Linux Jukebox Project: 3D interface/video playback ~~CAB BUILT pics added~~

[shane]

Update: check out a few screem shots of the software I just added

Hi all,

  been reading these forums for a while now though it was about time I got into the mix of things. I am currently building a jukebox, both software and hardware for a 3 semester group project at uni. The basics are:

   - runs on Linux
   - video playback on separate monitor(s)
   - animated interface using OpenGL
   - database for song info (MySQL)
   - automatic updates of songs and software via FTP
   - web based remote admin
   - wall mount cabinet


   So far we have implemented the database and video playback and have a working although far from finished user interface and web admin.

   The user interface is 3d(ish), written in 'C' and using openGL. Currently we have a working interface that can display thumbs and song info from the database and queue songs for playback, but it needs allot of polishing and functions such as search, top 20, view queue etc have not yet been implemented (that's for next semester!).

   My biggest problem at the moment is the user controls. We decided to use a trackball and two push buttons, allowing the user to scroll through the songs by spinning the ball left or right. However the jukebox is to be wall mounted, meaning the trackball will not work properly as it does not rest correctly on its rollers.

   My idea was to drill straight through an 8 ball ( this will be a challenge) and mount it in the cabinet like a spinner, only the axis will run vertically and not stick up out of the cabinet.

   

  The problem is going to be getting the ball to spin smoothly and keeping the spinner part (to read the movement) small so that enough of the ball is showing through the cabinet to be useful.

I have thought of using a belt between the pole holding the ball and the spinner reader thing:



or putting a mouse against the back of the ball:



   Any thoughts/ideas on how to modify the trackball or build this sideways spinner would be greatly appreciated. I would really like to stick with a trackball or similar as it suits the interface I have designed, although im happy to hear everyones thoughts. I hope my explanation made some kind of sense.

  If anyone is interested in hearing more about the project let me know, I can post more details or even our 'design proposal' from last semester which outlines everything in detail. thanks in advance guys

[GadgetGeek]

What if the trackball was mounted, turned 45 degrees so that gravity is keeping the ball on both sets of rollers.  Both axis would register motion, but you only need to read one of them.

Or just use a spinner with a knob.  Logic wouldn't change since you said you are only using one axis on the trackball anyway.

If you want, you could mount some sort of toy wheel on the spinner shaft so that only part of the "tread" comes through the juke.

Again, since you are only reading left/right, maybe a joystick?

[shane]

thanks for the reply,

   we had considered turning the trackball to ~45 degrees, might still do it, just rather not if possible as our current design for the cab doesn't allow much room for movement, and (I think) our cabinet design looks good with its flat face and slim profile.

   The joystick would not keep in with our design of a low profile cabinet and wouldn't allow the user to scroll faster or slower through the song list.

   I had considered a toy wheel of sorts, but the cabinet has to look as professional as possible as we are getting marked at uni as if it were a commercial project.

   The spinner is a good option and is what we will probably use if we cant get this to work, but as I said I really would to stick to a trackball of sorts, but this option is going to have to be seriously considered.

   thanks for the input, i think ill still be trying the 8 ball spinner 'cos personally i think if we did a good job it would look good and work well, and I had a friend suggest buying a 8 ball gear shift nob which would be predrilled at least half way. I could even use the gear shift nob as a nob for a spinner...

[rayt13]

Is there any way you could use some kind of spring loading behind the rollers to keep them in contact w/ the track ball?

[shane]

   springs is a neat idea, although pushing up the rollers would push the ball against the molding around the hole for the ball to show through, which would mean it wouldnt spin freely.

   rollers/bearings around the hole to push the ball back onto the rollers might work, if they were spring loaded the ball should roll fairly smooth though i would expect it to slow down.

   the problem with this approach is there is VERY little room to play with unless i hack away at the molding, and pushing the ball back would mean less of the ball shows to the user.

   hear is the trackball if anyone is interested, its from www.ozstick.com.au

   

   I will post some images of the trackball opened up tonight when i get off uni.

   I look forward to your ideas, thanks for the input so far

[shane]

thought you all might like to hear that we will begin building the cabinet this weekend, so ill probably get around to building my 8 ball spinner/trackball thing in the next couple of weeks with some luck.

