MP3 Jukebox with infrared remote control.

Overview

This page describes how a PC can be turned into a Jukebox, capable of playing a large selection of high quality stereo music at demand.

Features

With 2Gb of HDD, one can load the JukeBox with approx. 45 CD's of music. Playback quality is better than FM-Stereo, depending on the sound card used. What's more, a remote control can be used to play tracks. This requires some extra hardware that plugs into a serial port. But then you can use virtually any remote to control the JukeBox, limited to SONY for now. Contact the author for details on obtaining a infrared receiver.

Technical brief

The aplication is based on MP3, a compression method for hifi sound. The idea is to have a large collection of songs stored in MP3 format on your harddisk. A MP3 player, "Winplay3" is then used to play a MP3 track through your PC's soundcard. As it would be tedious to play each track manually, a so-called playlist can be made. This is a list of songs belonging together, say they're from the same CD. The program I wrote, IRmp3, plays these lists on demand.

User interface

Shown here is a snapshot of the user interface:

You can select a list by clicking on it, you can select a track likewise. Playlists need to be typed in into a file called "playlist", the following is an exerpt from the playlist file used with the screenshot above:

Title:, The Rolling Stones Exile on Main Street
f:\exilemst\rocksoff.mp3, Rocks Off
f:\exilemst\ripjoint.mp3, Rip This Joint
f:\exilemst\shkehips.mp3, Shake Your Hips
f:\exilemst\breakdwn.mp3, Stop Breaking Down
f:\exilemst\shinligh.mp3, Shine A Light
f:\exilemst\soulsurv.mp3, Soul Survivor

Title:, Portishead Dummy
f:\portis1\mysteron.mp3, Mysterons
f:\portis1\sourtime.mp3, Sour Times
f:\portis1\stranger.mp3, Stangers
f:\portis1\cldsweet.mp3, It Could Be Sweet
f:\portis1\wandstar.mp3, Wandering Star

Title:, Pink Floyd Meddle
f:\meddle\01.mp3, One Of These Days
f:\meddle\02.mp3, A Pillow Of Winds
f:\meddle\03.mp3, Fearless
f:\meddle\04.mp3, San Tropez
f:\meddle\05.mp3, Seamus
f:\meddle\06.mp3, Echoes

..etc..etc..

end

You can type this, no big deal eh ?

Here is an actual playlist, in HTML format: Sample playlist. It is generated by IRmp3 in the directory where IRmp3 resides, and will appear as "playlist.html".

Error 102:No computer in living room.

As with most same people (hum hum), I try to separate work and pleasure. This means my computer is not in the room where I usually enjoy my music. Fortunately, a telephone cable is laid between the two rooms in question. The cable appears to have 5 wires. 2 for phone, and 3 left unconnected. I use the 3 unconnected wires for audio, while remote control signals are modulated onto the phone lines. See "An IR Repeater".It works, and yields noise levels comparable to Dolby C. Consult your humble author for more details.

Download and use.

This will download a ZIP file containing 4 files:

• IRMP3.EXE A win 3.1 executable.
• PLAYLIST An example for the playlist.
• MSCOMM.VBX A VB3 extension needed for remote control interfacing.

Expand these into a directory named "c:\irmp3" or anything you like.

If you haven't got VBRUN300.DLL get this and unzip to your WIN311 SYSTEM directory.

Next to these, you'll need WINPLAY. Download it, register it, and put the following files into the same directory as where IRMP3.EXE resides:

• WINPLAY3.EXE The MP3 player frontend.
• L3AUDIO.DLL The MP3 decoder / player library.

IRmp3 uses COM2 at 19200,N,8,1 as it's input port of remote control data. This port cannot be changed as yet. Will be though. The program responds to the following codes:

Key       Hex code  Description
'"1"    = 0x00      Play list #01
'"2"    = 0x01      Play list #02
...
'"9"    = 0x08      Play list #09
'"10"   = 0x20      Play list #10
...
'"16"   = 0x26
'"17"   = 0x10
'"18"   = 0x11
'"19"   = 0x17
'"20"   = 0x29
'"0"    = 0x09      Play list #00 (the first list)
'"10+"  = 0x27      Play (current list + 10)
'"PLAY" = 0x32      Restart current list
'"STOP" = 0x38      Stop playing
'"PREV" = 0x30      Play previous track in list
'"NEXT" = 0x31      Play next track in list

Many links to IR projects here.

An universal Infrared Receiver.