Winamp Control With Serial Interface

winamp

Pasteler0 wanted to build an external control system for Winamp. Using the COM-port plugin he was able to wire up 4 control buttons directly to his serial port. The software also supports a 15 button mode. The switches are mounted in a clear plastic floppy disk box and connected to the computer serial port using CAT5. It’s a nice hardwired solution for control, but if you want just a simple remote, try WinLIRC.

[thanks geuis and ian]

20 thoughts on “Winamp Control With Serial Interface

  1. This is kind of like the way I use a winamp plugin that creates an HTTP interface to send winamp commands. It’s really nice. I use it with Misterhouse to start playing music automatically when I walk into my office using motion detectors.

  2. Very awesome. I just finished making a dedicated music playing computer, and I was wondering if there was an easier way to use buttons to controll it other than the keyboard. It only took me about an hour to make this, I installed it into an empty bay on the front of the case using the blank bezel. Very cool and streamlined. :D

  3. I’ve been using this same plug in for three years now at work. Threw together a 4 button controller out of parts I found in the computer scrap pile. Works great to contol the tunes even when the company mandated screensaver has popped up and you need to stop the music before answering the phone.

  4. You can also make a USB version of this with a PIC fairly easily. We enumerated ours as a game controller, but had to write host software to catch the game controller presses and convert them into winamp commands. That being said, the host software could turn them into any windows key presses so it had a lot more versatility. If you want source code (both assembly and python) you can check out our documentation here: http://students.olin.edu/2007/smcbride/bigknob/?page=home

    Also, with some tweaking, the USB version should work in linux as well – i think there’s a usb library in C that’s open source for linux that you could use to capture keypresses, but I haven’t tried for myself.

  5. well, i just made one of these from cat5, a connector salvaged from an old serial mouse adapter, and some microbuttons from a dead vcr, once i got it going, i realized there is a schematic for a 15 button version in the help tab of the config program. still very simple and uses diodes to make a matrix

  6. #10, I know that lirc can ‘learn’ transmitters so I’d assume that winlirc can.
    Anyone know of similar tutorials for parallel port, not serial? I only have one serial connector, and it’s part of a mouse (that I still use).

  7. I just control winamp with my samsung i730 and a plug in called browse amp http://www.browseamp.com that allows you to control winamp by web browsers. The chick totally did you being able to control the music from your phone not to mention you can really freak out your roomates when you aren’t home by cranking up the tunes remotely.

  8. Re: This is pretty cool, but the same thing could be done with the game port, and RMX

    http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?postid=1404330#1404330

    RM-X has supported this same 4-button interface for over a year now. I like hack-a-day posting things like this, however, its a little sad to see something that was done well over a year ago, and done multiple times before.

    i would much rather see new, unique, and innovative things posted here (such as a telnet interface into a Lua session for direct command execution which can be used to remotely administrate a computer over the internet to que up .torrent files for download on a headless server)

  9. Have anyone seen anything like this, but as a stand-alone application to control the PC? such as running executable files, opening shortcuts to websites, etc
    Any Open Source projects around? =D
    Or any ideas how this can be easily implemented?
    Tnx

  10. I have some question about using midi/gameport version. I have downloaded software called RMX for controlling winamp using joystick …… I calibrated it and wanted to use for volume control…… I have added this a functoin to axis Y, but it doesn´t work much good…… I wanted the higher volume….. so i moved with joystick up…….ewerything works, volume had gone up…….but then I moved with joystick down…..but volume didn´t go down but still up…… Isn´t this any bug in program ??

Leave a Reply

Please be kind and respectful to help make the comments section excellent. (Comment Policy)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.