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Hi!

Some time ago i've come with one idea to do some stuff with a lcd module, and i've got a great idea build a kind of mp3 player,cd audio player and in the futere maybe a dvd player aot of question right now, but the cd player and mp3 player is a must to do.

Spend some time read this.You could think that's a great idea or a stupid idea,Anyway for those on not think this is a stupid idea and know of this stuff please don't ignore this help me if you can.
I like to contrbut to the communities and a litlle help from them is a smile in my face.
So before you continue i thank you for your interest that brought you intil here.Please don't stop.Continue reading....

Right now you probably didin't got the idea but i will explay my self better.
Ok.I've got one PC, a basic one with only a audio card,mb,cpu,some mem,cd player and one hd, and of course a grafic card but only to work when i'm using the pc to troubleshooting something or to program the lcd.What i mean is that it won't have a monitor conected to the pc when working idealy.
Now i will explay what i whant to do.
I've got the pc and connected to him i've got the lcd module on a lpt port.
So far so good but my realy problem is programing the lcd.That's why i'm here.
I want to do a program so i can select mp3 music from the lcd throw some buttons conected to a serial port.In thsi program i whold be able also to rip cd audia as also ear them everithing commanded from the lcd button a lcd gui.
I will have some like this.

Start up the pc.
Inicializate the lcd module, automaticly as the pc boot.
In the LCD will appear the main menu, whith some option writed on him
1-Mp3 player
2-Cd audio player
3-Cd riper
4-DVD Player (In the future, out of question right now so don't pay attention to it)

1-Below this words will be a button placed by me whith multifuncion.
If i push the button below the "MP3player" it will clear the lcd and write another menu.
This menu will bring more option
Play
Pause
Stop
Next
Previous
And if possible a search option.

i wanted also to place a audio meter right on the right of the lcd.(i now that's sounds crazy but i now tha't is possible and i now that will require very,very work but if someone help me teaching how to do it it everithing possibe.Also the audio meter will be nothing especial just let's say 8 bars or something like that!!!

Now when i pressed the button assigned to the option "Play", the program will trace a directory of my choice(in the program) and start playing founded audio tracks.The play option also will have shuffle,repeat all, repeat only, and normal play chice.
This part i think i now a solution.
If i could find a command line based media player, i could command the player from the program.

In the left side it will have tha track name,duration, and encoded quality other stuff could be created after if there is space in the lcd and after this is complete that i think it wont be so soon

In the mp3's player is everything, it will also have a option to go back to the main menu, and if possible continuing playing (but not realy necessary)

Oh i've forgot if possible i could create a kind of string search to find track names and play them when selected.
The letters wowuld be writed by two multiple funcion buttons one to select characters to the right and other to the left.And of course the "Enter" boton.

2.CD Audio Player
The cd audio player is very simple.it reads the tracks directly from the cd player whith help of an media player whith command line based.
At this time the mp3's Player will be stoped and played the audio cd.
Also whith the basic media player funcions.And if possible the audio meter at the right.The look of the menu will be just like the mp3's player but whith no search option.
The tracks names could be readed from the the id3 tag if there is one, if not just name it as track 1, track 2 and so on.

3-The Cd Audio Riper
The cd audio riper will rip the cd that is in the cd drive.
it will be encoded with lame as it is command line based.
The menu for this one just have the number of tracks.
The rip can be full, rip the full cd or one by one.
The tracks will be added to the directory of the mp3's.
There will be some presets so i can choice the quality of the rip.96,128,192.
The ogg media encoding will also be a possibility.

The procedure to rip the track will be like this.
Full cd.
push the Start riping the cd boton
It will apear two entries.The Artist and album.Writed to id3 tag.in all files.
The when riping the track before start the next one it will ask for the name of the track, writed to the id3 tag of that track, and so one to all tracks be riped.If no name is entered will be named track 1,2,3 etc.

In the one by one option it will do the same procedure but it will stop after the selectioned track is riped.
Then the back to main menu boton.

