Browsebox

April 6, 2007
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    I’m interested in checking out your code for Browsebox - I’m trying to do something similar with a Nokia 770 & flash instead of using the Touch/Nokia770 skin.

    Any help much appreciated!

    -Dan
    plymptonia@yahoo.com

    Dan Ricahrdson / 06/09/2007

    Hi Dan,

    I plan to post the code after it’s had a bit of a tidy up. I’ll post it up as soon as.

    Bren / 17/09/2007

    Brendan,
    Did you progress with the development of the Browsebox for the Chumby? Looks cool, almost like the iPhone/iTouch music interface :-)

    -Mark

    Mark / 27/03/2008

    Seems a lot of Chumby owners would really really want this on their device. How’s the development going? Any idea when the code is ready for release? Nice work!

    Hans / 31/03/2008

    Comment

    Slimdevices’s Squeezebox is a fabulous piece of kit that streams your music collection to your stereo system over your wireless (or wired) network. You can browse your entire music collection using the supplied remote and a very intuitive text based interface. But what about navigating the Squeezebox using album covers, so you can choose music in a visual way rather than just looking through text lists? What we need is a touch screen device that could run Flash that could then interface with Slimserver - the server that drives the Squeezebox.

    As luck would have it Shawn Pucknell from FITC saw to it that some of the speakers at the forthcoming Toronto design festival got their hands on a Chumby - a lovely little device that runs Flash widgets - and it’s touch screen too.

    So after a bit of time finding out how to create a a Flash movie that can control the Squeezebox, I ended up with a prototype of what I’m calling Browsebox - a visual album browser for Squeezebox. Turn up your volume as the sound on the video is dodgy!

    The idea is that it’s very easy to use - touch an album and it begins to play. Touch it again and it skips to the next track. Touch another album and that starts to play instead. Use the arrows to navigate through the albums.

    It’s very simple at the moment. No fancy animation mainly due to the CPU power of the Chumby. You’ll also notice that the odd black space appears. This is due to Flash 7 (which is what Chumby runs) inability to display progressive jpegs - so I need to replace some of those images.

    This is just a very early alpha version of the idea and hopefully I’ll get some time to develop it further, make the interface a bit better and iron out any bugs. It’s just nice to be able to view your music collection visually.

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