help with ideas for a total homebrew mp3 car player

acidic · 07-12-2002, 07:32 AM

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.

tapper1999 · 07-12-2002, 07:58 AM

Try these links to give you some ideas on a player!

Yampp project

pjrc

These sites have completed projects that you can work with!

ShinkunoNamida · 07-12-2002, 11:32 AM

The ideal for an incar computer (as far as I'm concerned)
Swift boot time
Attractive, easy to use interface.
DVD, movie file playback
mp3
CD
GPS navigation interface

some other not as important features..
video game emulation
portability (for taking out of the car into the house)
detachable face (a few members have come up with ways to do this)

I'm sure there's things i'm forgetting here.

eugenen · 07-12-2002, 12:02 PM

Well most of us use a standard PC system since we don't have the tools to make a motherboard plus its not cost effective. I did a make my own system in school, but for my senior project I used a PC MB and predicted the electronics industry would go that route because you can pick up a PC and write a littel bit of code for much cheaper that you can design and build an embedded system. If your going to go that route why not try to have tighter integration with the cars electronics that what can be done with a regural PC? For example new GM's have a serial bus between the engine computer, body computer and radio. the radio can reset the change oil notification, control the auto headlights and auto door locks as well as the number of times the wipers swipe when washing the window. Why not do something like that and interface with the cars onboard electronics and have some monitoring and control over the cars functions. You could make a generic interface then have a module that would interface with the specific brand of car. Maybe monitor the cars distance and speed and compare it to your mapping ond or gps system. Have the volume of the mp3's change with the speed the car is going, monitor the engine for problems, integarte alarm functions (most here are not brave enough to trust their car pc to say shutting off the fuel if the alarm detector is tripped, one os crash could shut your car off on the highway, where with embedded systems you could do it with some hardware)

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