Jukebox Home

What's this site about?

Mike's Jukebox is a PC-based music player that I have designed and constructed for use in our house. It's better than a bought media player, with:

• Better sound quality
• Better remote controls
• Monitor screens that show what's playing

... and a host of minor benefits, including the satisfaction of designing and building something yourself.

This site will be of interest to you if you're thinking of creating your own PC-based jukebox. It isn't a package available for you to buy and it isn't even a design for you to follow. I've designed the jukebox for our requirements only.

Much of the software I've used is available off-the-shelf, but I've written some of it myself. You're welcome to a copy of my code, but to make anything of it you'll need to be familiar with web page construction languages such as HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, and Perl.

For any comments or questions there's an e-mail address on my home page.

What does "Mike's Jukebox" look like?

There are the bits you can see...

• An ordinary amplifier and speakers
• A remote control (Apple iPad), used for selecting music and controlling the player
• A monitor screen which shows the currently-playing track, artist, and album
• (Not pictured) An infra-red transmitter, which is used to send commands from the remote control to the amplifier

... and the bits you can't normally see:

• A Wi-Fi router, for the remote control and as a network hub
• A NAS (Network Attached Storage) disk drive, for storing the digital music files etc
• A Server PC (low power, fanless) to make everything work together
• A studio-quality DAC (Digital to Analogue Converter) for driving the amplifier and speakers

Scale: about 36 cm (14") side-to-side