Thread: help with ideas for a total homebrew mp3 car player

i need some help on ideas, for what might be to hard, or too easy, or what others have done in this area

i'm a computer hardware engineer major, in the fall i have to "come up" with a senior project (SP)idea. i'v been wanted to make my own touch screen mp3 player. from sratch. either using FPLGA's, embedded cores, or an x86 chip.

first off doing what most of you guys on here seem to do with just moding a "normal" PC to run in the car. is way to easy for an SP for me. we are talking like a full years worth of work the project has to be.

the possiblitys and ways to go about it are numorous. i'll take on anything thats intresting and what i think is reasionably feesable resourse wise and money wise. i'm willing to work on it for a long time up and past my SP if need be to complete it. i can make my specs on the SP to be what is reasonable in the amount of time i have. though i want to build a kick *** mp3 player, from the ground up, IE no pre made MOBO's or windows.

my problem is in what features should make it have?

i also have many diffrent ways to approch it in making it.

one thought i have had was to use an x86 chip, and make my own mobo with parts, needed to play songs off a drive, and to have some bassic controls on a screen.

i could also go with a simple pda, hack it to go with a larger screen, add IR for it, and add mass storage. ect

also thought of taking my RIO, hacking it majorly, put in a new large screen have the controls on the screen now, add IR, maybee swap out the optical drive with a hard drive. (gottag have mass storage) maybee add some consol gamage to the screen for the passenger. if gone with cdroms go make it a tray loadin system.

or using some kind of system on a chip design, and make the whole system on one chip. (hardware controls and software) with all the features and so on. if i can get the chip required donated.....(those are sooo spendy right now) (ever seen embeded windows? and have 95 boot totaly off rom? cool stuff )

i figureded it would give you guys a shot at what you guys find intresting, that could fit what i'm kind of looking for.

thanks for any ideas u guys will have.