Specifications

7.2 Extensions to the Current Design.
After developing the user interface on the player itself there are a wide range of extra
features that could be added. A remote control could be used to control all the features
of the player including track control and play list functions. An infrared received would
be developed on the player and the remote control could either be designed and
constructed or a third party product could be used.
Extra sound effects would be useful. Even though the player is designed to go into a
traditional stereo that should provide the user with the required effects it would still be a
benefit to be able to do this from the player. The effects could include bass, treble and
volume controls. The integration of this into the existing design would not be difficult.
The existing MP3 decoder provides the functionality to modify these characteristics of
the sound across the serial interface with the microcontroller.
The implementation of a seek function could be done to allow the user to fast forward
or rewind through the song. The current MP3 decoder also provides this as a function.
The main difficulty with doing this in the current solution is that the Ethernut cannot
transfer the data across the network fast enough. If the faster Ethernut product was used
the seek function could be implemented. The speed of the seek function can easily be
controlled on the MP3 decoder; therefore; the functional speed of the seek function
would be governed by how fast the new Ethernut can transfer.
It would be possible to display extra information about the song while it is playing. By
reading from the ID tag of the MP3 it is possible to read extra information. Not all MP3
files have the ID tag information, but if it is there the player could display the artist who
performed the song, the album it was from and its name. On top of this the player could
display a time indicator. Indicating either how long the song has been playing for or
how much of the song is left.
Not everyone agrees with network cables being viewable or putting holes in the wall to
install a network socket. Therefore, a long term improvement would be to allow the
player to connect to a wireless network.
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