Ongoing my living room music jukebox htpc - in progress!! (1 Viewer)

zombiepig

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March 21, 2005
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ok - before i get into this here's a bit of background on my ongoing quest for the ultimate mediaportal setup throughout my house. i work in a computer store so all the hardware i need i scrounge up from bits and pieces we've got lying around at work. which helps a lot - because my budget is basically $0 :p

so my project started when a customer comes into the store all in a fluster cos her lcd screen has stopped working (real estate agent... grrr.... worst people ever to work with!) 10 minute later she leaves with a new lcd (she's happy) and 30 minutes later i decide to try replacing her vga cable and score myself a pretty decent working lcd :p (i'm happy).

i decided this would probably look great if it was mounted on my living room wall, running mediaportal, with all my cds stored on the hard drive so it's basically like a giant jukebox.

so the first thing i do is rip off all the surrounds and end up with a flat panel screen thing:
lcd_front.jpg



lcd_back.jpg

(with all the circuit boards and crap taped down with masking tape...)

then it sits in the corner of my room for ages.

couple of months later we do a total replacement of all the pcs in this office - they were planning on throwing all the old ones out so i score a pretty modest p3 866, with 256mb ram and a rage 128 pro vid card. (i also managed to scam a p4 with 512mb ram, but that's being used for my main mp 'home theatre' pc. more on that later maybe). not bad for free i think!! (actually - i made $30 by selling some of the other pcs i scammed from there :wink: which basically got me a mce remote)

this sits in the corner of my room for ages until i finally get a free weekend and decide to cut a hole in the living room wall :twisted: (and the WAF hits an all-time low). had to feed the vga cable, the power cable for the lcd screen, and a usb cable up through the wall. getting the vga cable up there was an absolute pain of a job :evil: :evil: :evil:

hole_in_wall.jpg

everyone who visits the house in the next couple of days asks what the heck i did that for...

next step - need a picture frame to properly mount the lcd. $0 budget... decide the most appropriate frame is holding my degree. meh. degree sits on the floor of my room for now... and i score a pretty acceptable frame for the screen :p
picture_frame.jpg

it's not quite deep enough to fit the whole screen so i gotta make a deeper frame for it:
picture_frame_back.jpg

that's sitting waiting for the glue to set so i can paint it up properly.

in the meantime i decide to start work on the mce remote receiver. stupid thing has these tiny little star shaped screws that i couldn't find a screwdriver that fit. so i do the next best thing and smash all the plastic up :twisted: . good enough. then i find a screwdriver which fit anyway. oh well :roll:
mce_remote.jpg


that's waiting for me to finish the frame and mount the screen inside, and the little remote receiver somehow to.


in the meantime, i've installed mp on the machine and was really surprised how well it runs on it. i expected the pc to be wayyyy to underpowered for it to run smoothly, especially with that video card. everyone always goes on about needing a dx9 cable card but for something like this (music jukebox) this card is working fine!

so yeah - i'll post more when i've had a chance to finish it all and mount the screen properly!!
 

mzemina

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  • February 23, 2005
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    EqualRightsForWerewolves - Very interesting project. A few questions:

    1) Are you planning to not use a laptop to drive this screen? If you will be using a desktop computer how will you drive the LCD screen? I have a similar project that I want to run a DX9 video card in a desktop computer and want to drive a LCD screen from a IBM Thinkpad (600e) but can't find a method to drive the LCD from a video card.

    2) Will you use a touchscreen for input?
     

    zombiepig

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    March 21, 2005
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    mzemina said:
    EqualRightsForWerewolves - Very interesting project. A few questions:

    1) Are you planning to not use a laptop to drive this screen? If you will be using a desktop computer how will you drive the LCD screen? I have a similar project that I want to run a DX9 video card in a desktop computer and want to drive a LCD screen from a IBM Thinkpad (600e) but can't find a method to drive the LCD from a video card.

    2) Will you use a touchscreen for input?

    i'm planning on running the lcd from an old p3 which is sitting on a shelf under my house (i'll post pics of that later!). i wish the screen was a touch screen but that's wayyyy out of my budget. so - mostly the pc will be controlled by an mce remote, with the receiver built into the lcd frame. my wife and i also have a mobile running wm5 each, so we'll be using mpblue to control the music selection if we're away from the living room :D

    what exactly are you planning on doing? would you have one desktop pc with the dx9 card running the screen, then want to use your notebook to control what mp does on that pc? if so - you could use the mp web interface, or even something like vnc...
     

    mzemina

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    EqualRightsForWerewolves said:
    ...
    i'm planning on running the lcd from an old p3 which is sitting on a shelf under my house (i'll post pics of that later!). i wish the screen was a touch screen but that's wayyyy out of my budget. so - mostly the pc will be controlled by an mce remote, with the receiver built into the lcd frame. my wife and i also have a mobile running wm5 each, so we'll be using mpblue to control the music selection if we're away from the living room...

    I'm not sure I understand from what you describe. Is the computer that will be under the house running the LCD screen a cannibalized laptop?

    Mike
     

    mzemina

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    EqualRightsForWerewolves said:
    nope - just a bog standard desktop!

    OK - Then what are you using to drive your flatscreen? Is it a special video card? If so, which one and what model?

    More info, more info!

    Mike
     

    Marcusb

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    From what I understand he is driving a regular PC LCD screen but has just removed the casing.

    It's pretty much impossible to control a laptop LCD screen from a regular PC as there are proprietary controls used by the notebook maker and almost no information about them.
     

    zombiepig

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    March 21, 2005
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    ^^ yeah that!!
    it's a p3 866, with 256mb ram, a 10 gb hdd and a rage 128 pro video card. the lcd is from a typical computer monitor lcd with all the casing striped off.

    here's some more updates & pics:

    first, here's the computer mounted in a little shelf i built under the house. terrible construction effort on my behalf but it does the job :oops: built totally from random pieces of wood i found under the house.
    pc_under_house1.jpg

    fortunately the power supply and cpu fan are actually really quiet... otherwise people walking round the corner of my house would wonder what the heck was happening under there :p
    pc_under_house2.jpg

    lots of messy cords i need to tidy up sometime.

    here's the frame all finished and painted up:
    frame_finished.jpg


    and the rear view with the lcd mounted in it. the little circuit board on the bottom right is from the mce remote receiver.
    lcd_mounted.jpg


    here's the final finished (yeah, right!! :roll: ) product mounted in our living room

    screen_finished1.jpg

    screen_finished2.jpg

    screen_finished3.jpg

    ^^ with a triffid attacking it.

    i've always seen people post these 'finished product' photos of screens that are all blurry and thought that they could at least take a decent picture of it... but now i realize that's a lot harder then it looks :oops: (actually mez (wife) took the best photo of it)

    things still to do:
    - finish ripping all my cds to my server (probably about 100 still to do)
    - make a variation on vanessa's awesome mp skin with a red color scheme. blue looks really out of place in the living room
    - buy a proper amp and speakers, and mount the speakers up on the wall. currently the whole things just coming up of a cheap set of computer speakers i had sitting around!

    at the moment, however, everythings running and looking great! it's really simple to control from the mce remote, and being able to queue up songs using mpblue from my phone is just another awesome bonus (keep up the fantastic work btw MrSensitive!) :D most importantly... my wife is loving it ;)
     

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