[dundee] LUG project(s)

[Andrew Clayton]

On the subject of LUG projects, I have an what might be quite an
ambitious idea, that I've been mulling over the last year.

Design and develop a car based mp3 player... not a new concept, I know.
Last time I checked, the only one I would touch was the empeg which is
no longer in development.

This could even become commercially viable, but either way it would be a
fun project with the added bonus of the 'coolness' factor.



Heres a 'brain dump' of my idea's.


Obviously this thing would be hard disk based and run some form of
Linux.

There are plenty of embedded Linux development boards out there which
would have most of what we needed.


For getting your music onto the thing. USB has to be one method, but I'm
also thinking ethernet would also be very handy. This would allow the
use of such things as ftp and nfs/samba as file transfer mechanisms. And
provides a route for non USB capable people. E.g those of us running
years old Unix workstations.

Certainly the kernel support for accessing it through USB is there and
the devices disk would just appear as a SCSI. The USB gadget project
would offer other interesting possibilities.
 
I'm leaving firewire, irda and bluetooth out for now. Certainly serial
would be too slow, so thats out.

The thing could be configured through a web interface or through telnet.


For me the hardest bit seems to be getting a usable interface on the
thing with a LCD screen etc.


The thing would handle MP3 (this may be prove interesting if it became
commercial) and ogg vorbis. I don't see the point in supporting .wmv



 
Well thats pretty much my general thoughts on that....



--
Andrew