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.
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.
This is pretty cool, but the same thing could be done with the game port, and RMX
http://www.darkain.com/rmx/
In therory, you could have up to 4 buttons, plus 4 analog inputs, plus also use any other gamepad to further expand your controls
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
anyone have made tune table?
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.
winamp? people still use windows?
this doesn’t even come close to the laser/xmms combo.
Anyone know of a way to use this in linux?
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.
yeah ive been using this for ages, its great, i have one at my comptuer, on at my bed, one at my door and one in my shed. its really convinient
Hmm..about that winlirc; do you have to build their transmitter, or can the software easily be “trained” to any IR emitter?
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
#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).
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.
It looks OK, but you can’t beat the one i made a while ago for styling!
http://www.andybateman.co.uk/storage/mp3remote.jpg
Pretty cool, I’ve just done it and housed in a nice case with metal finish. Very simple, but it works! http://img454.imageshack.us/my.php?image=251120050030yn.jpg
dusch, well done man!!!
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)
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
i am making a 15 button one i got all the parts from http://www.maplin.co.uk and i built it into a small metal tin, any idias how to use the buttons like arrow keys or hotkeys?
matthewbratt1879@aol.com
matthew.
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 ??