Also I have done some more work on the software, the process managing the video queue has been worked on quite a bit and the interface has been cleaned up a bit, still lots of work to go though...

get this, after updating the software managing the queue we selected 100+ songs and left to have a few to many beers... later that night we returned, music was still playing as we had hoped so i sat down to watch the end of the song (it was 'Taylor' by jack johnson with Ben stiller in the clip, great song). It reached the end and CRASHED! It had played 80 odd songs without a hick up and crashes within a minute of me getting home. What are the chances??

[GadgetGeek]

get this, after updating the software managing the queue we selected 100+ songs and left to have a few to many beers... later that night we returned, music was still playing as we had hoped so i sat down to watch the end of the song (it was 'Taylor' by jack johnson with Ben stiller in the clip, great song). It reached the end and CRASHED! It had played 80 odd songs without a hick up and crashes within a minute of me getting home. What are the chances??

Exactly the opposite always happens to me.  Works flawlessly, and as soon as I leave, it crashes.  Try to recreate the events...works fine...leave, crashes.

Good luck with getting it resolved (maybe some corrupt data in that specific video?)
Look forward to seeing your final trackball/spinner solution

[unclet]

1) Instead of spinning the ball of a trackball to move rollers, could you mount an optical mouse behind the ball instead of using rollers at all.    Basically, instead of moving the optical mouse around for movement, you are moving the ball around instead.  Moving the ball interfaces with the optics of the mouse rather than moving rollers ......

Think of it as having an optical mouse on a table top.  To make the mouse pointer move you would normally move the optical mouse around on the stationary table top.    However, for your application, instead of moving the optical mouse around on the table top, you would keep the optical mouse stationary and move the table instead.   Just think of the "ball" of the trackball as the "table".   Spin the ball in front of the optical mouse.


2) Or you could simply use a joystick instead.   Have the person pull left to scroll through the song list.  Start the scrolling slow then after a few song pages have been scroll through (and knowing the joystick is still held in the left position) then increase the scrolling speed to allow for faster flipping of songs.  Instead of spinning a ball to move through songs, you would simply hold the joystick to the left.  The longer you hold it to the left, the faster the scrolling becomes.

[shane]

@GadgetGeek

yeah we queued up that same video about 10 times (yeah i know my jukebox doesn't tell u off for queueing the same song multiple times just yet) and it didn't happen again...

it did happen at the end of the video so if can detect that the video player has gone down it should be able to recover.

good luck with finding your problem

@unclet

the optical mouse is an idea we have looked into, we would have to sand the queueball cos the shiny surface wouldn't agree with the optical reader. And we would still need rollers to make the ball spin smoothly, which unfortunately leaves me with the same problem.

so the idea now is to drill thru the 8 ball and use a ball type mouse resting against the back so we can still have a nice shiny 8 ball

and that joystick idea is a good one, if this goes badly I think I will do that or something similar.


we did try just mounting an optical mouse 'upside down' for anyone interested - it works kinda, u just wave your hand from left to right or vise versa over the sensor. However you have to be at a fairly close and consistant distance from the optical sensor, and even then its a bit inconsistent.

This is something I felt people who hadn't used the jukebox before would find hard, and I found it became frustrating very quickly, so it was back to the drawing board.

[shane]

looks like the 8 ball spinner is getting built this thursday, christian (another group member) had the idea of using small bearings (they ar router bearings i beleive).

the bearings are sunk into the top and bottom of the ball, with a pin running right thru the ball that is fixed (doesnt spin). the inside of the bearing is fixed to the pin, the outside to the ball. Should spin really well.

we will place a roller on the back or side of the ball to read the movement.

we also started on the cab over the weekend, the front panel has been cut/routered/drilled into shape and is looking really neat. now we r waiting for the undercoat(s) to dry...

[Barry Barcrest]

The easiest way would have been to just mount the ball directly onto a spinner... With the spinner underneath or even on top there would still be enough room to have enough of the ball showing. I also think this would be the most reliable way.

Just remove the top of the spinner drill a hole through the ball and glue it onto the shaft of the spinner. Have a spindle going in the other end to make it more secure and job done.

