MO display to control headless music PC
Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2004 3:27 pm
i'm new to these displays. I currently have an old PC set up by my stereo to stream music from my main PC. It's got no monitor hooked up to it. I was wondering if it would be possible to use one of your displays (in combination with some buttons and probably a scroll wheel) to control the computer. Here's what it needs to do:
- Display currently playing song with some information (Fairly easy, I assume)
- Display the winamp playlist and let me scroll through it (don't know if this is possible; if not, i'd at least want a button to clear the playlist)
- Browse through my music library and add music (either a song or album at a time) to the winamp playlist. My music is all accessible on a mounted network drive and organized by artist\album\songs, so i assume some kind of explorer plugin (i found one on plasticrandom.net) could do this, but i'm not sure.
- buttons to control general playback of winamp, also not hard, i assume
Is any or all of this possible? How much programming on my part would be required? I'm hoping to integrate the display and buttons into a small-ish enclosure connected to the PC via a serial/power/USB connection. For the buttons, would it be better to use the onboard keypad input on the display, or take apart a cheap USB keyboard and wire some buttons to that? Is there much advantage to getting a 4-line display instead of a 2-line display? Obviously it can show a bit more information at once, but I don't know if it's really necessary. If an iPod can accomplish all of this with five buttons and a scroll wheel, I assume i should be able to do the same with one of these.
Another question. What is the difference between the various character LCD displays you offer? I see some that are the same color, same number of characters, same interface, and yet they're different prices? did i miss some difference between them? also, there's a page on the site that estimates shipping to be $21 to the US. that seems a bit steep to me for a little display... is it actually that much?
Thanks for any help you can supply, right now this is my top choice for controlling my PC (if it can be done)
Edit: i found this plugin for adding songs to the winamp playlist... has anyone used it? does it work well?
- Display currently playing song with some information (Fairly easy, I assume)
- Display the winamp playlist and let me scroll through it (don't know if this is possible; if not, i'd at least want a button to clear the playlist)
- Browse through my music library and add music (either a song or album at a time) to the winamp playlist. My music is all accessible on a mounted network drive and organized by artist\album\songs, so i assume some kind of explorer plugin (i found one on plasticrandom.net) could do this, but i'm not sure.
- buttons to control general playback of winamp, also not hard, i assume
Is any or all of this possible? How much programming on my part would be required? I'm hoping to integrate the display and buttons into a small-ish enclosure connected to the PC via a serial/power/USB connection. For the buttons, would it be better to use the onboard keypad input on the display, or take apart a cheap USB keyboard and wire some buttons to that? Is there much advantage to getting a 4-line display instead of a 2-line display? Obviously it can show a bit more information at once, but I don't know if it's really necessary. If an iPod can accomplish all of this with five buttons and a scroll wheel, I assume i should be able to do the same with one of these.
Another question. What is the difference between the various character LCD displays you offer? I see some that are the same color, same number of characters, same interface, and yet they're different prices? did i miss some difference between them? also, there's a page on the site that estimates shipping to be $21 to the US. that seems a bit steep to me for a little display... is it actually that much?
Thanks for any help you can supply, right now this is my top choice for controlling my PC (if it can be done)
Edit: i found this plugin for adding songs to the winamp playlist... has anyone used it? does it work well?
