Front Panel Winamp Controls

[D-T]

Anyone got any ideas on how to make a bay for a 5 1/4" slot for controlling winamp?, tlakin bout play next prev stop pause buttons, volume, an LCD to display the name of the song and time left etc, and possibly an infared reciever to remotely control playback with a remote? Any of this possible, any help[ appreciated, cheers

[WebMasta33]

To control winamp...? Never ever seen that type of mod. But I assume it would require modding some type of controller to a serial or parallel port, and then programming some software to accept certin imputs as control hot keys on winamp.

[D-T]

We were thinking that wed have to do all the parts separately, eg the LCD would have to be running off of one program shwing the winamp info, and th ebuttons another program etc etc
we just need some info on how to, if anyone knows, on the buttons and infared. ive been reading in another forum re LCDs and they look pretty easy to figure out, theres programs already done for winamp etc

[pHaestus]

matrixorbital may have something like this, and you could also probably hax0r support for this kind of thing into software for the CF 633

[dabum]

Yes, there is software out there that does this... and I think it's even free....

http://www.jarcom.com/inmotion/ -- an older site about a guy who wanted to put an MP3 player in his car (before you could go to BestBye or Sircuit Sity and buy one pre-built). He has links to software to drive various LCD's off of the parallel port of your computer.

Of course, I don't know if the links still work or not.

Also, you might want to search for other car MP3 setups, and see if you can find any plugins for IR control. I'm sure there are some out there.

daBum

[D-T]

CHeers for the info so far peoples. Will follow it all up, later

[Kevin]

As cool of an idea as that is, why? Isn't easier to just click next track than push a button for it on your case?
-Kev

[Marco]

Originally posted by Kevin
As cool of an idea as that is, why? Isn't easier to just click next track than push a button for it on your case?
-Kev

You just answered your own question. It is so much cooler! Furthermore you may be able to set up some interesting mousefree mp3 players.

[Avatar28]

It can be done. You could always look at a multimedia keyboard or, worse case, just use one of them to control your winamp software. That still has some good geewhiz factor to it, though maybe not as much as a remote or having the buttons on there would be.

[imatation]

It is actually quite easy to set up a character lcd screen displaying winamp info. There is a way to wire the lcd screen to your paralell port using a few simple resistors the plans come up frequently in these forums - http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/index.php and also there are many available winamp plugins available for controling the screen. The mp3car.com forums should have all of the wiring schematics and sites to download the winamp plugin

[CptnDipshit]

Yea, when I was browsing the winamp plug-ins, I think I there was a 4 or button interface schematic and plug-in for controlling winamp.

[imatation]

Yea, you can get ones and set the buttons for your keyboard, so as they dont interfere with typing. you could use the f1-f12 to control things like play, stop, and pause. another more complex thing you could do if you want to mount the winamp controls on the front of the computer beside the lcd screen is find an old keyboard and take the controler out and remember which letter keys corespond to which wires and put a momentary switch instead of keys. then you could have say 4 momentary switches that corespond to keys g,e,y,c which you could tell the winamp plugin to use as play stop, next track, and pause. here is a link to a page with the schematics and a little more elaborate instructions http://mp3car.com/usersites/arby/buttons.html