Empeg "Font End"
Posted by: corrigun
Empeg "Font End" - 03/04/2007 17:12
So I have played with some of the REALLY cool tools you folks have made. I was wondering how hard would it be to add a module to a car pc front end like roadrunner, more specifically adding the control and display of the empeg into a front end? Sort of like adding Tony's Empegface control capability into roadrunner. Thoughts?
Posted by: tfabris
Re: Empeg "Font End" - 03/04/2007 17:20
It depends entirely on Roadrunner. I don't know what that product is or what it does exactly. I don't know how it works.
EmpegFace was made to be a stand-alone application, and it's not very friendly with regards to integrating with other applications. For example there is a lot of hard coding to make it appear in the task bar, it depends on the right mouse button to show its configuration menus, etc.
HOWEVER... the actual functional thing that EmpegFace is doing in the background is very simple. It's polling a certain URL to display the screen, and when you press a button or a key, it's sending a URL to the player. Nothing more complicated than that. That's all it does.
If Roadrunner is extensible with that kind of thing, it would be brain-dead-easy to add it. Easier, probably, than it would be to try to shoehorn empegFace into someone else's front-end.
Do you have any links to Roadrunner? Uncle Google is linking me to Warner Brothers cartoons.
Posted by: corrigun
Re: Empeg "Font End" - 03/04/2007 17:22
Posted by: drakino
Re: Empeg "Font End" - 03/04/2007 17:22
http://guino.home.insightbb.com/roadrunner.htmlTook a bit to find between the ISP service, the cartoon, and other stuff. Throwing CarPC onto the search helped.
Posted by: tfabris
Re: Empeg "Font End" - 03/04/2007 17:28
Okay, now that I see what RoadRunner is and what it does, I would then ask:
Why?
Its purpose is to be a media playing front end for an in-car computer. In that situation, you already have a PC full of MP3s in your car. Why confuse the issue by adding an empeg to the mix, when you can already do everything you need to do from RoadRunner?
I mean, I'm sure the empeg is better at the job of indexing and playing MP3s than RoadRunner is, but at that point, just install an empeg instead of a car PC with RoadRunner.
Posted by: corrigun
Re: Empeg "Font End" - 03/04/2007 17:35
A couple of reasons for this...but 5 volts out is the big one. That is a serious pre-amp in the empeg and it sounds great. The other reason is that I want to hide the empeg and use the limited space in the dash for a touchscreen monitor.
What I would like to do is use the functionality of the empeg as a pre-amp/mp3 player and add the other features of video/nav/etc...and send the audio of the alternate sources through the aux in of the empeg which only provides ~1 volt. Control it all with a car PC and have all the audio funnel through the empeg. But at least I keep the 5 volts on the mp3 portion.
Does this all seem crazy?
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Empeg "Font End" - 03/04/2007 17:40
I'd think that the most reasonable way of doing this would be to use the webserver on the empeg to control it.
Posted by: corrigun
Re: Empeg "Font End" - 03/04/2007 17:40
The other reason that I just thought of is that then I can get a remote display for the empeg as well.
Posted by: tfabris
Re: Empeg "Font End" - 03/04/2007 18:21
I see what you're saying, Corrigun. That's valid, although with the complexity of your installation, it's gonna be groundloop hell for sure. Keeping either the empeg or the carputer out of that equation would simplify all the power and audio routing and reduce chances for that kind of problem. But hey, if that's what you wanna do, more power to ya.
How to do it: Well, I don't see anything on the roadrunner page that tells me it's designed to be extensible or that you're supposed to be able to add third party player applications.
HOWEVER... it does have its source code as a free download. You could very likely add your own empeg controller screen to the source code with very little effort. Like I said, what EmpegFace does is brain-dead simple: It polls a URL for the hijack screen image, and it sends urls to hijack for button presses. That's it.
If you're willing to dig into the Roadrunner source code, this BBS can help you with the exact URLs you need to get the job done. Let us know if you're going to go that far.
Posted by: corrigun
Re: Empeg "Font End" - 03/04/2007 18:30
Ground loops are no issue for me as I am celebrating my 20th year in the audio industry and troubleshooting these types of problems is old hat now. I just think this could be the type of thing I am looking for at this point. Thanks for the info. Anyone interested in treking this path?
Posted by: JBjorgen
Re: Empeg "Font End" - 03/04/2007 18:47
I'd be more interested in writing a digitalMod for
StreetDeck, since I already own it. I might be bothered to do that at some point. I've already written one digitalMod that initializes my ancient Delorme TripMate so it can be used as the GPS and that wasn't too difficult.
Posted by: mlord
Re: Empeg "Font End" - 04/04/2007 00:13
Dead easy. As everyone else is pointing out, the Hijack kernel adds HTTP controls to the player, so anything talking to it over TCP/IP (ethernet) can control it, and can retrieve a front panel display image from it.