And thats all.The dvd player is out of question because if i wanted a dvd player i must have a screen, and the lcd wont work for that.
All this stuff would be showed in the screen and selected in a console, kind of keyboard made by me conected to a serial port.
A mouse could also be usefull!


Now some f.a.q. to you.

Q:What the **** is this?Whats the point?
A:Ok this idea is to be aplyied on a car, checked?:)It sounds crazy for you?For me it sound pretty cool!Imagine that stuff i explayed up in your car!!Cool!

Q:Yeah, yeah thats all talk, but where is the work?
A:Right now i have let's be honest..only ideias but i really want to put them in practice and only with tour help this will be possibe!!
I've got a extreme will, and pleasure to learn and ear others ideias.So be free to send me to onother place and also to help (last one reccomended ).

Q:What's your contacts?
A:you can talk with me about this stuff and everything you thing is related whith it of course, i'm mind free.Ideas are welcome.
My e-mail is softmaniac@operamail.com or softmaniac@sapo.pt
Please don't send shit to it it will only take me time erasing it.And please put a good subject so i can recognize your e-mail or thy will be erased.
Also you can contact me when i'm on-line at messenger with the softmaniac@mail.pt contact.


Well thank you very much to read all this and come this far without going crazy.

you can treat me as a newrbie, so i can understand you ideas better.
Well you brains of programming start writting....
You can start telling me wich programs should i use and what kind of code.I know that assembler is a must!But other option like C/C++ can be used to do this stuff?

Well it's a start.
And one more time, thank you just for reading it.

A important note:
Please ignore the english errors!I'm Portuguese...if you know who that people are you will kown that we are nice people

Peace
S.M.

It seems that some stuff i've wanted to do it's arready done, but in any case the programs like lcd studio offer the option to interact with the lcd!

i could use the winamp to play the songs annd some plugins already made by nice guys to dysplay info from winamp, but how can i make a single program that icludes all the stuff i've said above in a single lcd.

it makes me a litlle confusion...how realy are transfered the data to the lcd?It's by hex right?how it's possible to write slide song names and stuff like that?
It makes me confussing.
Now can i start with c++ bulding the i/o acess to communiate?
I've seen some gadget to conect the lcd to a usb port..if i do that can i do whatever i want i mean can i send and read commands from the lcd as can i do with the parralel?

Come on guys a litlle help here...i'm really exitted to start working on this subject, i'm tired of my ir receiver, and i need a radio in my car, and i didn´t want to buy one before i finish the stuff.

I've got some people i know that are interested in this ideia, if i could acomplish this i could start making this stuff to my friends!I'm licenced in electronic and automation so electroniic circuits are cool for me, but programming i'm starting to learn...

What you described should be certainly doable with some work. I don't think there are programs to do this with graphical displays yet but writing one shouldn't be that big problem. I most likely won't have time to write one myself but I can try to provide help. Depending of your display I might be able to offer some low level display handling code so you wouldn't have to bother with that. I have worked with C/C++ myself so that would be the language I'm able to help with. And I think you should forget ASM with this project.
If you use other programs to do all the hard stuff and only write the frontend yourself this shouldn't be very difficult.

* What OS are you going to use ? Windows/Linux/DOS/something else ?
* What kind and how big display are you going to use ?
* How fast is the computer to run this ?

I think all this could be done as winamp plugin. With DOS you could probably get the fastest boot times.

I think you should go with the LPT display at first and maybe later think about USB. The USB module I'm working on should work in this kind use and button support is included in the future plans. Or do you already have some links to USB modules you could use ?

To get more into detail in this some information about the display and OS would be helpful.


USB module with the right features should allow same things as parallel interface.

Thanks for the reply!

Ok.Let's start.

As the pc is going to work in a car, it won't be a super machine whith windows xp it ill have of course the specification only necessaries to do the basic: communicate with the lcd.

Now is a question of choice.The cpu will be a pentium 233 or something like that a very slow one, and the OS i really don't know.What do you think is the better?i never worked with linux, the dos can be an option but windows can also be worked on.What do you think?