[shane]

we tested the amount of the ball that would show by drilling a hole just shy of 2" as the 8 balls we have are 2". It shows enough but this is with just shy of half the ball showing, i wouldn't want any less.

I have not seen any spinners with a footprint of around 1 cm which is what I hope we can achieve by using bearings as we can almost push the pin going through the ball up against the wood on the inside.

however if you or anyone else has seen a spinner of this size (damn small size!) send a link my way, I have had a look at all the homebrew spinners on byoac and haven't seen one suitable... but i could have missed it

[Barry Barcrest]

Well the other work around would be to have the ball in a recess which i personally think would look cool...

 |
 \
 ( ) Ball
 /
 |

Something like that, sorry i can't attach and image from work.. It would give more room for a spinner either above or bellow. Otherwise you could use one of thoose universal linkages like they have on cars the let you rotate an axel 90 degress...

=o= Sort of looks like that, if you know what i mean...

[shane]

we have alread built and half painted the front of the cab, and besides that a recess is out of the question because there isnt enough room!

christian has done a real good job of keeping the cabinet small and light, and i think there is about 20mm to spare between the back of our spinner and the motherboard ( i think the motherboard is there...)

that universal joint idea is a good one though, they arnt too bulky and we could shave some plywood away to give it more room. I like it alot...

anyone had experience with these? would they spin smoothly enough?

thanks for the idea Barcrest,

[Barry Barcrest]

I was thinking a meccano joint might do it for you...

http://www.mecworld.co.za/jmh/jmh/photos_files/animations/universa.htm

That has a video of one incase anyone didn't know what i was on about.

[shane]

hey guys,

well we have been busy getting ready for our mid-year presentation, all went well we got 95 out of 100...

anyway christian did a good job of the '8 ball' spinner, works great! ill get some proper photos next week

in the mean time here is a photo taken by the lecturer at the presentation, im looking forward to hearing some suggestions/comments on the cab design!!



the user interface showed up a bit dark, and didn't maximise properly (luckily the lecturers didn't notice) so the thumbs are a bit squashed but u will get the idea

and the red wasn't supposed to be soooooo RED, but that can b changed easy enough

[shane]

sorry everyone,

I have to use the webspace I was using to host the photos to complete an assignment for uni ( which is currently overdue... ahhrg )

I should have the pictures back up when im done later tonight, so please check back as I really want some opinions on the cab!

and as I said when I get the jukebox home Ill post some better pics

[shane]

there we go, all the pics should be up again

we ended up doing something similar to this:



except that we are resting the scroll wheel of a mouse up against the ball, its nice and rubbery and by bending a piece of metal out of the way we stopped the 'clicking'. this saved us allot of space as we could cut off most of the mouse.

two bearings were sunk into the top and bottom of the ball, and the axis glued to the inside of these bearings and fixed to the cabinet.

then we changed the mouse setting so as instead of scrolling it now moves the cursor from left to right.

so by spinning the ball the user moves the thumbnails across the screen, it works and looks great!

[mflint]

Nice job. Hoped you could post more pics of it and maybe let us try out the interface, to see what it's like. Best of luck with future works.

[shane]

just got it home!! my girlfriend went and picked it up from my friends place a few days early, a nice surprise.

well here's the pics i have been promising.



The view from the front...




From the side, the pole holding it up is only temporary, the idea is to have it wall mounted but we need to keep it portable for the mean time.





The layout of the hardware in the cab




the finished 8 ball spinner up close, notice the 8 ball is upside down , easy fix




Tried to show the how it looks when running, the flash reflected of the glossy paint and glass too much and when the light is on the interface looked faded, so its the best pic i got. Im looking to put some blue leds behind the 8 ball cos its hard to see in the dark!

i will be keen to have you all look at the interface, but its still in early stages, more a proof of concept than anything. When its up to speed u will hear about it

[mflint]

How you coming on the software?
Getting the bugs out of it.

[shane]

slowly...

have had exams the past few weeks so progress has been slow to say the least.

We managed to make our jukebox recover if the video playback crashes and have written a seperate process to manage the playlist.

so the next few weeks should see alot of improvement, and probably the creation of alot more bugs

[mflint]

Update?

