I started iTunesTouch with the intention of creating a great free touchscreen product. My time has however not been available recently… mainly due to the arrival of my little girl (now 4 months old!).

I’ve had several requests for source code so other members of the community can keep the software going. I have now created a repository on Google Code. However, I’ve never used it.

If anyone wants to help with the coding, then please head over to http://code.google.com/p/itunestouch/

Reply to this post to let me know if you’re interested and I can add you as a developer. If anyone has any tips on how to use Google Code to get me started, that’d help a lot!!

There’s no code there yet – I need to head back home to get that. Hopefully I will upload it later this evening.

[Update 08 April 2011]
Finally got around to uploading the code. Take a look and let me know any problems etc.

• Cat5 network around the house
• Wireless available around the house
• NAS drive with music (UPNP enabled)

So – how to be in any room and listen to the music. I’ve looked at several options, but all require fairly significant investment. The response to all these is, “for the next house…”. So for this house, we need a temporary / cheapish solution.

Netgear MP101

I had one of these for a while and it worked nicely. It’s wireless, but way too slow for my liking and (as I remember) you had to have some media server running on a PC for it to work. Even when on the wired network it wasn’t terribly fast.

Browsing for artists and albums wasn’t great either. It was clunky and the response time from the remote was too slow.

So it was ebayed. Pretty sure I got a good price for it!

The current solution

I bought a few Veho wireless speakers. These are truly brilliant and are reasonably cheap (around £45 for a speaker with transmitter and £30 per speaker thereafter).

You plug the USB transmitter in to the PC/Mac you want to broadcast the music from (in my case it’s running my jukebox), then simply turn on as many speakers as you want. They connect and play the music. Each speaker has it’s own power source (rechargeable batter) and volume control.

The only downside is the actual quality of the sound. They are fine for background sound, but they have no life when turned right up, producing a rather tinny sound.

It got me thinking…. surely the internal parts can be ripped out and I can hook up to bigger speakers? The simple answer is YES. It does work. I wrote it up on my other site: http://www.touchscreenjukeboxes.co.uk/modified-veho-wireless-speakers

The future

I’d love to have speakers wired to the Cat5 sockets which can be controlled BY room. Ideally controlled by iPhone or iPad. I’d like click on a room then select which music I want to listen to in that room. I know there are solutions out there which do this…. I just need to save the cash!!

I bought a 15″ touch screen monitor from eBay… bit risky as there were no drivers with the screen. It turns out I had a nightmare getting the thing to work. Luckily the company who originally supplied the monitor had their phone number on the back, so a quick call to Dicoll Ltd and I now had the drivers. In the end I got it working, after taking the back off and changing the “emulation” mode….. or something!

I’ve set up the monitor with some awesome software called Album . It reads your MP3 collection and looks up album covers for each one. It also comes with a special “touchscreen mode” which is perfect!!

Here’s a shot of the whole PC… obviously this will be hidden when it gets properly installed!!

Future Plans
As I have X10 equipment – I want to run some home automation software from this PC too. Using the touch screen to control the house will be sweet! Watch this space for some updates!

Update: 11-08-06

I finally got around to putting all the computer bits in to an old case…. also played with the idea of using a cold cathode behind the monitor to add a nice touch…. not sure if it’ll be there for the “final” wall mounted version though… we’ll see! There is also a cold cathode inside the case which is sound activated – which could be cool – except the PC will be inside a cupboard!

Update 18-12-06

Thought I’d post a few updated pics of the jukebox. It’s now installed in the kitchen and running nicely! The next step is to get one of those mini pc cases, as the current one is rather too big for my cupboard!!

…make up your own mind!

edit: The lyrics are apparently

“The world needs wannabe’s
The world loves wannabe’s
So let’s get some more wannabe’s
And do that brand new thing”

marvellous.

*and this is no exception.

It’s for Comic Relief… so its all good…