Bratwurst's Juke Box

[Quads]

Post the thread we +rep you....
Don't post the thread..... yeah.... this could be bad.

Batter up!

Sneak Peek!
http://www.eyman.net/gallery/albums/Jukebox-Project/Alive_juke.jpg

[Richard Cranium]

I was going to start a thread once I had it up on the wall.

I was going to put up some speakers on mounts and then wall mount it. Maybe this weekend. I've got a marquee in place now as well.

I'll throw some pics up later today if I get some time.

[Richard Cranium]

Reprinted from the old forum, with some minor edits (and some fixed capitilization):

http://www.eyman.net/gallery/albums/Jukebox-Project/Alive_juke.jpg

This jukebox is a cabinet made out of 3/4" oak plywood with a kiosk look. It has a 15" LCD and some arcade style pushbuttons to select the songs. The design is to hang up on a wall, but i haven't installed it yet. It has an old ass Pentium 4 computer inside running Windows 2000 and as of right now about 170+ complete albums. The jukebox software is called "SK Jukebox" and is pretty full featured for a free program. The guy who wrote it stopped updating the software, but the program as is works well.

My basic idea behind this was to put something together so people could pick and choose music to listen to while playing cards at my place. I also wanted to get my feet wet with interfacing arcade controls with a PC before building a MAME cabinet, which is next on my list (now started). I saw a few designs I liked over at a different site and modified them into my own design.

I've been working on this thing for over a year now, although to be honest I'd work for a day on it, then let it sit in the basement for a while before I got back to it or figured out what the next step was. There is probably about 50 hours work here, between research, design, software install, electronics install/solder, button configuration, woodworking and finishing, etc.

The whole thing was a huge learning experience. a) I've never done a bunch of the woodworking steps I took, for instance, installing european style hinges or cutting dado's (big thanks to a friend of mine with a table saw who helped out with a lot of the woodworking). b) I haven't soldered anything since 8th grade. c) I'm lazy.

Eventually, I'm hoping to get this thing mounted on the wall. There is a french cleat on the backside to make that easy, but now that everything is mounted inside the thing is heavy as hell and i'm a little nervous about hanging it up.

The one big thing i have left to do is install the marquee (now installed, but no pictures yet).

Marquee banner image:
http://www.eyman.net/gallery/albums/Jukebox-Project/JukeboxMarquee.jpg

Control panel closeup:
http://www.eyman.net/gallery/albums/Jukebox-Project/triangles_lit.jpg

Wiring of control panel:
http://www.eyman.net/gallery/albums/Jukebox-Project/solder_finished.jpg

Inside components:
http://www.eyman.net/gallery/albums/Jukebox-Project/Internal_wiring_small.sized.jpg

Video of the juke in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrXiIznjYBI

Lessons learned:

a) When using a jig to cut holes for a hinge, make sure the jig is tightly affixed to the peice to be drilled, or you'll end up with either a really crooked cabinet door or a useless 35mm hole in your finished piece.

b) Don't forget to calculate for everything inside a cabinet door. I didn't - and had to cut the inside of my cabinet door to accomodate the nuts that held the buttons to the control panel. Without the cut at the top, the door would stick out about 1/8". Both of these errors made the inside of my cabinet door ugly as shit, but since it should always be closed to the end user, its not that big of a deal. I chalked it up to newbie mistakes.

c) Have a plan built into the design to accomodate the marquee before you start cutting the wood.

d) Plan for venting heat somehow. I may have to install a fan or two up top later down the road. Temp is something I will have to monitor.

e) Always test the stain color before putting it on the peice, or you'll end up with something that doesn't look anything like the display at the store and you'll be really pissed off.

f) The old cliche, measure twice cut once. Notice how you can see the bottom of the monitor and the Dell logo? You're not supposed to. Please imagine its not there. You can't buy this thing in the Dell catalog.

[Quads]

Awesome project!
Estimated total cost and hours to build?

[Bixby]

That is very impressive. I would like to tackle something down the road. I have recently converted 1100 of my CDs to MP3 Format. I need to clean up the MP3 Tags a bit then I could totally see doing something like this. Very inspirational. Thanks.

[Richard Cranium]

UGH... don't have a running cost sheet so let me estimate and edit this post occasionally if I think of things. The cost really wasn't that bad, but I did end up buying some tools and stuff, which can get expensive obviously. That has value for future projects though... Lots of stuff was on hand so that saved some cash.

