Just had a great idea for using a detachable cd players face

Gemini · 05-08-2004, 09:47 PM

Hey guys im new to the forum, well i have been reading alot on the forum and i thought i will register and share my idea

OK, i was thinking of a different way of using the car computer instead of a keyboard, mouse or an lcd touch screen.

Why not use a cd players face and connect the rear connectors on the keyboards pcb in the propper places and so when you press something on the face it acts as a keyboard key being pressed.

It might sound like "wtf this guy is talking $hit" BUT, while in class the other day we were learning about binary and ascii and **** and how the computer knows what keyboard keys you are pressing.

We connected the pc up to an oscilloscope, and when we presed certain keys, it gave us a wave:

like pressing the "A" key would give us _-_____- and if you convert that to binary, would give you 01000001 wich converted to text will give you "A".

I cant remember if it gave us the ascii code for "A" or the binary but it desnt matter.

The thing im saying is, that if we connect a cdplayers face onto a keyboard pcb,
it should output ascii on keypress and if it does, we can bind them keys to the software we use in the car computers.

Like we could bind the eject button to actually eject the cd or when we press something unused like the bassboost, it will play a winamp play list etc

Sorry i cant explain this very clearly but im sre you guys know what i mean.

Anyone done something like this ?

Also, you could get one of those DVD roms that have a slot and have it behind the cd players face so it looks real.

I have drawn how it would be setup in a car (poorly) lol

So what you guys think ?

Rob Withey · 05-09-2004, 02:13 AM

Not a new idea. And yes it will work:

http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/show...plate+keyboard

samael · 05-09-2004, 03:14 AM

I suppose you could also google for joystick keyboard hacks, done for homemade arcade machines. Same idea, but less fidly on the joystick side than a head units woulkd be

Gemini · 05-09-2004, 05:01 AM

well, **** i feel like i just re invented the wheel

I should have searched but i didnt think that anyone would have done it (and i didnt know they are really called face plates). Another thing that would be cool would be to be able to connect the lcd screen from the face plate to the pc so its not just sitting their doing nothing and make it display the winamp tune being played.

Then you could have both the vga lcd running and the Face plate lcd displaying something so if you want, you can turn of the big lcd and it would look like a totally stock cd player

One again, i apologise for not searching forums, i didnt know what to search for.

I just found out that the propper name for the detachable face is called a face plate

Skraggy_uk · 05-09-2004, 05:09 AM

I've had similar ideas, but never gotten round to dealing with it.
Had thought of making am old radio case/face into a PC controller, with keyboard options used for power, using the face plate, and for operating winamp (before media engine came about) or switching apps. I figured on using a serial LCD or VFD display inplace of the stock one to display winamp MP3 or radio data, with all the cabling behind the face plate in an old din case, and all the wiring properly wired to connectors in the back of the case, with circuit boards properly mounted on stand offs to make it all really solid.

Never got any further as TFT based systems really took off, but I can see that it would really have a use as a headunit replacement, with the volume controls wired to operate the feed to Amps, and maybe even splitting signals into front and rear.

You could treat it as a headunit, but all would do would be a controller/splitter/process unit, rather than do any playing/recieving itself. Would be a decent place to mount a USB hub too, so the main PC would only have what it needed plugged directly in.

NitroNic · 05-11-2004, 11:31 PM

I'm not sure if this is the same thing you're talkin about or not. I think so, but I'll list it anyway.

The way I'm making a controller for a non-car mp3 player computer is to build the controller it's self, using momentary on switches, wired to the keyboard's cuircit board. First I have to figure out which circuits of the keyboard matrix to short.

SO when you figure those out, you could run wires to the switches in your face plate to the keybard circuit board, and have you a nice looking controller.

samael · 05-11-2004, 11:35 PM

i am going to do that very thing. bizaar....

Charliey · 05-12-2004, 05:14 PM

For my project i hacked apart a keyboard and wired individual momentary switches to the inputs in the correct matrix. I only wired up 8 keys so it wasnt that hard to trace 8 keys to find the right spots on the matrix.

Heres a picture of the screen with the buttons mounted on it:

JayKaye · 05-13-2004, 12:15 PM

i like ideas like these.

personally my idea was to grab an old Playstation controller and use the analog 'joystick' from it. Being analog there are heaps of 'button presses' you can get out of it.
I really like the cd face idea though.