I don't have the lcd yet, but it a 4x20 size but no more details for now.It must fit in a car console so it can be very big or very small so i can write things there, it will also have the butons below and beside him so the 4x20 it's coll.The color is irellevant for now but it can be blue, orange or green.

So can i drop the idea of the usb2lcd?and go to the lpt?how many butons can i conect to a serial port?it's one by data pin?

Ahh, so C/C++ is the way here right?If i could take the sdk of the winamp i could do all this stuff with it right?then i only had to write the lcd stuff.
I don't think i could right a full media player and riper, it's very hard for me now!
First i would be greatfull if you guide me in the start, a kind of orientation so i can know where to start.

I will begin with the main menu.Do i need to have the lcd right now to start program?If not good, if i do it seems that i will have to search for a store here in portugal for one!

Very thanks to you that are interrested in help in what you can, i really apreciate it!
Please post you questions so i can think in all aspects i missed.

My best regard
S.M.

Maybe windows would be the right choice for you if you are familiar with it.


Aha, so you are going to use a character lcd. I have never programmed a character lcd so I can't help with that but there should be examples of character lcd programming available. Your lcd is probably HD44780 compatible.


I would recommend using lpt in this. The number of buttons in serial port depends of the hardware you use for the buttons. I haven't used serial port buttons but there should be examples available in net.


This should be possible to make as winamp plugin. Winamp would then handle the media player part and you would need to write the frontend to control winamp and ripping.


At first I would recommend just getting familiar with the programming tools you are going to use and do some experiments with them.

You don't need the real lcd at first. You can just write the stuff to the screen and pretend that it was the lcd. You should be able to make some kind menu this way.

Thanks!

Look!I've been surfingin the linux site and i was amazed with the number of programms command line based and exactly doning what i want!
Thera are programms to rip the audio cd's to mp3 and ogg, tag editors with command line based, mp3's players with command line based playlists editors and audio cd's players.

That's exactly want i wanted if i could get together all this programs i would be with 85% of the work done.

Of course if i could find the same kind of programs command line based but for windows would be great!!As i'm familiar with it!
I need to think for the best solution, it's linux enviroment very hard to work on?


About the lcd.So wat's the diference of a caracter lcd and graphical one?in terms of programation?I wanted to make the audio meter.Can i do it in the caracter lcd?The graphic one i best i know, but too hard to programm i think!There is the size 4x20 but graphical?

So lpt will be, with the serial buttons i'm only woried with the programmation and i was hopeing that you could help me with that!
The hardware is very easy to make..i think

I don't think it's that hard but if you are not familiar with it and also want to learn some programming you need to learn both at the same time. So I think it might be easier to learn programming in familiar environment. But if you can't find good command line tools for windows then you could have a look into linux. But often there are also windows ports of linux tools.


Well the main difference is that you can control individual pixels in graphical lcd. Many graphical lcd's also have a character generator and have both text and graphics layers. So the text layer works like character display and then you can put graphics over it. I don't think graphics lcd is really harder than character lcd but then again I have never programmed a character lcd.
Many character lcd's have some custom characters so some simple audio meter should be possible. Of course you can do audio meter with only characters also.
Graphical 128x64 display is 8x21 characters with 6x8 pixel font. There are also 128x32 and other sizes but I would recommend at least 128x64.

you can find board ready to use :

http://www.pjrc.com/tech/mp3/

and you can put it in your car



http://www.pjrc.com/tech/mp3/gallery/page21.html

Thank alot!!

It's very interresting board, and i could make it!But, even so i don't know if it's hardware capable to do what i want.i readed all the site and i know the board can be updated using flahmemory.

The player doesn't have a cd-reader but they said they were working on it!Even so the site isn't updated since 2001!!!But the forum is active!

I must ask them some questions about the player, the costs and then i will decide if i get that or go on with my inicial idea!

Thanks stef for your link

The guest is me!

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