Mobile Linux

About a month or so ago I read a little blurb in Wired Mag about this company, PhatNoise, who are working on an MP3 player that works with car stereo systems with CD changer controls. So I jumped on their site for more info. At the time it was only working on Kenwood systems, but they had a form where you can sign up to be notified if your model head unit was made compatible. So I signed up, and today I just got an invitation to try out their box on my Sony deck. Sweet!!!

This product is something I've been waiting for for the longest time. The current in-dash MP3 decks are nice, but it still requires me to carry around and juggle discs in my truck. I like to encode my MP3s at higher quality (LAME settings: -S -ms -c -v -b 128 -B 320 -V 1 for those interested) so I can only fit about 8 albums per disc. Which is good, but not good enough. I had wished that someone would make a CD changer that read MP3 discs, which would give me enough songs to play with.

Well the PhatNoise implementation is even better. It's a hard drive cartridge based system and the test unit I'll be using comes with a 6 Gig cart (the production versions will come with 20 Gigs, with 30 Gig carts on the way). The server, which goes in the trunk (if I had one), holds the cart and has the exact same connections a real CD changer would have. So it just plugs straight into the stereo.

To get the MP3s into the cart, you use their bundled music management software and USB cradle. With the software, you manage the MP3 playlists. What's cool is that each playlist corresponds to a "disc" in your "CD-changer." Now with Kenwood units, the PhatNoise box looks like a 99-disc CD changer with CDs that can hold up to 999 tracks. I'm curious to see how this will work on the Sony decks since the display counter for discs has a permanent "1" in the tens digit place, and therefore can only count up to 19 discs. So we'll see how it works. I suppose it will just roll over.

The coolest thing about it all? It's powered by Linux. =) I get to pick it up in their office tomorrow, which just happens to be around the corner from where I worked at OnAir. Small world. Hey, maybe they have job openings too...