surly wrote: > I would like to know if a product like this would be of any interest to > you as Squeezebox users: > > I have a Mediacenter running in my main System. > For now i tried Softsqueeze and SqueezeCenter on it and Softsqueeze on > a second Computer in an other Room. > I am planning to buy the Boom for my Bedroom and the Kitchen. > > But I don't want to buy a Squeezebox for my main System because the > Mediacenter is running most of the Time anyway and my mediafiles are > stored on that machine too. > But for just listening to music it would be cool to have a display in > the mediacenter case that displays the Gui of Softsqueeze/Squeezebox > Classic (so that i could turn the TV of). > This Display should also display the information of Vista or XP MCE > when in Mediacenter Mode. > To make the Unit perfect it should have a ir receiver and the > possibility to turn the SqueezeCenter/Mediacenter Unit on by IR even > when the PC is powered down (as the IrTrans Units). > The connection could be with usb to onboard headers. > If the Unit would come in a optical drive sized housing with the option > to mount it without the housing the possibilities would be various. > > You could use it in a Mediacenter or Squeezecenter environment either > in the Living room or the hobby/server room. > > I don't want to use a Controller because i live in an appartment and > try to avoid WLAN because of security issues. > > greetz surly > >
You are describing the head unit (if you can call it that) of that Bose entertainment system. It's about the size of a paper back book sitting on it's spine (the main Bose box is hidden). Anyways, Squeezecenter is a server, not a client. You need to run a client on your media box if you want to listen to your music. And that is what would control a display if any existed. At this point I have to ask why you are not using this (assume micro$oft) Mediacenter software to play the music? The answer might be obvious, you want to stay in the SlimDevices music client paradigm. So you want to put a local VFD display on your media computer, Matrix Orbital makes VFDs which you can usually buy 1 at a time. (I think they are expensive.) And if you get the one with support for a small key pad and a USB port I think it will cost over $100. That way you can do the "Bose thing" and put it in it's own small box w/a USB cable out the back. If you go for the drive bay style of VFDs you will probably only be able to fit a 16 character VFD inside your computer. That doesn't sound bad but since the original SlimDevices paradigm was to control everything from the server you run into a crunch problem. That is, if you look, you will notice that the basic SlimDevice box has a 2x40 character VFD. So, now what are you going to do? Write your own device driver? It's not impossible here is an example of a squeezecenter client using only a 16 character VFD: http://www.mvpmc.org/images/mvp_vfd_2.avi ...lot's of scrolling! B.T.W. That driver took 100s of lines of C code and runs on a powerPC. You could probably do much better and w/a less powerful processor. I don't think there is a turn key solution for your media center needs. But if I really wanted a solution I would switch to mythtv and buy a smaller bay sized matrix orbital VFD to mount in my media computer. I believe mythtv already has drivers for this type of VFD. Then, 'cause I don't think there is one, write a squeezecenter client mythtv plugin. While doing that you could add code to handle the scrolling and (hopefully) send the text off to the VFD driver. Now you would have what you want and feel great because you would have had contributed to the open source movement! IR receivers are another thing all together. I don't know what you can do on the windows side but if you swing over to linux the possibilities will make your head spin (really). If you do this you probably want to start with a project called lirc.org. And if you want to get into tweaking the remotes you can google the jp1 project (think poor man's harmony remotes). ...have fun. _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
