• Registered: 2009-04-09
  • Posts: 5

Topic: Any hardware hackers have any suggestions?

About 7 years ago, I restored an AMI Rowe Black Magic jukebox.  Its mechanics were in such poor shape that I stood no chance of rebuilding them "nor did I have the expertise".  I ripped out all of the internals, put in all new speakers and amplifiers and put in the only computer I had laying around at the time.  An old Pentium 75 with 32 megs of ram and a scavenged 1 gigabyte drive.  It runs dos, mpxplay, and uses a keyboard that I hacked into the old numerical buttons so that you could select songs with them.  It's been in my den ever since serving up the same 200 songs "all that would display on the marquee" and I love it....

But...

It's time for an upgrade.  Just above the key pad is a clear piece of plastic that you put a sheet of paper behind that shows how much it costs per play.  The hole is aprox 5X7.  What I'm thinking about doing, it putting a chumby in that hole.  Taking advantage of it's touch screen and wifi capabilities to greatly extend the usefulness of the jukebox.  I've done a little measuring and I'm pretty sure it will fit.  The only things I'm concerned about are

Is it possible to plug a keyboard or otherwise interface my keypad into the chumby

Is the chumby powerful enough to run on it's own with this project (I assume that it is, all it has to do is play mp3s and serve up internet radio)

Lastly has anyone else tried anything similar to this?

Convincing my wife to spend the $200 bucks "I'm very broke" on something I intend to hack on isn't going to go over well especially if it won't work.  Any one have any experience with one that is similar.

  • Duane
  • Duane
  • Blue Octy
  • Offline
  • From: San Diego, CA
  • Registered: 2006-08-24
  • Posts: 8,197

Re: Any hardware hackers have any suggestions?

The chumby will accept a USB keyboard.

The chumby as it ships has a music player that can play MP3, Ogg Vorbis, AAC, WAV and FLAC, and can stream internet radio.  Nowadays, you'd replace that 1 GB hard drive with a multi-gig USB dongle, and the chumby is 350MHz compared to your old 75MHz Pentium, and has 64 MB RAM compared to your computer's 32MB.  It's running Linux, and it's easy to bring up a prompt either through the built-in TTL serial or over the network.

Several folks have repackaged chumbys - if you go to this blog, the "chumby on everything" entry has a video - toward the end is a hardware hack of a chumby repackaged into a Tivoli enclosure.

Can't help you on price except recommend doing some Google searches to see if you can find any running promo codes.

Duane's Website

  • Registered: 2009-04-09
  • Posts: 5

Re: Any hardware hackers have any suggestions?

Thanks for the reply!  I was reading in another post that the chumby will not automatically turn on if it is powered down?  I control the jukebox via a master power switch on the back, and it would need to automatically turn on when I threw that switch.  Has a way to do this been found?  Also I'm probably going to need a bit of custom software to make it work.  I think it's pretty easy to make apps for the chumby isn't it?

  • Duane
  • Duane
  • Blue Octy
  • Offline
  • From: San Diego, CA
  • Registered: 2006-08-24
  • Posts: 8,197

Re: Any hardware hackers have any suggestions?

The "2008" chumby (which are sold out) did not power back on automatically upon restoration of power, however, the "2009" chumby (which is what you'd get if you bought one on chumby.com today) does power up.

As far as custom applications, you can simply use Flash, or any of the various languages that are available.  A lightweight version of Perl is built in.

Duane's Website

  • Registered: 2009-04-09
  • Posts: 5

Re: Any hardware hackers have any suggestions?

Sounds like exactly what I'm looking for.  Also thanks for the blog link.

  • From: Oceanside, CA
  • Registered: 2008-04-17
  • Posts: 650

Re: Any hardware hackers have any suggestions?

Duane wrote:

The "2008" chumby (which are sold out) did not power back on automatically upon restoration of power, however, the "2009" chumby (which is what you'd get if you bought one on chumby.com today) does power up.

As far as custom applications, you can simply use Flash, or any of the various languages that are available.  A lightweight version of Perl is built in.

Is there any hack (hardware or software) to get this behavior on the so-called "2008" chumby?  I'm guessing you're referring to 1.7 ironforge hardware in both cases.  Is there a minor number after the 7 that determines these types of things?

Linux Guy - Occasional Chumby Hacker

Materdaddy's Website

  • Duane
  • Duane
  • Blue Octy
  • Offline
  • From: San Diego, CA
  • Registered: 2006-08-24
  • Posts: 8,197

Re: Any hardware hackers have any suggestions?

"2009" chumbys are 3.8 hardware.  It's a different motherboard - this isn't the only change.

It also supports brightness controls and a different display/touchscreen than the 3.7 hardware.  It also uses a different 802.11 dongle, but with the same chipset.

Duane's Website