing a jukebox recently for a poolhall. When
> > all is said and done, I found a refurbished 100 cd jukebox which I
> > thought was really nice, until I heard the price - $4500. This is on
> > par with a lot of older refurbished models, and the price can double
> > for newer ones! So, the gears in my head started turning, and I
> > mentally devised a plan to build my own jukebox that does more then
> > your "standard" juke for a lot less money. Though I am unfortunately
> > more of a Windows guy, I am thinking of turning to FBSD for this job.
> >
> > 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.
> > Here's what I need to do:
> > *Build a catalog of all music and videos on harddrive and CDs in
> > changer, automatically 1-2 times a day or on demand.
> > *Output video to a monitor which shows only the music list. For
> > CD's/mp3s it will show the CD cover and a songlist. Typical jukebox
> > style with CD's being numbered as well as song (EG. say NOFX's "War on
> > Errorism" is listed as CD 22 and the song "Mattersville" is track 12,
> > they'd enter 2212 as the song request). Show anywhere from 4-8 CD's and
> > song info at a time (depending on screen size)
> > *Interface with several buttons to control display. A set of NEXT PREV
> > buttons which "flip through" the virtual catalog, and another set
> > entitled "Music" and "Videos" which switch display
> > *When pressing the "Videos" button, I'd like to be able to see the
> > screen switch to a similar style as the above, only showing a
> > screenshot of the video, artist name, song title, and album.
> > *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)
> > *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.
> > Stuff I'm thinking about adding but isn't necessary - search function,
> > user inserted CDs (which lock CDtray until song/cd is through playing).
> >
> > Although I'm fairly certain FBSD can handle this, I wanted to ask the
> > experts, to see if I'm right. I'm hoping to have a real easy to operate
> > jukebox, so I don't want to have to many buttons, keyboards, etc there
> > to confuse people. And if at all possible, I don't want to make mention
> > that I'm using FBSD/PC hardware/etc inside (well, except for some
> > powered by FreeBSD stickers on the back hehe).
> > Let me know your thoughts! If I go forward with this, it's at least 2
> > years away, but I think the idea is fairly sound.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >   Jeremy Pavleck
> > _______________________________________________
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