MP3 DVD car player?

Forum: DSL Ideas and Suggestions
Topic: MP3 DVD car player?
started by: PipingFool

Posted by PipingFool on Dec. 29 2004,02:14

So here's another possible project for DSL.

I've been trying DSL on some old hardware and found that a P1 200MMX is just perfect for playing MP3's. (I'll be using a P2 450 though, possibly running at only 300 to be able to get rid of the fan ;p )

Since a harddisk is quite sensitive to shocks and a DVD has quite some space you can use for storage you can easily come to the same conclusion as I did: burn DSL together with a bunch of mp3's on a dvd and use that to boot.

But since you can't use big monitors in your car and because using a keyboard/mouse while you're driving is not very safe we need some other things.

An LCD or VFD screen and some way to navigate, perhaps with a IR remote?

Both of these topics have been tried before (I know a few sites that discuss this using slackware) so it should be not too difficult for the average linux veteran to set this up.

Other sites I've seen go into the hardware aspect of powering the puter so there's quite some time saving to be done trying to figure out that part yourself. It also seems there are car PSU's that are made specifically to power a puter without the need for the normal PSU.

Due to the fact that we're not going to use this puter to surf, play games or proces text we can save on some space there. (Yay! More MP3's!!)

So.... the questions are:
Is anybody interested in helping me out on the DSL part of this?
Has anyone already tried/done this before?
Anyone got tips or hardware I should look into?

If I get this project to work I'm planning on posting a how-to here or on a personal page. Maybe even post the tweaked iso for others to use.

Posted by cbagger01 on Dec. 29 2004,04:21

Some trivial advice:

Buy an IDE-to-compactflash adapter and a small (64MB or 128MB) compact flash card.

Then do a DSL OS frugal install on the card and use it like a hard drive.

Because it is solid state and has no moving parts, it is nearly immune to shock or vibration.

The only gotcha is that flash memory doesn't like very cold weather ( < 32 deg F). You can find some brands of compact flash memory that will work in cold weather, but you will need to pay more for them and read the specifications very carefully.

Next up, mp3 data storage.

I would buy a cheap USB memory card reader and then buy a big USB memory card like a 512MB or 1GB compactflash or SD card. The nice thing about this approach is that you can mount the card reader in an accessable location and easily remove the card in order to add newer music files into it from your PC. Another option is to buy a USB thumb drive and mount a USB port or cable in an accessable location and do the same thing. You can get a 1GB USB 2.0 thumb drive (that will also work with USB 1.1 at slower rates) for about $55.00-65.00 in the USA. This will give you more mp3 storage than a stanard CD-R disk (700MB).

Posted by PipingFool on Dec. 29 2004,12:07

Quote (cbagger01 @ Dec. 29 2004,05:21)

Yes, and there's the problem... buy this and buy that.

The intention is A) to NOT buy much, B) keep the amount of hardware to a minimum, C) to NOT buy various internal/external USB/CF/SD/xD/whatever memory cards.

The object is to do it with DVD's. Why? Because A) DVD-rom drives are dirt cheap and B) DVD's are dirt cheap. C) Rubber bands are great for suspension of drives and avoid damage. DVD damaged anyway? No problemo: Just burn a new one.

For your information: there's another gotcha to your solution. If you just happen to forget to do the frugal install you can damage whatever memory you install DSL on. Goodbye card, goodbye 65 US $. I can buy a new DVD-rom drive for about 25 euro's and a pack of 10 DVD's costs what, 12 to 15 euro's? That makes 40 euro's or about 60 dollars? Or, alternately I could buy a second hand drive for 10 to 15 euro's, decreasing the cost even more.

Furthermore I have to say that prices in Europe for thumbstick/flash memory/whatever are quite higher than in the US. A 512MB SD card, for example, costs about 50 Euro's (where I live anyway). Hence the idea to do it with a DVD-rom drive and a DVD. Second hand stuff is easy to come by and a LOT cheaper too.

Anyway, thanks for the idea.