Sheet of 3/4 oak ply, $40
Used 15" LCD, I can't remember but either $25 or $50. I want to say $25.
Old crappy computer, free from the junk pile at work.
USB 802.11b wireless adapter, free (had it on hand)
Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 speakers, $125 - $150 regularly, I got for free from Dell (now busted though, will follow up in a different post if I'm successful fixing)
IPAC2 Keyboard encoder, $39 + $12 shipping DHL from GB
14x Happ horizontal microswitch pushbuttons, $1.25 each
2x Happ triangle lighted buttons, $8 each (ordering direct from Happ near impossible in low quantities, or if possible they RAPE you on shipping, order from a reseller or via one of the power sellers on ebay)
2x Replacement LEDs for the bulbs in the triangle buttons, $ ?Can't remeber off top of my head?
Replacement power supply for computer, free from junk pile at work (old one was loud as fuck, which of course sucks for audio applications)
Power strip, $5
Flourescent light for marquee, $10
Marquee printing, free, have a plotter at work
Lexan/Plexiglass for Marquee, $10
Wiring, solder, etc
Various other materials costs: screws, stain, poly, sandpaper, plastic risers for motherboard, etc
Couple bottles of Jack Daniels as a thank you to a guy who helped make some cuts with a table saw, $40-$50

When I first posted this up at the other place I had about 50 hours into it, that included research, design, finding and ordering supplies, woodworking, finishing, computer setup, wiring and configuration of controls, CD ripping, etc.

Since then, I've probably spent a couple minutes here and there getting the marquee installed, but not much else.

I used this thing in my basement pretty much everytime I went down there to work on my flood disaster, and when refinishing a bed my son uses now. So it has gotten a good amount of use, even if not the way I hoped it would be used during poker games downstairs. I haven't had a game since I built it at my place.

[pond007]

How does the SK Jukebox program work for finding your .mp3's and cataloging? I've been playing with some freeware Jukebox software and haven't found one I love. I've got tons of songs but need to redo some of the tags as they aren't labels other than track 1,2,3 so on etc. I'll see if I can find the program and do some research on it. Thanks for posting and it looks great.

[Richard Cranium]

How does the SK Jukebox program work for finding your .mp3's and cataloging? I've been playing with some freeware Jukebox software and haven't found one I love. I've got tons of songs but need to redo some of the tags as they aren't labels other than track 1,2,3 so on etc. I'll see if I can find the program and do some research on it. Thanks for posting and it looks great.

You point the software to a central folder where you place all your media underneath and it scans it. You do have to do some proper organizational work here, and this did take some time on my part. With proper planning, a lot of this can be done easily and without a lot of work/time needed. Just start throwing stuff together though from different sources without any structure, and its going to be a bigger pain in the butt than waking up next to swanky.

SK Jukebox works in a tree structure, so you have the central music folder, for example:

c:\music

and then a folder named with the artist

c:\music\Pavement\

and then album(s) in sub folders

c:\music\Pavement\Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
c:\music\Pavement\Slanted and Enchanted

Then you have to name your tracks properly. So inside the album's folder

01 - Silence Kid.mp3
02 - Elevate Me Later.mp3
03 - Stop Breathin'.mp3
04 - Cut Your Hair.mp3
05 - Newark Wilder.mp3
06 - Unfair.mp3
07 - Gold Soundz.mp3
08 - 5-4=Unity.mp3
09 - Range Life.mp3
10 - Heaven Is A Truck.mp3
11 - Hit The Plane Down.mp3
12 - Fillmore Jive.mp3

*Couple notes on track listings -

The hyphen can be added by SKJuke. If you want this or not, just make sure its uniform or it will look silly on the screen.
Use two digits for the track numbers, or 10, 11, 12 etc might appear out of order.


Here's how you make this easy if you have a ton of stuff on CD already:

Use a ripping program that allows you to customize how the output is named and organized. You can also use a high encoding rate and get a better quality of output, I used either 256 or 192. I used Windows Media Player to do all the work, which some people might hate on but it did everything I needed without any hassle. I set it to automatically name the folders the way I wanted, it auto did the tracks and put the track number in front, with a hyphen, then the name of the track. Music I obtained via torrent or otherwise I usually had to clean a bit manually.

Other biggie - SK Jukebox uses a picture inside the folder, either one you add yourself, or the one windows automatically places there, as album art. There were a lot of pictures that I either needed to find manually or wanted to replace with better quality images. I found a really cool program to do this, but the download site is no longer available. I still have the exe on my juke though, I can host it for people if necessary. You can also go to amazon.com or cduniverse or just use google images to find album covers, or this search engine: http://albumart.org/

[chuckerin]

Have you thought about adding a different sound card to the mobo? I got a HTPC with a TOSlink (fiber optic) connection and the difference in sound quality is night and day. It's not an expensive upgrade. I think the cheapest sound card w/a TOSlink connection I've found is the Turtle Beach going for around $30.

[Richard Cranium]

A sound card is probably an upgrade I'll do at some point. First I have to get my speakers working again and build some shelves for the corners of the room.

[Richard Cranium]

Here's the jukebox on the wall - I just mounted it.

http://www.eyman.net/images/jukebox/jukeOnWall_sm.jpg

I need to run power to it next. I'll probably get some of that plastic raceway and paint to match wall. When I get power done I'll post a pic of it turned on and the marquee light lit.

Next up, speaker shelves in the corners of the room.

[Richard Cranium]

Speaker brackets from Klipsch were ordered from manufacturer online and should be here Friday. I'm using set of Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 computer speakers.

