DIY Jukeboxes

[andrewhannay]

Hi all,
New to the Jukebox forum, but I've just finished building my own dedicated MP3 jukebox based on DOSCAB for my arcade room. There must be loads of you out there who have built your own jukeboxes based on the available free software that's available. Are there any links out there of your jukeboxes or shall we start posting them here I'd just love to see what other peoples creations look like.
Andrew

[DrewKaree]

Post yours here.  Others have done the same - check out a few threads here, but also check out the Project Announcements thread - June's thread has a few links to other folks and what they've done, and there's a Taxi Cab looking one....few others, but make sure you post pictures

[saint]

Don't forget there's a jukebox category on the examples page  (http://arcadecontrols.com/arcade_examples.php#jukeboxes) that currently only has 4 entries...

--- saint

[andrewhannay]

Well, here's mine.
It's and industrial PC mounted in a Birch Laminated box with a flat screen mounted on the front. I have used a telephone keypad cut into the flat screen enclosure along with a little circuit board that uses a PIC to decode the keyboard matrix and generate PS/2 keyboard codes. I originally wanted to build it using black "Conti Board" to give it an 80's look but I couldn't find any and didn't want to start painting it so I decided on making it more up to date by using Birch and matt Aluminium . The illumination is provided by those neon strips you can get to illuminate the inside of your PC. The sound card output is amplified by the Nakamichi Stereo below it (For some reason the sound output is very quite and I need to sort this out before we throw any Parties).  Everyone who has seen it since I finished it on Friday has been very impressed and say it's too good to put in the Arcade room in my Garage. Hope you like it.
Andrew

[Johnny]

andrewhannay,

Nice looking, and just curious, what's the software You are using?

- Johnny

[andrewhannay]

I'm using DOSCAB, I boot into DOS and run it from there. That's my own skin based on a test skin that was supplied with the software. It's a bit boring I know, but I wanted as many songs per screen that I could get while still being able to read the text. The Screen is only 640x480 but it works quite well. I had to turn of font smooting.

[Johnny]

I'll think it looks good. I'm using Wincab myself (Just to get some music running in the background).
Any chance of some close up's?
(To me it looks like You have more than 16 selections avaiable in Wincab)

- Johnny

[Chris]

I'll think it looks good. I'm using Wincab myself (Just to get some music running in the background).
Any chance of some close up's?
(To me it looks like You have more than 16 selections avaiable in Wincab)

The number of selections available in WinCab depends on the skin and the number of control buttons available.  He is using the single-label style, so he has 40 selections available.

[andrewhannay]

Yep 40 per page. Although with just over 400 tracks to choose from thats only 10 pages so I could have had only 20 larger lables per screen and it would look less cramped and the fonts might look neater. I think I might prefer to have them in album/directory order as opposed to artist order as it makes selections more like 80s style CD juke boxes but I won't be able to use the ID3 tags I believe and the directories/album names will be limited to 8 characters in length.
Here is a closeup in the dark (paint job around the screen looks a bit dodgy in the light)
Andrew

[Silver]

I'm not completely sure, but you may be able to generate the database in Doscab by running the same files in Wincab. (you'll be in windows so IDtags/long filenames supported). Copy the generated database file over to the dos machine may then work although I may be overlooking some things.

If the 8.3 limit is a problem, then there are versions of DOS that support longfilenames - try win98se dos mode (you can boot directly to this). I've also heard lots of good things about FreeDos which may also support them.

Lovely jukebox by the way!

I

[Chris]

I think I might prefer to have them in album/directory order as opposed to artist order as it makes selections more like 80s style CD juke boxes

I'm going to try to fix the CD skins this weekend.  Maybe I'll also add an option to group the singles-style labels by album instead of artist.

[andrewhannay]

That would be quite good actually.
Here is another question though, Is it possible to have a mode where only albums are shown and when I select an album the whole album is played. I'm thinking of making another Jukebox, that will look even smarter that I can put my entire album collection onto and then I hide all my CDs away somewhere.
Alternatively..............(and if no one replies I'm going to post it as a new subject)...............
..............is there a software already out there that will take a CD check to see if it has been MP3'd and if not, store it to hard disk download the info from FreDB and play it. I remember seeing something like that at an electronics show, and it was possible to control it with a PPC or Palm with infra-red control.
Andrew

[Chris]

Here is another question though, Is it possible to have a mode where only albums are shown and when I select an album the whole album is played. I'm thinking of making another Jukebox, that will look even smarter that I can put my entire album collection onto and then I hide all my CDs away somewhere.

This is beyond the scope of DOSCab/WinCab right now, but many of the other jukes here will play full albums as a single selection.

--Chris

[andrewhannay]

Yeah, but yours is the best.

[clonestar]

Hi Andrew, nice to see another member of the UK pinball group here, just don't let jukedock know.  I'm sure you alrewady saw my juke when I posted to the gruop but there are several pictures of other jukeboxes in this thread:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=36948.0