Posted by DonttPanic on Dec. 29 2004,16:05

I would suggest getting a compact flash card (64-128 meg) just to boot DSL. This would reduce the chance for error in booting your mp3 player. You would still be able to use the DVD-rom or a hard drive for the media.

Posted by PipingFool on Dec. 29 2004,16:34

Quote (DonttPanic @ Dec. 29 2004,17:05)

Just a thought: are there eproms large enough to hold DSL???

(I admit I'm a total NOOB in the lelctronics department!)

Posted by cbagger01 on Dec. 30 2004,05:47

If you are paying $65 US for a compact flash card, then you are getting ripped off.

I can get a 64MB compact flash card for almost free in my location. For example, there is currently a PQI brand 128MB compact flash card selling for $8.99 after a $10.00 rebate. Even if I got a premium brand card it is probably still under $30.00

You can also do the OS on the flash card and the mp3s on the DVDROM drive.

With a little bit of scripting, you can quickly copy a few mp3s from the DVD drive into the RAMDISK and then play them skip-free. Then when the mp3s are done playing, you can delete them and queue up the next batch into the RAMDISK.

This would allow you to use a DVDROM exclusively and avoid skipping.

If you have 128MB of RAM you can load the entire OS into RAM using the "toram" boot parameter and then spin down your DVDROM drive for most of your voyage.

Posted by PipingFool on Dec. 30 2004,14:03

Quote (cbagger01 @ Dec. 30 2004,06:47)

cbagger: To quote your previous post QUOTE You can get a 1GB USB 2.0 thumb drive (that will also work with USB 1.1 at slower rates) for about $55.00-65.00 in the USA. UNQUOTE

And I my previous post I said that stuff over here in Europe is way more expensive than it is in the US.

So if I pay 10 Euro's for a second hand DVD-Rom and about 0.89 to 1.12 Euro's for a (4.7GB) DVD I'm still cheaper than you.

I'm not fond of using flash cards/mem sticks to keep the OS on. They aren't made for that use. And a frugal on a 64MB ram P1 ? I think I'll stick with the DVD-solution.
Anyway, I'l keep you all posted on my progress.

Oh, is there a howto on making your own bootcd? I browsed a little and may have passed it.

Posted by cbagger01 on Dec. 31 2004,07:41

This post should be helpful:

< http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....;t=2484 >

It explains how you can build a customized *.iso for burning to CD-R or DVD-R disk using the mkmydsl script

You should boot up the normal dsl livecd on a newer computer with a decent amount of RAM in order to perform this task.

You can also do it on an older computer if you have a large swap partition or if you run the script in a directory on a linux hard drive partition (EXT2 preferred).

Good Luck.

Posted by betaluva on Jan. 03 2005,04:14

i dont about using DSL but my friend uses win95 with winamp2.6 with a LED plugin on a old pentium 100,because he uses a hardrive he has the pc mounted on springs.

Posted by PipingFool on Jan. 04 2005,02:49

Quote (cbagger01 @ Dec. 31 2004,08:41)

Thanks a bunch!!

Can't decide what to do first: mess around with making a custom cd or grab my soldering iron to prepare the LCD and IR remote first and get that working first.
(I read somewhere XMMS is LIrc-abled and can handle LCD scrren, is that correct?)

Guess it will be the CD. Thank god for CD/DVD-RW's

If I have read correctly and in analogy to the Master/Optional directory I could add a MP3 directory to hold my MP3's.

Then get XMMS to start up automagically and read a playlist and start playing it.

Interesting and challenging!!!

Posted by PipingFool on Jan. 04 2005,02:58

Quote (Guest @ Jan. 03 2005,05:14)

i dont about using DSL but my friend uses win95 with winamp2.6 with a LED plugin on a old pentium 100,because he uses a hardrive he has the pc mounted on springs.

Well, that's the reason I don't want to use a HD. That and making a "suspension" for a CD/DVD drive is a lot easier than making one for an entire case. And even with suspension the HD or CD/DVD-R is prone to become defective anyway. Much cheaper and easier to keep a back-up CD-R and make another copy if the one in the car is defective after a while. But thanks for the tip anyway. If I can't get it to work with DSL I might have to consider (SHUDDER) winblows anyway.