MusicPal Internet Radio

I have bought a Freecom MusicPal internet radio as a present for Sandie.
It turns out that it is actually a little single board computer running linux, so I have to see what I can do with it.
Fortunately some other people have made a start as shown here. Most importantly they show that if you point your web browser at the musicpal and log in, you can run an extra CGI script as http:////admin/cgi-bin/debug.cgi. This allows you to switch the telnet server on and off in the MusicPal.
Once you have switched the telnet server on you can log into the machine as root and have a look around.
To do anything interesting with it there will be three main requirements:

1. Read the keyboard (well the buttons on the device anyway!)
2. Display things on the screen.
3. Play music files.

I have made a start on this. The buttons can easily be read from /dev/keypad. Typing cat /dev/keypad shows the key currently being pressed. Note that there seems to be a delay between typing cat /dev/keypad and anything starting to appear - not sure why.
The codes returned are:

• Fav - 1
  
• Menu - 2
• Volume Button Press - 4
• Volume Button Clockwise - V
• Volume Button Anti-Clockwise - v
• Select Button Press - 8
• Select Button Clockwise - N
• Select Button Anti-Clockwise - n
  
• No Key Pressed - T

That's a start anyway - displaying things on the screen will be more difficult - I'll ahve to find out what sort of driver is provided - there /proc/mvlcd looks like something to do with it, but I don't know what.....

NT