The jukebox project aimed to renovate an old jukebox in my fraternity's basement. The jukebox, a Q160 originally manufactured in 1959, had been unused for decades. With the glass smashed in and components out of repair from over half a century in the basement, repairs were deemed too expensive and difficult. And so the gigantic paperweight has sat in our basement. I decided that we should take a different approach and try to renovate the jukebox myself, with a new digital design. I assessed the body, which was in surprisingly good condition, but in need of a cleaning, and began gathering parts.
After watching ebay for several weeks, I finally found the perfect touch screen for the jukebox. The ELO Touchsystems 17" sealed glass touch screen LCD monitor is light, stylish, has a durable sealed glass screen, and is chemical and spill proof. I was able to get it at an absolute steel. The cost, including shipping, was only $300, when the screen easily retails for over $750. It is in perfect condition, and appears brand new. I donated my own computer components to act as the heart of the jukebox. I also was able to find extremely inexpensive neon case lighting to use as an accent for a surprising $3 a piece.
Next, it was clear that some custom software was needed. We needed something that would be full-screen, thereby limiting users to only choosing music and not fooling around with the operating system. I spent about 24 hours of total time writing my own custom java program to operate the jukebox. It has a five song playlist, which keeps selected songs playing in the near future. It also restricts playing so that the same song cannot be played in the past thirty songs and so the same artist cannot be played twice in a row. It also has a special administrative panel, that is password protected, that allows skipping of songs, clearing of the playlist, and downloading of album artwork from Wallmart.com. Pictures of the software are available via the link below.
With the software completed, and all the components purchased, next came construction. I spent two weeks ripping apart and cleaning the body. All the old electronics were removed but saved for their historic value. I then had custom plexiglas made to replace the old broken front glass. The plexiglas is 1/4" and virtually indestructible. It was custom cut with holes for the touch screen and mounting brackets. I assembled and wired it all and tested it. Everything went perfectly. The night it was finished happened to be Matt's birthday, so we threw a celebration. The jukebox was a hit and at a total cost of only $400, less than a quarter the original price of the donated laptop that powers it, it is a valuable addition to the basement.
Jukebox and Software Pictures
Jukebox Statistics
The jukebox software was designed to run on Java JRE 1.5. There have been some odd GUI issues reported when using Java 1.6. Since the Jukebox has JRE 1.5, I haven't bothered investigating, but if you can figure out what is happening, let
me know.
Because of the themes used for the GUI, the software will only run in Windows. Though the theme can easily be modified in the source to allow it to run on any platform!
To use the software, launch the jar file and select the folder which contains all the music. The software allows you to download album artwork from Wallmart's website. To access this feature, and to exit the application, you must enter the administrative menu, accessible from the icon in the lower left-hand corner of the screen. The password is 1234. Otherwise, the software is very easy to use. ENJOY!
NEW to version 1.1.5: Lots of changes and fixes with this release. Here are the major ones:
- Album artwork is now stored together in the installation directory; thus preventing duplicate image files in each music folder.
- Fixed the bug where you were only able to download album artwork if a song was playing.
- Album artwork download window is now actually visible and gives a working progress bar to monitor the download.
- Recursive directory reading is now enabled. This means that when you select a folder of mp3s when the program opens, DPhiDJ searches for music in that folder AND all subfolders.
- Fixed JButton remnants bug where buttons were overlapping the administrative and password windows. To do this, however, I had to ENTIRELY change the window handling of the main window. The main window is no longer "full screen" and no longer changes the resolution to 1024x768. The main window still appears, however, full screen. That is, it is a 1024x768 window that is always on top. However, this means that, You must set your screen resolution to 1024x768 for the program to appear full screen. Sorry, I know its a sucky change, but it can easily be modified in the source and its the only way to fix button rendering. There is obviously a problem with the Java full screen renderer.
- NOW WORKS EXCLUSIVELY ON JAVA 1.6! Yes, it no longer works on JRE 1.5, because of some XML libraries I used and the change in screen rendering. You must have JRE 1.6 downlaoded.
- Artists are actually sorted now! I don't know how I overlooked that in the original release
- Increased the scroll bar width to 25px, which makes it easier to grab on the touchscreen, especially when motor skills are somewhat impaired.
- I wrote a logging class so that I can track jukebox statistics (most popular songs/artists). In the public release available on this page, however, that feature is disabled.
- DPhiDJ now reads the currently logged in user's iTunes XML file. It uses the data in the XML file to more accurately determine song information. For large numbers of songs, this makes the program laod faster and displays mroe accurate track information. If a song is not in the iTunes XML file, ID3 tags are used, as before.
- The word "The" is stripped off the front of any artist. It is a quick workaround to the problem of generation of multiple artists.
- The program icon is now distributed in the "dist" folder for use in creating shortcuts to the program.
NEW to version 1.1.7
- Fixed problem where undetectable song titles would cause interface to crash.
- DPhiDJ now comes packaged in an installer for Windows!
