Griffin Powermate on GeeXboX?

UrbanSoot · 12-04-2006, 04:00 PM

Anyone had any luck making Griffin Powermate work on this distro?
I ordered my Powermate last week. Going to drop my G4 433Mhz tower in trunk. Right now trying to find a suitable distro to run. What would you guys recommend?
My requirements are simple - should play MP3s and some videos from HD and maybe DVD/MP3s from optical drive, but that will come later.
Hmm... Maybe display OBDII info as well?

UrbanSoot · 12-04-2006, 06:24 PM

Seems like I'm going to go with highly customized Ubuntu. It will save me tons of time to customize it to what I need and it still will be pretty lightweight distro to run. Most probably I will be running 1 application per desktop and will be switching between desktops using Powermate (click + turn)

kev000 · 12-05-2006, 10:36 AM

Good choice with ubuntu, Geexbox makes a great set top. but If you want to add stuff to it, it can can get very complicated and time consuming. Good Luck with ubuntu.

UrbanSoot · 12-05-2006, 11:04 AM

Yeah, I have tons of Ubuntu CDs laying around anyhow (say 50+?) and I currently use it on one of my servers and on my laptop. Hm... Wonder if I should make a bracket to hot-swap my laptop into a circuit and mount it behind my seat...

UrbanSoot · 12-07-2006, 11:36 AM

my griffin is coming this following monday =)
i already prepared screen, 250gb hard drive, upped ram to like 700+mb, and got 200w power inverter.

now i need to get vga -> rgb rca cable and install os.

UrbanSoot · 12-11-2006, 05:55 PM

my griffin just came in today =)
going to start on the system setup either today at evening or tomorrow

Herve · 06-30-2007, 03:36 PM

Sorry for the late reply. If you're still interested, I made a daemon for the powermate for geexbox 1. I'm sure it will also work for ver 1.1, but the full source are not available yet.
I was jalous of the multi function knob in my girl friend's BMW! I had to add something like this in my car: It works absolutely great.

dupa2 · 07-04-2007, 09:19 AM

I use ubuntu kernel and modules only, rest of the system is unstable debian, with WindowMaker. So far I just made a plugin for my car2pc interface, and switch screens, etc. using my headunit, but that knob looks very interresting.
Let's get one! Herve, any chances for some sources or any documentation?

Thanks

Herve · 09-24-2007, 04:16 PM

Sorry again for the late answer:
I don't get notify when there's a reply to this thread.
So, I rewrote the daemon for the powermate for geexbox (actually it can be used with any distro that has mplayer listening to /var/mp_control in slave mode. but just geexbox has the ability to do the OSD stuff the right way, also it boots so fast that no suspend to disk is required. I just switch the computer off: there's no write access anyway with GB) and if I spend some time to tune up a package there's a good chance to get it commited.
There's more info in geexbox forum (keyword for a search: powermate).

Herve · 09-24-2007, 04:20 PM

But if you can not wait until then, I can give you the source code of course. It's easy to recompile geexbox since the full source are available since ver 1.1 release.