After five years of decent service and running 24/7, Wind, my media playing machine started having hardware failure issues as well as lingering problems decoding large video files. For a few years now, I had been hoping to find a SBC that would be able to handle my video decoding needs, as well as be able to fit inside of a phone body.

Say "hello" to Redbar. Unfortunately, I still have issued with decoding video. Hopefully a switch from Debian to Arch will resolve some of my issues.

The Build

Redbar utilizes a MinnowBoard Turbot with a USB soundcard and a USB wireless network adapter. When the build took place, photos were taken with my mobile phone which I upgraded to cyanogenmod without backing up my pictures. [hella sad face]

Oh well, here are some pictures of the machine.

Redbar

This is actually the finished product. The phone is a Kellogg Redbar that I gutted.

Storage

Mounted in the body of the phone is a 2 TB SATA hard-drive. Power for the drive is pulled from the 5V pin on the SBC.

SBC

Mounted to the base of the phone is the Turbot. The OS (currently Debian Jessie) is running from the MicroSD card.

Power

A small button was attached to the bottom of the phone so that the device can be turned on and off.

Because the OS is running from a SD card, I should really find a way to run 'sync' before the 'shutdown' command powers off the SBC.

Final Location

Boring.... The phone, the TV, and there is a stereo amp in there as well.

Anywho, I'm not too happy with the way the device has been decoding TED Talk videos, and I'm experimenting with making a SD card image of Arch Linux so that I can take advantage of more recent software for my media player.

Also, I'm going to complain about the absurd difficulty that I am having with attempting to downmix all audio to 2 channel stereo. Sheesh, what a pain.

Now quit reading, and go replace a computer with a slightly less problematic computer.