Juicebox Hacking 259
magic_user writes "Now that Mattel's JuiceBox can be had for $12 (Target, WalMart), this seems like a perfect toy for hackers. I've found a picture frame hack but what I'm really looking for is a way to play my own videos on it. It runs uclinux so this shouldn't be too hard, right? "
$12? Hardly... (Score:5, Informative)
It seems that this [elinux.org] would have been a more informative link to include in the story as it gives quite a bit of information about the JuiceBox and links to some of the code from Emsoft.
It does seem like an interesting device to putz around with but I'll hold out until you can display pics via wlan to it
Re:$12? Hardly... (Score:3, Informative)
Noisy website (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Arm port of Debian (Score:3, Informative)
here are the technical specs (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.elinux.org/wiki/JuiceBox [elinux.org]
YES! $12! No need to hack it... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Arm port of Debian (Score:2, Informative)
Or you could just go grab the juicebox source [emsoftltd.com] from emsoft [emsoftltd.com] and save yourself some time.
-theGreater.Re:If there's anything I've learned... (Score:3, Informative)
We have different opinions of "all in one", apparently. If you've got some sort of embedded PIC with OTP ROM, and it's embedded in epoxy, yah, you're probably done (hence "all-in-one" - this is more of a "all-in-three-or-four"). But this has a lot of hackability in it, as you've got easy access to all of the address and chip selects, and some versions of the board even have a moderately replacable ROM.
Regarding the video: oh, definitely. The video potential of the device sucks. But I wouldn't expect anything else for $12.
The SDCard connector, however, is an add-on that is not all that cheap in of itself.
It's just a slot adapter. Grab an SD socket from Molex (either free, $4 inside another order, or $10 from Sparkfun) and wire it up directly, as the pinout is already available.
Plus there's serial input, as well. It's disabled in the default build, so you have to replace the ROM (or via JTAG), but you'd probably want to do that anyway.
Re:If there's anything I've learned... (Score:3, Informative)
Plus a cheap MP3 player. It's probably got just enough oomph to be an Ogg player as well. The LCD screen actually makes it so that you can actually have a decent GUI.
Other than that, let's see... with a serial port, you could easily make a universal remote control with LCD screen, a digital picture frame (as seen above), or a status monitor for X (where X is some other project that spits out serial data).
Of course, if you want to be really stupid, a 66 MHz ARM7 certainly has the capability to emulate an NES.
In my case, it looks like a really, really nice front end to the Motorola GPS unit I have (spits out only serial data).
It's like picking up cool pieces of plastic and cardboard when you're a kid because you swear that you'll find a brilliant use for something so neat. Then it sits in the closet until you're an adult and throw it out.
Bah! You just described my basement, except for the fact that I do find uses for said objects.
Otherwise you can custom build a similar device for only slightly more
C'mon, it's $12! No way you could get the parts and board for that little.