building a car mp3 player

[Skywalker[TSG]]

How do i make a mp3 player for my car ?
it must have a LCD display to show the number/name of the song etc

could this motherboard and a small LCD monitor be used with maybe a flashcard to store the mp3s and winCE ?

[cooter007]

http://www.mp3car.com

Everything you need to know!

Goto "Examples of mp3cars"


I'm getting ready to do the same thing....

[Mike]

That's pretty neat. Please tell us how you do.

[Skywalker[TSG]]

Thanks for the link Cooter

anyone know where to get a small (cheap) LCD touchscreen?

[LiLRiceBoi]

I might try that when i get my own car....

[br0t]

You may want to check these out...

mpegbox

and

MP3 BOX

[deltaf508]

Here's everything I used to build mine.

EIO.com (really cheap LCD's)

Evation IR Remote Unit

Lorty's winamp plugin (Lorty makes the best Winamp plugin you'll ever find. It also has a built in search function so you can search for songs.)

IR assistant - Software for configuring your Remote control. This is the best software for any Remote control Application period.

Winamp - the definative Audio/Mp3 player

Winamp volume equalizer - Normalizes all the output coming out of winamp

And of course, Windows 98SE

Instructions:

• Build your unit. This will include soldering the LCD to a Printer port cable - if it is a HD44780 chip based LCD. Schematics will be on the EIO website. BTW - Lorty's program only supports the HD44780 protocol. This is not an easy task if you haven't done it before. Talk to someone with some Electronic assembly experience. You will need to understand Wiring schematics along with soldering inline potentiometers to your LCD.
• Install the software. Then Configure it (this may take the longest).

Couple of helpful tips.

• Do a lot of research before you get started. search keywords like; mp3car, lcd, hd44780, etc. It took me about 15 - 20 hours of reading before I even started the project. The more you know going into it the easier it will be.
• Disable "bad shutdown" in msconfig. This will make it so when you shut down your computer with the power button it won't run scandisk when it starts back up. - very important.
• Take your time and think things through logically. This is not a one day project. It took me about 40 hours to build my first home unit after all was said and done. Now I've built two of them.

My unit is not a car unit it's a house unit but the build works the same.

Last but not least. Here is a link to my unit. Pictures are not that great but you'll get the idea.

My MP3BOX

If you have any questions feel free to PM me.

Gary

[Mike]

Wow Delta, that's pretty cool. How much work did you have to put into that?

[deltaf508]

mike,

Thanks, I'd say total of 60+ hours (including all the research it took) to come up with. All the software I listed accounted for most of my research time. I think this is the "best of the best" software-wise. If your going to make a jukebox this will save you a lot of time.

But it is something I use everyday. And I virtually have everysong, from every artist, in every known language at my fingertips. I have a total of about 60 GB of MP3's scattered across various drives.

Gary - *listening to some tunes right now*

[Mike]

wow ... I honestly don't see myself committing to something like that for that long.
Sure it'd be fun to play with, but right around 25 hours I would be ready to throw in the towel!