Finally, some news from softwareland. A couple of weeks ago, I made an interesting discovery: MPD. Some people might already know it as it is widely used as a remote jukebox on some old hardware with a bunch of speakers attached to it. I was discussing this piece of software with a friend when suddenly it struck me: this is perfect for nMedia!

OK, I'm posting this in my blog, not tied to the project, since most of this is off topic as far as the project is concerned. I'm just doing this update to emm... well... ironically, explain the lack of updates. Because seriously, quite some time has gone by since our last one. Some people might say the project is dead in the water. Usually I'd be the first to agree; my life is filled with projects which I optimistically started, yet never seem to finish. However, upon closer inspection, this project might not be as dead as it appears... Read on... ;)

Well, it's been a slow couple of months lately. With the car in Spain for two and a half months (lent it to my father so he wouldn't have to take the company car abroad) there was little point in continuing on the hardware side of the deal, and without a decent Linux desktop to act as a development machine there was little chance of getting anything done on the software side either. Oh, don't get me wrong; my main desktop is Linux alright, but coding a GUI application on a 1024x768 laptop just doesn't feel comfortable. Call me spoiled.

My Lilliput 619GL-70TV/C/T arrived yesterday. It is a 7" model, with touchscreen, perfect for our project. And a very important part too, as it will be one of the only parts that will always be visible.

The last of the critical parts to this project (the mainboard and the RAM) have arrived two days ago. Today I finally got around to post something about it. I'd probably would've gotten them sooner but there was a problem with delivery which caused a small delay.

OK, on to the hardware... If you've never seen an epia board in person, it's hard to appreciate just how small they really are. I knew it was small, I seen the pictures, I cut out a 17x17cm cardboard square to check for clearance, but when it arrived I was still surprised at how small the whole thing was. Pictures don't do it justice; you gotta hold one in your hand to realize how well put together this thing is.

Bought two more parts over the last couple of weeks: a 2.5" laptop hard drive and a 3.5" to 2.5" hard drive adapter, though I already lent the hard drive to a friend whose laptop broke down. The only parts I'm still missing now are the mainboard, the PSU, the touchscreen and a custom case. The touchscreen and case are not necessary, and I can make due with a normal ATX power supply for now and just attach the mainboard to my KVM for i/o, so I'll probably get started on the software as soon as I get the mainboard I ordered today. It will be fun to see yet another media project PC start out as a bunch of hardware lying loose on my desk...

A friend of my uncle who works in a Ford garage was so kind to set me up with the first part for this project: a broken Ford radio/CD head unit. Now I couldn't care less what functionality the radio has nor what it looks like, I just needed a double DIN radio frame to stuff the computerparts into.

This is what the fully assembled unit looks like: