In January of 2003, the stereo was stolen from my car. I have been without a sound system since, and I’m getting quite tired of listening to a tiny little radio with poor reception.

This article was originally posted in 2003, and was lost during the move from PHPNuke to some other long-forgotten content management system for my site. I have recovered the text of the article, and am reposting it here with very few changes.

There’s bound to be some link rot, but I have left the links alone if only to shame the respective webmasters.

After spending hours researching new receivers and even bidding on one or two, I did some research. I decided to create my own sound system. I have an MP3 collection, and I will be encoding my CD collection as Ogg Vorbis .

But I also want to be able to listen to the stereo. After googling for hours, I found the hardware that I have been looking for. Since I enjoy writing software, I will be integrating all of it myself.

Of course, all of the software I write will be licensed under the GPL, so check back soon for some code. If you are interested in helping me write or test this get-up, please visit the Sourceforge Project Page .

Specifications

• Uses a laptop running Linux hidden away in the vehicle. Mine is a sometimes-working Thinkpad 600.
• For display, an LCD such as this one connected to the laptop through USB. ($75.00)
• For control, a numeric keypad connected to the laptop through USB. ($22.00)
• To be able to listen to the radio, a D-Link DSB-R100 FM Tuner, connected to the laptop through USB. ($34.95)
• My existing two-channel amplifier to connect the factory speakers, and a 1/8” headphone to male RCA adapter to connect it to the laptop. ($7.00)
• My control application uses mpg321/mpg123 and ogg123 to play files. These have a Remote Mode that my application uses.
• Note that vorbis-tools-1.0 must be patched for ogg123 to include Remote Mode. See this posting on the Vorbis Development List . Also, you must have automake-1.4. No other version will work when compiling vorbis-tools.

Status

1. Specify parts and place orders
   • AC Inverter (Done)
   • Display - I chose the gray on white backlight (Done)
   • Numeric Keypad
   • Bus-powered USB Hub
   • D-Link USB Radio Tuner (Done)
   • Wiring harness adapter for my car (Done)
2. Design user interface for 4x20 display and numeric keypad. (Mostly done.)
3. Write software front-end for control of mpg123, ogg123, Radio Ttuner, and CD player. Use code from:
   • lcdproc
   • tunerd
4. Must also handle controlled shutdown and wakeup based on power loss and restoration.
5. Test my software in my car.
6. Create housing/face for display to mount in stereo hole
7. Network server software for management of playlists, etc, from a network-attached PC.

Future Upgrades

• Wireless network adapter, so that I can download music to the player from my home network.
• Manage playlists while the laptop is offline, and upon powerup, have laptop replicate over the wireless network.
• The Griffin Powermate USB Knob as a volume control. Only $39.

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