A new generation of Minty?

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wee1337
 

A new generation of Minty?

Post by wee1337 »

I am currently working on a way to take the minty concept, an mp3 player inside a mints tin, and catch it up to current standards. My Project would require alot more money and pretty much rebuilding from scratch. Color Lcd and video are in the plans as well as built in USB drive and more memory. The hard part would be the firmware. The idea of using ipod firmware crossed my mind but that would require an lcd screen with the same specifications and a click wheel. I will get more details back later after i find out more.

ut20xx
 
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Joined: Wed Dec 28, 2005 1:03 am

Post by ut20xx »

Sounds like a good idea, but you must realize how hard it is to build such a player. I am currently also working on an iPod type player, possibly with video playback.

Here are some things to consider:
  • *It is difficult to find small (<3") LCDs capable of playing video (having 65k or more colors and a low response time).
    *You need a microntroller powerful enough to decode video (ARM9 or XScale).
    *Software audio and video decoding is very complex.
    *USB Mass Storage (USB Drive function) is complex if implemented in the firmware.
    *Gumstix are powerful enough for almost anything, and they run Linux, so they are the easiest to write code for. Just [beware of their high power usage (around 100ma or more)
    *Atmel makes a nice ARM9 microcontroller; the AT91RM9200. It also runs Linux, and is quite powerful. Fortunately it uses only about 30ma.
    *Cypress and a few other companies make IDE to USB bridges for easy USB Mass Storage without any frimware. The only one I've found to be availible in small quantities is the CY7C68310-80AXC from Arrow Electronics.
Also, you may want to get comfortable with C programming, specifically for ARM processors and maybe Linux, because unless you use ICs for audio and video decoding, you're going to need to use an ARM processor. Also, if you are using a hard drive consider that you will need at least 32Mb of buffering memory.

edit: I recently found a website that has some good open source encoders and decoders for many media media formats including MP3, AAC, JPEG and Real Media. They're even optimized for ARM processors: https://datatype.helixcommunity.org/

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