Arch Linux

fdac

Member

From: Brisbane, Australia

Registered: 2005-06-19

Posts: 96

Arch MPD Jukebox project

Hi,

I've got a spare older computer sitting around I plan to use for a dedicated media jukebox, and put in the lounge room.

At this stage I just want to play music files using MPD.  My vision is to turn on the box and have it start playing with a useable interface, controllable like a jukebox.

The way I see this happening is:

- Arch installation, minimal services / programs, no X, music files loaded onto local HDD, MPD starts at boot, audio output to stereo system

- (Initially) Configure box to automatically log in a (restricted) user (hack in wiki) and start NCMPC or similar, system controlled locally by keyboard, or from a separate workstation on the LAN

- (Eventually) Buy a remote control receiver and use lirc / irpty, then hide or remove local keyboard

- Be able to shut down box by simply hitting the power button

- "Lock" the player interface, NCMPC or whatever, so that an accidental press of 'Q' doesn't exit to a console

- LAN connection to enable remote administration of media library etc.

Anybody done this already?  Any suggestions, tips or tricks?  Anything I need to look out for? 

Does it make sense to do this in Arch or is there a better way I haven't found yet?

All comments welcome - I'll post back here reporting progress!

Francis

hugin

Member

Registered: 2006-05-19

Posts: 93

Re: Arch MPD Jukebox project

I've done something similar before using mpd.  I had a spare tower in my dorm room, (my monitor blew up, and i bought a laptop) that i hooked up to a set of speakers and played my music collection out of using MPD.  I controlled it with ncmpc from the laptop. 

I don't see why it wouldn't work.  The only thing i can see is, how old the PC is, as if it's quite old it might have a hardware power switch (but this would make it too old to decode flac, i think)

I know there is a key screen, where you can re-define keymaps.  so you should be able to easily disable the q button.  I think this might be a feature in the .11 release, or done with a patch (i used it on Gentoo.) 

A neat idea might be to to take some sort of wireless (either wifi or bluetooth) device (pda, nokia 770, etc) to control it.  Then you don't have to have a monitor in your Living room, nor hook it up to your TV, as i did (which  can be a little troublesome to read at times.)

I would recommend using either NFS or FTP to admin the library.  Those, for me, gave the best transfer speeds for music files.  If you want to be able to use the music on another machine NFS is my favorite solution.

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Open Toes; Open Mind; Open Source.

phrakture

Arch Overlord

From: behind you

Registered: 2003-10-29

Posts: 7,879

Website

Re: Arch MPD Jukebox project

Try jinzora: http://www.jinzora.org/
Along with a web mpd front end - throw lighttpd on it, and boom.

I did that with an old laptop and some shitty speakers... worked nicely.

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http://phraktured.net

fdac

Member

From: Brisbane, Australia

Registered: 2005-06-19

Posts: 96

Re: Arch MPD Jukebox project

Thanks for the responses.

I looked at Jinzora and it looks good, maybe once I get the basics up and running I could experiment with that.  Obviously that would entail running a webserver etc.

I don't want this box to be continually on, I just want to be able to start it up playing a standard (large) shuffled playlist by pressing the power on button on the case. 

/me thinks about starting this on the weekend...

Francis

Komodo

Member

From: Oxford, UK

Registered: 2005-11-03

Posts: 674

Re: Arch MPD Jukebox project

I wrote jinzora installation instructions in the wiki a while back, check them out. It was fairly slow when I tried it, but I think they're using Ajax now, at least in CVS, so it should be a mite speedier.

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.oO Komodo Dave Oo.