Just Checking to see how the program is coming?

[shane]

mflint,

yeah i have been verrry busy working on it, probably 20 to 30 hrs a week for the past 3 weeks.

We have a demonstration next thursday at a conferance called 'engenius', its organised by the uni to get project sponsors and achademics to look at the students work. the prize for getting judged the best is a couple of grand!! while i dont expect to win, the top 5 groups get a 100% grade for the subject so thats what i am gunning for...

currently there a few minor bugs, and im adding the finnishing touches (or atleast what i can in time) to the user interface.

we have added scrolling advertising over the video clips, song search, playlist view, and the ability for the owner to disable songs/genres at certain times or indefinatly, and im currently animating every tnansition i can (ie/ song now playing changes - old song scrolls off screen new one scrolls onto screen)

A music distribution company was also kind enough to send us a bunch of samle videos to use which is handy, much better quality than what i had and they come with a thumbnail and  song info

Ill be producing some screen shots and/or videos of the interface in action early next week so ill post em on here for u's to look at.

[mflint]

Hope you do well at the -UNI- Hard work always pays off in the end.

Software sounds interesting. I'll keep checking as i am sure others are watching and hoping for you too:.

[shane]

cheers,

and if anyone reading this thread will b in melbourne (australia), this thurs and is interested in seeing the project let me know, the conferance is open to the public and i could always use a few 'stranger' telling everyone how good it is

[shane]

hey we managed to swindle second prize, a 100% mark for the project ( & $1000!!)

not a bad afternoon...

i even got some pics of the interface going, ill post em on here once i get my mate to email em over

 

[mflint]

Excellent Job (Told you hard work pays off) Glad to see it.

[shane]

here are some screen shots finally, just wish I had have put em up befor itunes 7 came out...


the main menu


a genre menu


the playlist, fairly obvious

I tried for a while to capture a video, its much better in action, but after wasting a couple of hours I gave up.

the redish background looks a bit funny here, but on the juke it works well cos it matches the paint job!!

let me know what u's think

[Barry Barcrest]

Reminds me of the song selection on the playstation game SINGSTAR, looks sweet dude.

[shane]

hmm I havent seen/used singstar (and trust me, u wouldnt want me to), might have to have a look

[Space Fractal]

The software look awesome, and great 3D idea. Would been fine, you also released to the public. There are not many linux software out here.

A thing I thinked about it. How would you select the songs?

As I can see for myself from the main screen: The albums could look like a real cd-cover (a box instead of plain). When the user selected the album, it simply turn it around and see the song list.

Otherwice how do the song list selection look?

[shane]

I was thinking of doing exactly what u described to play my mp3 collection.

The project was to build a 'video jukebox' like you might see in a pub/club,  there will only every be one or two songs from the one album, so there was no need to do this originally.

and to answer your question the 'song selection list' is seen in the middle picture (showing the song 'Metallica: Fade to black'). The thumbnails shown are screenshots from the videos

We are looking into a couple of options for the software, and if none work out i would like to see it released to the public, if this is the case you guys will be the first to know!!

[mflint]

Hows it working out for you?

[shane]

to be honest I havent touched it since we demonstrated it, I have too many other assignments to worry about ATM (not trying to sound like a sook, just the way it is)

our third group member will be back from Germany anyday now, then we can decide what we want to do with the unit and software, and like I said if the software isn't commercially viable I would like to see it released, but it would still need some work

Also, I am developing a similar MAME frontend that some of you guys might be interested in. Wrong forum I know but I definitely going to release this one, and if we realease the jukebox software I will look at combining the two interfaces, should be really cool for a Mame cabinet!!

here is an early screenshot, what do u think so far? Sorry about the small size, I'm capturing on a laptop without a graphics card, so if i capture anything too big it combines frames and looks really bad.



Any ideas/feedback would be great, and will be acted on quickly 'cos its due next week!!

for a bit more info visithttp://yallara.cs.rmit.edu.au/~sdoolan/rtr/

[mflint]

Game sounds awesome,You guys sure to put a lot of time into these projects.
Best of luck with it.

[mflint]

Hows the Linux Software coming (JUKEBOX)  Had any thought of a release to the public.