17/aug/2002
Well... yume's on the backburner now, don't know if I'll ever finish it - if so I'm going to rewrite 80% of yumeControl since my coding style sucked back then. But in case you happen to have any questions/requests... I'm still around :)

07/jan/2002
As usual nothing turns out the way one plans.
For me this means that I didn't work on yume very hard but focused on Japan instead (somehow I needed a break anyway) - which resulted in both an unfinished yume and a neat amount of anime CDs.
Soon after, I started living on my own because university life began. Unfortunately it wouldn't allow me to put much time into yume either... so basically yume is frozen now, but will be revived as soon as I find time to do so. Can't stand unfinished projects eating up the valuable space of my room :)

07/apr/2001
Yeeeeeehaaa!
All exams are written now and I have 2 months I can spend finishing yume =)
I'll start with throwing out the Chronotron and adding the PaceMaker plugin for which I now have the source code and can add win32 message handling for easy manipulation. Then I'll finish the HLDS menu. After that the playlist menu is on the way - and with it yumeControl v0.5...

06/mar/2001
I apologize for not updating the page but as I'm going to write my High School exams in four weeks I'm rather busy learning all the stuff I need. And that's a lot... ;-(
So basically yume will not show up in my schedule before april, 5th.

13/feb/2001
Sorry for not updating the page for quite a while now.
Since the PSU didn't work as expected, I changed the schematics a bit so that the SG3525-based circuit only powers the 12V-rail. The -12V are now generated by a MAX736 which is strong enough to deliver the 70mA the soundcard's OPs need to feed the line-out.
After finishing the PSU it was the first time I could see yume running in the car - and it works! Yay!

Not much news on the software side, except that the LAN menu is nearly finished and I'm currently integrating support for a HLDS (Half-Life dedicated server) which must be finished until friday. Sounds to be an easier task than it really is... but it will definitely rock!

01/feb/2001
Haha... had not thought enough. The shuffle functions use "non-repeating" and "assessments", however these features cannot be used simultaneously.
You ask why? It's rather clear... Imagine a playlist where no track has already been played. When playing, most of the tracks with the best ratings will be played at beginning since they are favourized. After playing they are marked as "already played", which prevents them to be played again later on. So they will NOT be played more often than the not-so-good tracks. However the only reason why I implemented assessments was that they should of course be played more often if they have a better rating then normal.
So we now have a new options switch :-)

28/jan/2001
On saturday I got the new transformer and tried it out. The PSU now works much better (even the rectifier doesn't get that hot anymore), however the 12V/-12V part does not - the transformer produces a voltage of about 60V (!), it crackles (insulation breakthrough?) and it delivers -25V instead of -12V. I hadn't thought that it would be that hard to get the PSU running... *sigh*
So I used two 7812 in parallel (using two diodes + the diode trick to compensate for the voltage drop) and FINALLY got yume running. I'll continue my work on the PSU later on because now it's time to wipe out these tiny nasty things which get into your way when using yume.

On the software side there are news, too: yumeControl now features assessments! It was not that easy to find a fast implementation and it made the playlist even more complicated... but never mind - the main thing is that it made its way to the "already implemented" list ;-)

Update: yumeControl will also contain yumeList which is currently a standalone program making pretty html formatted lists of all mp3s you have. You may have a look what the result looks like.

22/jan/2001
Oh well... the new year doesn't start as good as I thought it would. The PSU doesn't work as expected since the rectifier gets FAR too hot and consumes enough power for itself to overheat my transformer. Now I have a mobile heater. Great.
I will have to buy a more powerful transformer.

Perhaps I will build an external case for the transformer, rectifier, heatink and the fan so that I can omit these parts when not needed. The reason is that they are adding much weight to the player which itself is already heavy enough.

Another sad thingy is that the S/PDIF converter doesn't work at all. I yet don't know why, however I've no good feeling about it.