The speakers are fantastic in sound for computer speakers, but they are somewhat fragile and have a problem with the DIN connector going bad if it is jostled or mishandled in the slightest. My set developed this problem, and I found a solution online (http://forums.klipsch.com/forums/t/95921.aspx) of cutting the end off a keyboard extension cable and using it to replace the DIN cable end of the speakers. So after a bit of splicing and soldering the 6 lines on the inside of the cables, wrapping with some electrical tape, the speakers were good as new again.

<this space reserved for a photo of the spliced cable>

I also made my own longer cables for the speakers using this tutorial:
http://www.soundwise.org/mods/cablemod/cablemod2.htm

Here's a picture of the Juke on the wall, turned on, and with the Marquee lit:
http://www.eyman.net/images/jukebox/jukelit.jpg

Edit - Since this photo I've installed raceway to hide cables and mounted the speakers on the wall.

[Quads]

Still one of my fav. threads.

[Richard Cranium]

I bought a 15" touchscreen LCD on ebay yesterday for $40. That's a steal! I'm going to try and get it working with the juke and replace the current screen. Will post updates as this progresses.

[T]

I don't know how I missed this over a year ago.

That thing is all sorts of awesome!

T

[Quads]

This is still my fav. thread.

[1LuckySOB]

did you get the touch to work?

[Richard Cranium]

Yes I got the touchscreen to work - but it was a real pain.

I had Windows 2000 on the jukebox because the specs on the equipment wasn't that great. I wasn't ever planning on hooking the thing to the Internet so I wasn't really worried about security updates or anything like that. But the drivers for Windows 2000 weren't easy to find for the touchscreen, and the thing kept giving me blue screens and other issues.

So I decided to up the RAM on the internal computer and I updated to Windows XP. Installed the proper drivers and bam - the Touchscreen works really well. The whole machine is quicker from the added RAM, so it that was an added bonus.

The original idea for the juke was to get my feet wet interfacing the buttons with a computer, so that was why I didn't use a touchscreen from the start. So I felt I gained the knowledge and experience I needed the way I went. If I had to start over from scratch building a jukebox, now I'd go touchscreen, but still with a few buttons. I like the triangle buttons still for moving between albums. Sometimes I still enter songs by the number too.

The touchscreen dimensions are slightly different than the old monitor, so I do need to build a new bezel.

Edit to add -

Where I put the MAME cab in the room the Jukebox probably should be moved as well. I promised the wife a new couch in the basement, and we're going to buy an L shaped couch, so everything will probably get moved around anyway soon.

[Richard Cranium]

So quite some time ago I replaced the screen on my juke with a touchscreen, as discussed above. The new screen didn't work with the old bezel. So I have been using it without any bezel, just the screen with the innards and wires exposed, and no marquee.

http://www.santapoco.com/images/juketouch.jpg

I cut out some lexan to fit the new screen. I wanted to paint it black on the backside of the plastic to hide the inside of the juke and also allow me to use a light-up marquee.

So I cut the lexan, and although the cuts aren't great, they're going to work. I taped off the area where the marquee will go.
http://www.santapoco.com/images/plastic1.jpg

Grabbed some plastic spray paint...

And bam, I did a terrible job and got this in a couple spots.
http://www.santapoco.com/images/plastic3.jpg

So I sanded it smooth in those areas and am trying again. What causes that? Did I overspray in that area?

[Redneck Rebel]

In my experience that's caused by applying too much spray from too close a distance.

EDIT: Thx for reviving the thread. I've never seen it before and that build is pure win in my book.

[Richard Cranium]

I have the black plexi installed around the touch screen now and I moved the jukebox to a different wall next to the arcade.

Here's a pic I took a couple weeks ago but hadn't gotten around to uploading. If I get some free time this afternoon I'll try to get a video uploaded of the touchscreen in action.

http://www.santapoco.com/images/arcade/arcadeandjuke.jpg

***Bonus contest***
1st person to correctly identify the game in play on the arcade gets 1000 chips.

1st person to correctly identify the album displayed on the juke gets 1000 chips.

Be the first to identify both, before someone else has identified either individually, get a bonus of 1000 chips for a total win of 3000.

[ACE'S FULL]

Not sure on either album/game but what you have there is fuckin BAD ASS!! I will have to attempt this jukebox once the basement gets built at my place.

[Redneck Rebel]

Atari Hat Trick

[Richard Cranium]

Atari Hat Trick

Winner!

http://www.santapoco.com/images/arcade/hattrick.jpg


Damn that was quick. (that's what my wife said.)

Hat Trick is an extremely simple game, but its a blast to play. Back where I used to play games growing up it was one quarter for a 2 player game.

[Doctor_XXX]

Specials (by: The Specials) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specials_%28album%29)- 1979 ska goodness! :cool:

[Richard Cranium]

Specials (by: The Specials) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specials_%28album%29)- 1979 ska goodness! :cool:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi4MOA_1MYA

Winna winna ckicken dinna