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Mark's RioCar Empeg 'CandyBox'

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Meet Mark's Music System

This is a wepage for my mp3 player, "CandyBox".  Candy as in "ear candy and eye candy", and box because it really is no bigger than a candybox of chocolates.  Pretty remarkable considering the sound experience that comes out of it.  Packed with an Intel 220mghz StrongArm Risc Processor, a 10gig harddrive, ethernet and USB port, and 2500 mp3 songs to date!

If you think this is totally insane, to make a webpage for a person's stereo system, then you are right!  However, Candybox is so damn kewl it deserves at least a page with some pictures on it.  Its really doesn't do it justice, until you see the visuals on it in person and listen to the music.  You hit the "next" button on it and you have no idea what song you are going to get next, from trance, techno, classic rock, industrial, dance, classic rock, hard rock, punk, folk, elevator music, classical, movie soundtracks, comedy, soundbites, southpark, to gregorian chants! 

CandyBox is a RioCar made by SonicBlue, serial number 40103686,at the moment undoubtedly the top of the line by a wide margin of all car music systems.   The RioCar is the commercial version of the EMPEG hacker project to build a linux mp3 player that would fit in a car dash to replace a car radio.
 
 

Mark Buys a RioCar

When I first saw this, I knew I wanted it, but the price was fairly outrageous.  But .Zebra is the ultimate gadget car, for a gadget guy.  And for the ultimate gadget car, I need the gadget for a sound system. Nothing less would do!  :-)

When SonicBlue decided it could no longer market such a high end device in a recession, and dropped the price on the RioCar, the decision was made for me, I had to snap one of the last ones up before they were gone forever, and join this l33t club of empeg owners.  I'm not per say a hardcore mp3 music guy, but...  this was such a kewl gadget... I had to have one.  Anyway, now there are only a few new ones left on Ebay and thier going for outrageous prices.

As far as I'm concerned, the RioCar's  utter hackability makes it not only the ultimate car mp3 player, but perhaps the ultimate music machine ever, and one hell of a potentially fun toy.  Not to mention the very kewl Vacuum Florescent Display.  And the time it saved me building an mp3 player out of computer parts. 
 

Firing it Up

The first order of the day was setting an IP address for the thing. Unfortunatly, the latest beta software I had already installed before it arrived didn't work, so I used a different computer and the CDROM install that came with the unit.   Piece of cake.  Probably the first time I've stooped to using DHCP around here.

Once I had a static IP set through the serial connection, I was ready to rock and roll across Ethernet.  My first mistake was attempting to transfer a gob of music from an XFS mounted Linux partition, through a Samba mounted windows file share, to the RioCar through my hub.  This cut my transfer rate in half or worse.

I then installed "emptool" right on the Linux box, and from a command line could transfer at 100% rate as fast as the RioCar harddrive could keep up.  Now I was jamming with power.

By that afternoon I had uploaded all of my music, most of which I have never had time enough to listen to, so its a very interesting experience to just put the unit on random play and see what comes up next. 
 

The RioCar Arrives FedEx - First Pictures

These are the first pictures I took and are kind of boring, because I had yet to figure out what to do with it yet or operate it, and had no music on it. 

my mark what a big box you have

SonicBlue shipped it in an greatly oversized box that was four times as big as it needed to be.   I'm sure I was the last to get one the the 10gig units as I ordered mine irregardless of whether their online store said "out of stock" and took my chances. 
 

very well packed

Inside was a smaller box, which contained the actually RioCar, very professionally organized and packed.  Impressive.  Where's my EMPEG stickers!
 

first breath out of the box...

First picture...   sweet... those edges on the mounting bracket looking razor sharp tho...
 

she's alive, captain!

It took me an unusually long time to find the power supply in the box, as they had it hidden in a white cardboard box inside the styrofoam packing.  After cursing for quite a bit I found it and fired it up for this shot.
 

empeg serial number

Check out the NIC Mac Address!  No music on it yet, nor an amplifier or speakers attached, so all I could do was check the serial number on it -- 40103686... 

Later I would register on the RioCar registrery and find I was the only registered owner of a RioCar in Georgia.  Nearest other owners was someone in Clemson, SC, and several owners in Knoxville, TN.
 

empeg and cat

Tanya's Cat, getting in the way.  He better better keep his paws off my EMPEG!

These pictures don't show the incredibly kewl visuals you can get on the RioCar...  perhaps I'll put some of those up later...

As soon as I took these pictures, I rushed the unit back to my house where I jacked it into my hub and a serial connection to Revolution and began filling it with music.   That I was able to go from opening the box to being live so fast with this unit is a tribute to the psycho hacker engineering that went into the design and packaging of the RioCar.  It was so well done even, I'm more than willing to overlook its sweet sexy commerical exterior knowing that inside beats the heart of a true grassroots hacker hobbiest project success.  IMHO, more of an open source spirit success than Mozilla ever was.
 

My car runs Linux, has an Ethernet Jack, and an IP address

I've now upgraded the softwa to beta 2.0beta7 which doubles the amount of visuals, and installed "hijack" on it which adds an ftp daemon, a webserver, access to the temperature sensor and a screen blanker, many other weird features, and a 'breakout game'.

I've also uploaded some critical windows installs onto the harddrive, in case I'm ever out in the field and want to trade mp3s with a friend, all I have to do is yank out CandyBox, plug it into their computer with a crossover cable or USB, ftp into Candybox and download the Rio Software (oh hell, lets show them Opera and maybe GTA2 and Quake3 as well ;-))  and we're rocking and rolling.  I think its kewler than my Compaq multimedia laptop even!

You can control the unit from the computer actually, although I usually do it with the IR remote control more often than not.
 

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empeg.peachcountry.com

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