My first Freebox box - HTPC style

[kremmit]

Warning:  This is gonna be long.  I'm doing my part to use up all of the electrons on the internet.

So, for years now, on some other message boards I frequent, I've been reading posts from Barry and several of the other members here about this great software called "Freebox".  I never paid much attention, but a while back, I was eating dinner, and when it was done, this nice oriental lady brought me a funny looking cookie.  Inside the cookie, I found this:



Well, I'm not one to ignore it when fate jumps out of my dessert and tells me what time it is, no sir.  So, I got my bass out of the closet and started practicing for my new job as a rock star.  That didn't pan out, but a while later I did decide to check out this jukebox thing I keep hearing about.  So, I downloaded Barry's software, and then what I did was, I left the .rar file sitting on my desktop.. uninstalled.. for weeks. 

But then, I finally got off my butt and installed it.  I pulled a little test library consisting of 25 albums worth of AC/DC.. and then I put in 7 albums of "other" just so I could test the search and browse functions.  "Hey, this thing rocks!  I should build a juke or something."  A quick visit to these forums and I see a thread talking about cheap 19" touchscreens at pacificgeek.com, so naturally, I clicked through, looked at the screens and the incredibly low price, and then.. did nothing.

But then, a funny thing happened.  I kept thinking about those dirt-cheap touchscreens, and Freebox, and a few days later, I found myself checking pacificgeek again, with an itchy "buy" finger on my mouse.  Lo and behold, the price had been raised a good hundred bucks or more, and they were sold out to boot.  But I was hooked through the bag now, and I kept up with the touchscreen thread here until somebody mentioned some of the same screens cheap on ebay.  And I bought one.

When the screen arrived, I hooked it up and tested out Freebox, and hot-damn did it look good on that nice big screen.  Now, here's the part where I post a screenshot:



Yeah, you're seeing that right.  I didn't take a picture.  But, trust me, it looked good.  More fun with a touchscreen instead of a mouse, too.  I showed The Wife Character, and she got excited about the juke idea, wanted me to build it for the living room, asap.  She's not usually interested in my geek projects, so that was.. alarming.  Turned out, she didn't want me to put something really big in there, or something with a lot of flashy lights.  Woman, it's a damn jukebox, of course it's big and has flashy lights.  I don't want to build a fricking kiosk, it's not gonna sell movie tickets or show you how to find your way to terminal D.

So, I started scouring the net, looking for pictures of jukes that I liked, and for ones I though she could live with.  Among them, I came across eist1's HTPC Mediacenter Jukebox:


Now, recently The Wife Character had also been telling me how we needed to get a DVR.  I should build one or buy one or something.  I had already been thinking in the back of my mind that I ought to put a capture card and DVR software on the living room juke, so when I saw eist's project I immediately thought of this: 8" touchscreen I had sitting in the closet for a carPC project that was "on hold" (translation- I'm lazy and I never installed it):



When I showed eist's project to The Wife Character, I got an immediate yes vote.  Small, no flashy lights, kills two birds with one stone.  Plus, the space in the closet that previously belonged to that tiny, lo-res touchscreen now belongs to the much nicer, high-res 19 incher I bought.  Profit goes to: my parts closet.  I'm a big winner here!

Also in the closet, this old HP 7955:



I picked that up "broken" from a non-technical fellow for $50; it was working 100% except he had hosed his Windows install somehow.  I don't feel bad; I didn't know when I bought it what was wrong, only that installing a brand-new power supply hadn't fixed it.  He'd already gone out and bought a $2000 replacement system, and $50 was his asking price.  I figured "Hey, for $50, that'll be a nice addition to my parts closet!" 

I dug the touchscreen and the HP out of the closet and fired them up.  Aside from the fact that the HP sounded like a dentist's drill in a wind tunnel, everything was peachy, and Freebox looks pretty decent at 800x600 on that thing.  Now, here's the part where I post a screenshot:



Yeah, you're seeing that right.  I didn't take a picture.  But trust me, it looks pretty decent.  Nowhere near as nice as on the 19incher, but I'll survive.  However, my poor ears will not survive the racket that HP is kicking up.  Especially if this thing is to live in my living room, and play my music.  I found that there were three sources of really bad noise in there; the Maxtor harddrive was kicking up quite a squeal, the generic case fan sucked, and then there was this gawdawful CoolerMaster heatsink fan:



Lucky for me, the old parts closet came through again.  A nice quiet Seagate Barracuda I got from (actually, I dunno.. do you guys find that you just collect parts from "somewhere"?) replaced that Maxtor, which now has it's own special place in the parts closet.  The generic case fan is in the trashcan, and it's replacement is in the mail- stay tuned for pics, it'll be more interesting than you might think a new case fan would be.  Also in the parts closet, I just happened to have a brand new (original version) Scythe Katana CU heatsink.  This all-copper monster is one heavy bastard at 590 grams, but it ought to keep that old-school fire-hot P4 in check.

 

Pretty, ain't it?  I bought it to go in The Wife Character's computer, but it turned out that the mounting hardware forced it to lean the wrong way due to the orientation of the chip socket on her motherboard.  There's also a nice replacement PC case in the parts closet, one that wouldn't conflict with the heatsink when mounted in that orientation, but that's one of those projects I've never done.  I've got a lot of them in that closet...

Now, something you might have noticed about that HP computer, is that it bears a remarkable resemblance to this dog:



No way that ugly-ass thing is going in my living room looking like that.  I don't know if I can actually make it look any better, but I can hardly do worse, so I'm going to give it a try.  Besides, there's no place for the touchscreen on there.  And, I like my tin snips and my Dremel.



Oh, and I forgot the before shot:



Yeah, you're seeing that right.  I didn't take a picture.  But I imagine you've seen the inside of a PC case before anyway.  Basically, I gutted it down to an empty steel rectangle, because the everything inside is getting re-arranged except for the motherboard and PSU- those will retain their original mounting. 

Here's a pic of the newly re-designed case:



Yeah, you're seeing that right.  It's not done yet; that's as far as I've gotten.  And yeah, that's right; this whole long-ass post was nothing but a tease.  There's not one screenshot of Freebox actually running, not one pic of anything that looks like a jukebox or an HTPC (unless you count the ones of eist's project), not even a conceptual render or a dodgy pencil sketch on the back of a square of dirty-looking toilet paper.  The best part is, I spent so much time writing this post, I don't have any left to work on the actual project- so don't expect any updates tomorrow, because I haven't gotten anything done tonight. 

But I'm pumped.  I do have most of the rest of the design all worked out in my head, parts have been ordered, and I'm committed to actually finishing this project- it's not going back into the parts closet, I swear. 

I have to finish it, because I just happen to have this 19" touchscreen in my parts closet that would make a nice juke for my gameroom.  A nice big one, with lots of flashy lights...

[kizer]

Hahah, wife Character.

I had my music on a PC with a standard mouse/keyboard/monitor and my wife was less than impressed. As soon as it went touch screen in a box I cant keep her hands off of it.

You could always go cardboard as a well demo box for figuring things out. Heck I did for a few weeks and the wife instantly said that will do. Of course your scale is smaller and different, but it never hurts to think outside of the box.

[kremmit]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it'll have a cardboard front bezel for a while until I get the front panel laid out just right.  And until I figure out how to make one that doesn't look like crap. 

[draginit]

man, that was pretty good reading. haha. good humor with the pics n tricks....i'll be waiting for chapter 2...whats the title of the book gonna be?