Also, the serial port has various player commands to do stuff.
Cheers
Posted by: tfabris
Re: Empeg "Font End" - 04/04/2007 04:40
Quote:
Ground loops are no issue for me as I am celebrating my 20th year in the audio industry and troubleshooting these types of problems is old hat now.
Ah. No worries, then.
Quote:
I just think this could be the type of thing I am looking for at this point.
Only if you can program in whatever language RoadRunner is written in. Don't count on someone else doing it for you. The people on this BBS are frequently miracle workers (Mlord especially), but the problem is you can't *depend* on miracles.
When I said it was brain-dead easy to program a control interface for the empeg, what I meant was that the actual concept of it, and the commands you send to the empeg, are simple. However, you do need to know some basics, such as how to send HTTP commands and how to receive files from an HTTP server. These things sound simple, but depending on your programming language, might contain some tricky gotchas if you've never done it before. Also, I don't know what the application framework for RoadRunner looks like, for all I know it could be deeply convoluted and very tricky to insert your own code. You won't know until you look.
Posted by: corrigun
Re: Empeg "Font End" - 04/04/2007 13:19
Roadrunner was just an example of a front end I was asking about there are tons of them out there like Streetdeck, digital dash, etc...As for programming, I am totally incompetent with writing code other than web stuff so there is nothing I can really do there. More than anything it was food for thought and maybe someone who is looking for a new "project" might take it on and add a different spin on controlling the empeg.
Posted by: drakino
Re: Empeg "Font End" - 05/04/2007 16:36
I am contemplating a CarPC install of some sort for my Mustang, but haven't really settled on the specifics yet. If I find a solution that allows the empeg to be added easily, I'll let you know. Currently eyeing a Mac Mini as the PC, so I can have the choice of Windows or OS X based solutions. With Cocoa and Webkit on OS X, an empeg front end would probably be a few lines of code.
Posted by: dcosta
Re: Empeg "Font End" - 05/06/2007 12:24
>> it's gonna be groundloop hell for sure.
couldn't you stream the audio over http and eliminate ground loop noise from RCA out on empeg?
or do you suspect noise over cat 5?
Posted by: tfabris
Re: Empeg "Font End" - 05/06/2007 15:14
Quote:
couldn't you stream the audio over http
At that point he wouldn't need the empeg in the equation at all. As I recall, he wanted specifically to use the empeg's audio output stage, rather than have his computer doing the playback.
Posted by: K-tracid
Re: Empeg "Font End" - 07/06/2007 04:25
I would just like to record from the radio to the empeg hdd in the car. then you could uplode it to the PC and chop out the good bits and delete the adds?
IS THIS POSSABLE?
Posted by: Roger
Re: Empeg "Font End" - 07/06/2007 05:37
Quote:
IS THIS POSSABLE?
With the current software, no. With the current hardware, possibly, but you'll need to write some custom software.
Posted by: mlord
Re: Empeg "Font End" - 07/06/2007 14:03
Quote:
I would just like to record from the radio to the empeg hdd in the car. then you could uplode it to the PC and chop out the good bits and delete the adds?
IS THIS POSSABLE?
I want that, too. Someday, someday..
Posted by: tfabris
Re: Empeg "Font End" - 07/06/2007 15:58
Quote:
I would just like to record from the radio to the empeg hdd in the car. then you could uplode it to the PC and chop out the good bits and delete the adds?
I think one of the reasons no one has implemented this yet (aside from the limitations and difficulties already covered in the FAQ) is that there are other things available already which do this, and do it better than the empeg ever could.
For satellite radio, you can get Tivo-like portable players which will let you record hours of satellite radio and play it back in any way you want. For over-the-air radio, there are cheap tuner cards you can plug into your PC, which come with Tivo-like software to do all kinds of fancy scheduled recordings. Also, the car isn't a great platform from which to record over-the-air radio, what with the reception changing as you drive around.
Posted by: mlord
Re: Empeg "Font End" - 07/06/2007 19:47
Quote:
For satellite radio, you can get Tivo-like portable players which will let you record hours of satellite radio and play it back in any way you want. For over-the-air radio, there are cheap tuner cards you can plug into your PC, which come with Tivo-like software to do all kinds of fancy scheduled recordings. Also, the car isn't a great platform from which to record over-the-air radio, what with the reception changing as you drive around.
I want to record regular FM, on the empeg, as it is the device I have and it is capable of doing it. And not necessarily just in the car -- I use it more in my office than on the road anyway.
And recording from Aux-in is not likely to be any more effort than recording from FM, so if somebody hooks up an XM radio to the Aux-in, then great. And again, most XM radios are hardwired into automobiles, so that's where it's likely to happen.
Not difficult to do, I just haven't gotten round to it yet. And neither has anyone else here.
Cheers