jeffkaplan.net » Jukebox

Touchups

Jeff — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 16:52:37 +0000

Its been a few weeks since I’ve posted about the Jukebox. Right now I’d say its 90% done. The hardware and software are running perfectly. The cover around the monitor was painted yesterday and put into place today, just needs to be screwed in. I decided to not paint the rest of the cabinet. The STERN on the sides gives the box an old look, something I’d like to keep. We still need to work on the plexiglass at the top. Not sure what to write up there and how to write it. Pictures can be viewed here.

Nordbeat is working on a new version of the jukebox software, right now its in RC2. I’m going to wait a while before upgrading the software. It works fine now and I really don’t want to chance screwing up the database. There are almost 1100 albums and 16000 songs in there and it took a while to get everything working just right. The database is about 25 megs, awesome.

The Hook-Up

Jeff — Sun, 02 Oct 2005 17:22:43 +0000

A few weekends ago I got the monitor and hooked it up to the computer. The jukebox is now functioning, at least computer wise. The cabinet hasn’t seen much work but its nice to actually be able to use the jukebox. Its fully loaded with almost 1,000 albums and runs decent. There is some lag when, well doing anything. Just some graphics lag, the audio works fine. Hopefully this month will see the mounting of the monitor and computer. New pic here.

Tool time

Jeff — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 00:29:46 +0000

Today I took a screwdriver to the cabinet. Removed the brackets that held the controler panel down and removed the coin mechanism. There must have been 50 screws holding that all together. That was easy stuff. The fun stuff involved electricity. The fluorescent light at the top now works. I spliced the cable with some old electrical cord I had. Looks like the monitor is coming this Friday. From there I can make the measurements for the faceplate and the monitor mounting. Hopefully there will be room enough in the bottom for an amp and some speakers. We’ll see. Pictures can be found here.

The Jukebox

Jeff — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 00:04:28 +0000

I am falling way behind in documenting the Jukebox project. By the way, I’m building a Jukebox.

The idea for and design of the jukebox were found in the same place. The Rock Bottom Brewery in Chicago. Although I had used “internet” jukeboxes in the past the inspiration didn’t hit me until that night. Half the songs we wanted to play weren’t on the machine and needed to be downloaded at a cost of twice the normal price. That’s BS I thought, I can do it better. Did I mention we were in a brewery? Anyway, beer plus getting ripped off added up to inspiration. Mmm beer, inspiring young minds since 1164. Onto construction.

I set Google on the hunt for jukebox designs and MAME cabinets. The results were promising, what I waned to do had been done before. The shell would be an old video game cabinet, purchased off of Craigs List from Steve in Long Island. (Thanks for helping tie the trunk closed Steve) The guts consisted of a 6 year old Pentium 3 and a touch screen monitor. I just purchased the monitor off of touchwindow.com. And whats hardware without software, the jukebox program is called NordBeat. From what I can tell a German guy makes it. The software is the closets thing I could find to a real bar jukebox.

As of now the cabinet, computer and software are in the house. The monitor was bought over the weekend. I opted for the cheapest shipping available, so it should be here sometime before x-mas. The software, as far as I can tell without the monitor, is configured. There are over 900 albums in there, each had to be tagged with the correct artist, album title and album cover. This place ain’t called Groan of Tedium for nothing. I’ll post again on this subject next time there is a change with the project. Photos can be found here.