ECE597 Project Network based OGG player

This project is part of the ECE597 32-bit Embedded Linux class at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, IN.

The goal of this project is to have the Beagleboard act as a network based mp3 player. The Beagle will be programmed using a custom, protocol for transferring files from a network based server (x86 pc) to a Beagle. Speakers will be attached to the Beagle, where the file will be played back. Possible extensions are a LCD for displaying id3 tag information, and buttons for user interaction (next track, previous track, etc.) on the GPIO interface.

Hardware
Parts

1 - C4 BeagleBoard

1 - .1” (100 thou) header

1 - LCD Display: NHD-C0216Ciz-FS-FBW-3V3

1 - Logic Level Shifter: BOB-08745

1 - 3.3 V Voltage Regulator: LT1086 CT

2 – 10uF Capacitors

3 – 1uF Capacitors

1 – 1kΩ Resistor

C4 Beagle Expansion

BeagleBoard datasheet (page 94):

In order to use the expansion header on the BeagleBoard, a .100'' header was soldered onto J3. The useful pins for this project are noted below.

Pin 1 – 1.8V

Pin 2 – 5V

Pin 23 - SDA

Pin 24 - SCL

Pin 27 – GND

Making I2C2 work on the BeagleBoard can be a bit tricky. Take a look at Interfacing_with_I2C_Devices for some tips.

LCD Display

LCD Datasheet

Complete Display Datasheet

Purchase

Pin 1 – RST

Pin 2 – SCL

Pin 3 – SDA

Pin 4 – Vss

Pin 5 – Vdd

Pin 6 – Vout

Pin 7 – C1+

Pin 8 – C1-

The 2 capacitors should have a value of 1 uF. The 2 pull-up resistors will not be necessary due to the pull-up resistors in the logic level shifters (see below). The slave address of the I2C interface protocol is 0x7c. Pin 1 will be tied high, pins 2 and 3 are the SCL, SDA pins respectively, and will therefore go through the logic level shifter below. Pin 4 will be tied to ground. Pin 5 will be tied to the 3.3V. Pin 6 will have a 1 uF capacitor tied to pin 5. Pin 7 will have a 1 uF capacitor tied to pin 8. Consult the datasheet for further information.

Logic Level Shifter

Schematic

The 1.8V supplied from the Beagle we be connected to the LV pin. The HV side will be powered with 3.3v from the voltage regulator

3.3V Voltage Regulator

Datasheet

Testing Description

Initially the level shifter and lcd display were tested using an arduino as we already had working I2C code for the AVR. Once the LCD initilization pattern and was functioning correctly the circuit was then rewired to accommodate the 1.8V of the BeagleBoard.

In the ECE597 lab kit, we were provided a USB->5V adapter for powering the beagle. However there appears to be an issue with newer kernels drawing too much power to actually run the beagle off of USB. The 5V pin on J3 was only outputting 3.9V. In order properly power the Beagle, a wall-wart needs to be used; which caused the 5V pin on J3 to be a steady 5.1v.

Additionally a 1uF capacitor was tied to the 1.8V supplied by the BeagleBoard expansion pin 1 to ensure that in peak power demand, the pin level shifter would have a more reliable power supply. With everything in place the code and circuit were tested. However it was observed that there was not consistent data transmission between the beagle and the LCD. The I2C bus would sometimes report Remote I/O errors. The the i2c level shifter was tested at the new voltage on an oscilloscope and using a 1.8v 400khz (same frequency as the i2c bus) square wave created by a function generator. The behavior was not quite as would be expected. There bus was not reliably reaching 3.3V on the output of the level shifter, and the waves were not square. The output looked more like a charging capacitor. As speed is not a issue in our system, our solution was to reduce the clock frequency of the i2c bus from 400khz to 50khz. This adjustment produced reliable results, which allowed the correct and reliable communication with the LCD.

There are a few command line tests which can be performed in order to verify whether or not I2C is working properly, i2cdetectand output.

Server Side
The server is currently a Ubuntu Linux virtual machine. It is running Icecast as a streaming server. Icecast streams audio to listeners, and is compatible with Nullsoft's Shoutcast.

The server is also running IceS version 2 in playlist mode to provide Icecast with music content. IceS can either read audio data from disk or sample live audio from a sound card and encode it on the fly. Version 2 of IceS has been modified to not allow MP3 files due to licensing issues with the MP3 format. Instead, the server streams a playlist of Ogg Vorbis music files. Ogg Vorbis is an audio compression format. It is roughly comparable to other formats used to store and play digital music, such as MP3, VQF, AAC, and other digital audio formats. It is different from these other formats because it is completely free, open, and unpatented.

To change format of the MP3 files to Ogg, use this command, which does so by dumping the binary into the Ogg encoder: $mpg321 input.mp3 -w - | oggenc -o output.ogg -

Note that the ID3 song information tags aren't automatically transitioned from the mp3 using this method. Use the vorbiscomment command to add tags to the file. At least the ARTIST and TITLE should be added for our project. Other tags defined by the standard can be found here.

Client Side
The client, running on the Beagle, uses mplayer and perl primarily to interface with the Icecast server. mplayer can take a single argument that is a network address to attach to a network stream. When attached to a network stream, mplayer will output all of the metadata received from the current song as reported by Icecast. The output of mplayer is piped to perl expressions which check over it using regular expressions. The an match for Artist or Title is found, it calls the hardware access code.

Links
BeagleBoard datasheet

Kernel Patch for I2C

Additional BeagleBoard I2C help

BeagleBoard U-Boot and Kernel Changes to Enable I2C2

Enabling I2C2

Latest Kernel Adjustments for I2C2

Additional Hints on I2C2

LCD Datasheet

Full LCD Datasheet

Buy the LCD

Logic Level Schematic

Purchase Level Shifter

Voltage Regulator Datasheet

Voltage Divider Info

i2cdtect Information

Results of i2cdetect