Single-board computer used for network streaming audio player TFT touchscreen-based application

Abstract

New microcontrollers have become widely available that far exceed the capabilities of microcontrollers marketed a decade ago. Because of increased bus sizes that boost memory addressing and data transfer rates, the new microcontrollers are capable of hosting an OS system. Thus, they have transitioned from hosting dedicated applications to hosting many applications. Often these devices are referred to as single board computers. The physical product created herein was a network streaming audio player on a single board computer. The hardware platform chosen was an Odroid-Cl. The board features a multicore RISC architecture ARM processor. Like other single board computers of its class, it features much RAM, as well as eMMC memory which acts as "disk" memory. The base unit features an abundant array of connections to the outside world, including 40 GPIO pins, four USB ports for keyboard, mouse, WiFi USB device, plus separate RJ45 Ethernet jack, plus micro-USB and micro-HDMI ports. Odroid markets a platform compatible 3.2" TFT touchscreen display for use with the C1. In this project, the programmed touchscreen provides a user-friendly kiosk-like interface. The HMDI port acts as the streaming audio output port. Proj ect software development intentionally sought to leverage the strengths of a fast and lightweight Ubuntu Linux variant, Lubuntu. QtCreator is the software Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for programming, chosen for its Graphics User Interface (GUI) programming reliability. As a whole, the completed project integrates diverse software development tasks, from program scripting, to work with windowing systems, to event-driven software. The skill sets needed by the project are enumerated. The implementation of a network streaming audio player was not a strenuous task. The working product is reliable and user-friendly. Two different course sections received a lecture on the completed work. The students were surveyed and the survey results were analyzed.