Thread: DIN mount mp3 players?

Thank you for the response.

Originally Posted by StrataG

Any 1-din headunit will provide problems navigating through tons of mp3's. You are searching for a holy grail that is not available nor conceivable. You want buttons to be able to use to search your media easily, knobs to control volume (and possibly scrolling), and a screen that would make it easy to navigate nested media. 1 din is simply not enough room to do all of this unfortunately. You would either need to use a magnifying glass to read the text or limit yourself to 2-3 lines of easily (while driving) readable text.

Actually, IMHO, it's not really the case. For instance the Omnifi has 3 lines of very large, readable text on its LCD screen, and many of us feel that it's sufficient for navigating a large media hierarchy. I was ask skeptical as you when I first tried it, but it's turned out to be pretty usable. There is a rotary encoder and a bunch of buttons on it, which together, allow me to keep my eyes on the road more than when I was trying to poke the touchscreen on my Xenarc (which lacks tactile feedback). There are valid arguments to go either way ... flexibility via infinitely reprogrammable touchscreens vs ergonomics and tactile feedback which ease of use while driving a car that shakes your hand and makes it hard to poke a software-defined button accurately.

The empeg was the closest thing to what you are looking for, but the only viable option I see in the future is a double din unit. No matter what the solution that may eventually come, it will certainly not be cheap. Figure at least a 2.5" drive, text readable lcd screen, built-in amp, CD/DVD drive and processor will not keep this unit anywhere close to your desired figures. If a unit like this did come along, I don't imagine it being anything less than ~$1,000 until years later when you'll find them for ~$500.

Yes, the empeg seems like it was closest to what I was looking for. Too bad, like the Omnifi, it's been discontinued. Why would it need a built-in amp? You could just plug it into an AUX input if available or use a CD changer adapter. A CD/DVD drive would be nice for doing on the fly rips, but a cheaper alternative would be to have the cartridge be removable for syncing with your PC. An 802.11g adapter option could allow wireless syncing from
your PC. These two options are how it's done on the Omnifi, but the wireless on it is crippled by the use of a slow USB 1.1 port.

If you did search, the reason your searches came up with no results is because no such beast exists. The first reply was to "start brewing" because nothing like this existed commercially (at least anymore).

Yes, I just wanted to be sure that I hadn't missed something ... even after searching for hours, as I did, it's not always possible to find relevant information, so I wanted to see if others knew of devices that I hadn't found.

There are people who have made their own, and with nano-itx boards, it is becoming more possible, but certainly not cheap. The Subaru in-dash kit allows for a 7" Lilliput and an Epia based system. That requires 2-din's and is not cheap.

Yes, that was exactly my initial approach, until I realized that, while it's a cool idea to have a full-blown carpc, that I wasn't really using it for much more than listening to music and navigation. Although I've long been a proponent of touchscreens, I can now also appreciate their shortcomings. And, as I mentioned above, after trying out a dedicated hardware MP3 player, I found that having tactile feedback is quite useful while driving. Therefore, I've come to the conclusion that a for optimal usage in a car, a blend of strategically placed buttons & a knob make a very nice adjunct to the touchscreen. indashpc.org's Car2PC adapters make it possible to use the existing steering wheel buttons and HU to supply these extra buttons, which preserves dash real estate. I think there are infinite possibilities to using these as an adjunct to the touchscreen when controlling a carpc, but designing the behavior that's logical and easy to use is a definite challenge. But I digress... I should bring that topic up in a separate thread.

If there really are no longer any viable players out there trying to build an affordable unit which can fit in your dash, I'm considering pursuing the development of a reference design for such a device, much as the developer of empeg did.

One of the things I was trying to figure out when starting this thread was to get some input as to whether the existing devices failed because 1) they were overpriced and badly implemented or 2) the market has spoken, and there simply isn't enough interest in them. The only devices which seem to be on the market at the moment are either the trunk mounted devices, or a few very expensive solutions which aren't really implemented that nicely.

This thing, http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/worklogs/57120-wifi-enabled-mp3-player-in-stanard-din-post589296.html, if done with cheaper parts, looks quite interesting to me, at least. Personally, I'd be willing to spend $300-400 on something like this, if it were on the market, and implemented in a flexible, possibly extensible manner.

Originally Posted by lincomatic

The only thing which keeps the DMP1 from being a perfect solution is that it won't fit into a DIN slot unless I fabricate a new housing for it. Before doing that, I just wanted to know if there was already something on the market that's affordably priced, and already did everything I want it to do.

I have an Omnifi and IMO its a POS. In order for it to play music files with any kind of quality I would only be able to fit a few cd's on the drive. That and all the problems with the firmware, not to mention that the hardware is kinda cheap. I've been using a Rio Karma in my car recently. At least that way I can use ogg files which get a little bit better quality. I really want to use Flac but i have yet to find anything that fits the bill. Empeg would but +$400 for a use 4 year old electronic device seems steep. So I am left to build my own. Just need to do a lot of research I guess what I am trying to say is… I’m kinda in the same boat.

Originally Posted by lincomatic

If there really are no longer any viable players out there trying to build an affordable unit which can fit in your dash, I'm considering pursuing the development of a reference design for such a device, much as the developer of empeg did.