28/dec/2000
As I've noticed today the case I use is not in MG Electronic's catalogue any more - the ordering number was 30111523 (title: 'Mixer-case road 10" blue'; price: DM225), so if you're interested you may call them and ask if they can still deliver it.

Besides this I've made yumeControl's FPS counter visible so you now can see how fast the data transfers to the display are. Without display attached (LPT set to -1) there will be around 20 FPS whereas there are ~11 when I drive my LCD (LPT set to 1).

Another update: yumeControl v0.4 isn't finished yet but you may have a look on the improvements I spoke of some days ago by downloading v0.35. The playlist core is fully working now (and so do the keys). I'm currently building the playlist menu structure and the LAN setup menu. To test the playlist you just have to do the following:

1. run yumeControl and close it again so it creates yumeControl.ini using the default values
2. add the [playlist]-section to yumeControl (have a look at the sample .ini what it should look like)
3. run yumeControl - it will then save the playlist to unsaved.ypl

Once the playlist has been saved to unsaved.ypl there is no need for the entries in the .ini anymore but they may remain there. However you can't simply update the playlist by editing the .ini: you have to delete unsaved.ypl first (the playlist file has priority over the .ini).

27/dec/2000
Today I have written proper documentation for yumeControl which you can read in the yumeControl section.

26/dec/2000
There have been made many changes to yume since the last update so I had to rewrite parts of the docs. Most of the improvements have been made to the electronics used: the new power supply is complete now, a coaxial->optical S/PDIF converter has been added, the board for the PIC, the LCD and the converter is finished and the specs for the PIC are complete. So now a friend is writing the program for it while I'm messing around with the extended features of the playlist - which btw are far more difficult to implement than I thought... at least I now know why most other players have only simple playlist functions: some involve rather heavy thinking... :-)
The other thing I now focus on are the routines for LAN management which make use of the more advanced controls, e.g. IP address entering by only using the wheel.

29/nov/2000
Oookay. After some brainstorming what to do I've decided to use the core of Christian Richter's circuit design which will hopefully succeed in providing 12V when using yume in a car. The reason why I had to do this was that the MAX724 wasn't able to act as a step-up converter - unfortunately...
In the meantime I've been working on yumeControl v3 and built in a couple of new functions - as there were soft unpausing (fade-in when pause is released), fast forward/rewind, the popup-menu in the track info display, the core of the playlist engine and some minor additions. yCv3 will be released when the playlist feature is fully implemented - which will hopefully happen in two or three weeks...

20/nov/2000
Well... using the MAX724 for the 12V line doesn't work as expected *sigh*. If it's voltage input falls below 12V it's output voltage gets low as well - not staying at 12V as it would be needed for car installation where the voltage can drop below 12V easily. So I now have to develop something new... kinda frustrating today because the HDD I use for yume broke down also. Though 90% of its space is still usable it doesn't matter - it is broken and thus useless for usage in a device that is carried pretty often and has to resorb some shocks. Damn.

12/nov/2000
Okay folks, yumeControl v0.2 is available... the download is ~1MB and contains everything you need. There is no installation and no configuring required. I'd be glad to hear some comments about it :-)
To get a preview you may jump over to the yumeControl section to see some screenshots.

27/oct/2000
Yeehaa! I FINALLY found some time to update the page a bit. Now the hardware section contains the description of the power supplies and I will tie up a package with yumeControl v0.2 soon. Many features have been added since v0.1...

01/oct/2000
In the last weeks I was rather busy with developing the control software so I was unable to do much on the page - but now the hardware section is somewhat more complete and I have uploaded the current version of the control prog so you can see what's going on (you can find it in the download section).

09/sep/2000
I finally found some time to create this page which will hopefully help other mp3-player builders that aren't satisfied with the simple functions/components found in many other players. To see the difference you may look in the software section to see the list of the neat features yume will have.
Ok, I know this page hasn't that much content by now but this will change as soon as time permits.