Like I said I am looking for the exact same thing. Only I want at least a 100gb drive and the ability to play Flac files. I don't really have enough electronic knowledge to make one so I might be stuck just building a whole carputer to play my flac files

Originally Posted by blkwrx

I have an Omnifi and IMO its a POS. In order for it to play music files with any kind of quality I would only be able to fit a few cd's on the drive. That and all the problems with the firmware, not to mention that the hardware is kinda cheap. I've been using a Rio Karma in my car recently. At least that way I can use ogg files which get a little bit better quality. I really want to use Flac but i have yet to find anything that fits the bill. Empeg would but +$400 for a use 4 year old electronic device seems steep. So I am left to build my own. Just need to do a lot of research I guess what I am trying to say is… I’m kinda in the same boat.

Yes, the stock firmware for the Omnifi is crap. Have you tried using Openfi?

http://openfi.sourceforge.net

It works much better, and now that progress has been made in replacing its original decoder, it is possible to work on adding support for OGG, etc. The CPU may not be fast enough to handle decodes of all formats, it might be possible to add FLAC support to it in the future. You can keep up with the progress by joining the omnifi and openfi_dev boards on Yahoo! I think a 100GB drive should work OK on the DMP1, although I can't remember if someone's actually tried it yet. You could try one with formatted with either FAT32 or a Linux-style ext filesystem.

Originally Posted by lincomatic

Actually, IMHO, it's not really the case. For instance the Omnifi has 3 lines of very large, readable text on its LCD screen, and many of us feel that it's sufficient for navigating a large media hierarchy. I was ask skeptical as you when I first tried it, but it's turned out to be pretty usable. There is a rotary encoder and a bunch of buttons on it, which together, allow me to keep my eyes on the road more than when I was trying to poke the touchscreen on my Xenarc (which lacks tactile feedback). There are valid arguments to go either way ... flexibility via infinitely reprogrammable touchscreens vs ergonomics and tactile feedback which ease of use while driving a car that shakes your hand and makes it hard to poke a software-defined button accurately.

I have had mp3 capable headunits in the past that have had 3 lines of text to browse the cd. Perhaps the ui is better on the omni, but I found all of my experiences severely lacking. Multiple brands and multiple models later, I found the only way I would be truly satisfied is with a carpc.

As far as the touchscreen is concerned, the only thing I use it for is when I need the on screen keyboard (for searching media and inputting nav data). I use a Shuttle Express (probably going to pick up a Shuttle Pro instead though) in conjunction with girder. I have one button that cycles function sets for the other buttons. From it, I can control media playback, navigate through my front-end's ui, control volume (broken down by front/rear/sub), and a number of other things. If you haven't looked into it, it's a great device. The 3 center (out of 5) buttons have recessions that easily allow me to know which button is which. The Pro version has quite a few more buttons (I believe about a dozen) that would probably allow me to keep myself to 2 function sets. I only need to glance at the screen to determine which function set I've cycled to and from there I am set. The only time I really do that is if I want to raise or lower the sub volume based on a particular song.

Originally Posted by StrataG

I have had mp3 capable headunits in the past that have had 3 lines of text to browse the cd. Perhaps the ui is better on the omni, but I found all of my experiences severely lacking. Multiple brands and multiple models later, I found the only way I would be truly satisfied is with a carpc.

Yes, I agree.. all of the HU's out there I've looked at that support MP3's do it as an afterthought, with no though at all put into usability. They tend to just lump everything into one huge list, have poor navigation abilities, and poor support for displaying song info properly. The Omnifi uses an XML database which is generated externally, that presents different navigation modes, such as Album/Artist/Genre, etc. Through the use of 3rd party tools, this is infinitely extensible.

Thanks for the tip about the Shuttle. It looks like a nicely designed device which won't break the bank. You have a similar usage model to mine... do most of the controlling with a hardware controller which is easy to use while driving, and resort to the touchscreen only for those functions which require it.

Originally Posted by lincomatic

Yes, the stock firmware for the Omnifi is crap. Have you tried using Openfi?

http://openfi.sourceforge.net

It works much better, and now that progress has been made in replacing its original decoder, it is possible to work on adding support for OGG, etc. The CPU may not be fast enough to handle decodes of all formats, it might be possible to add FLAC support to it in the future. You can keep up with the progress by joining the omnifi and openfi_dev boards on Yahoo! I think a 100GB drive should work OK on the DMP1, although I can't remember if someone's actually tried it yet. You could try one with formatted with either FAT32 or a Linux-style ext filesystem.

I'll try it but I'm not sure I can get what I am looking for through the omnifi system. I guess it depends on whether the poor sound quality was a result of the MP3's, the Firmware or the hardware. But thanks for the suggestion.

On another note. Is there any software that will play flac files the does not need an OS to run in? I am trying to figure out a way to make a relatively cheap flac player for my car that will house a 100gb HD.

Originally Posted by blkwrx

I'll try it but I'm not sure I can get what I am looking for through the omnifi system. I guess it depends on whether the poor sound quality was a result of the MP3's, the Firmware or the hardware. But thanks for the suggestion.

All the people who complained so far about bad sound quality were able to get them to sound good enough for their tastes. The most common problem is that the output level is quite high on these things, and overdrives the preamp. A simple inline volume control fixes it.

On another note. Is there any software that will play flac files the does not need an OS to run in? I am trying to figure out a way to make a relatively cheap flac player for my car that will house a 100gb HD.

What kind of hardware are you considering to run it on? There are various small versions of Linux available that you could use which boot quickly and run with a small memory footprint. You're going to have to be willing to invest some time and effort to modify them if you have a custom display and input device, though. There's also stuff like pycar, which you could strip down, and adapt, if you plan to use a standard display.