External Winamp Control

Nowadays, winamp have full support to keyboard shortcuts. But some time, when winamp didn’t have this feature, I was thinking in some way to make a easy way to change music by simply pressing one button, it would make things faster and would help me to change music during games. So I decided to make a external control painel, to make it easier to change musics, volume up or down, toggle shuffle and many other features by pressing just one button. I found one winamp plugin that shows how to configure a external control using the Serial Port, being able to make 4 or 15 buttons control. I decided to make this, step-by-step, how to do it, hope you enjoy.

My site for those who would like to see more of my How-To's:
Pasteler0's Tech Blog

Material:

1. 4 push-buttons
2. SERIAL connector
3. Connector Box
4. Cable
5. Soldering iron and accessories

As you can put the buttons wherever you want, I decided to put mine in one old diskbox.
I decided to use a network cable to connect the Serial connector to the buttons, because its easier to organize and makes the work simplier and faster.

Step 1 Step 1

Making the control:

1. Looking in the scheme, we see that we have to connect one side of each buttons to one cable, these will be solded in the pin number 4.

Comments

[deathfromabove]

I really like this, anyone know how i could incoporate it into a VB project or make it send keyboard shortcuts?

[Yerboogieman]

I want to use this in my car.

[kt2112]

same here this would be great when putting an old laptop in car for music

[FixedHDD]

hehe i'm going to build this right now

but i'll get the controlswitches direct in my computercase that means i'll drill 4 holes in the case....

that would be a perfect MP3-Machine

Pictures will come

[FixedHDD]

Done! But this is only the bare electric circuit. now i'll paint my case black n yellow and then it's time to drill

[axel5890]

i like the green switches. where did you buy them at? they look like radioshack push buttons switch

[Gonazar]

Can you adapt this for a usb port instead?

[James (pseudo-geek)]

hey the software wont work for me. it saves it as unreadable when I use FireFox, and it opens a new tab with gibberish when I use Internet Explorer.

[James (pseudo-geek)]

maybe you could give me a link to where you got it - all the files I download from instructables do this to me.

[Robotrix]

Here's mine! I made my case from cardboard cause i'm ghetto

[tj the gnome]

lol i made a cardboard case for a broken PDA i fixed

[pasteler0]

nice done! =)

[Peter_Pansen]

This guy build one out of a Rotary phone control http://www.bwir.de/schaltungen/winamprotaryphonecontrol
Unfortunately the program is very crapy. You have to close it, or you won't able to shutdown Windows, and sometimes it disables itself.

But the idea is very funny I got one to

[Brett]

Just about finished mine :). Last thing to do is the case.. but everything works so far. Brett

[pasteler0]

Show pictures when done! =)

[trebuchet03]

I wish my laptop had a serial connection :P But you score an A :D

[rotor]

Internet to the rescue!

http://sewelldirect.com/USBtoSerial.asp?semt_adcatid=1094&semt_keywords=usb%20serial%20adapter

ok, yeah, it's a little more intrusive that you probably want, but I just wanted to post this for completness.

[trebuchet03]

haha yeah, I know about those thingies :P I have the schematic on how to build one yourself somewhere in the depths of my hard drive too :P But $20 is a little steep :P

[godsdog]

Do you happen to have pin configs for more than 4 buttons or is this the max? (thinking about using 16 button config utilizing binary)

[Woeka]

If you install the COM-port Winamp Control programm go to help and then to the 15 button tab and there is a ... guess what ... 15 button version :)

[Brett]

I like your instructable a lot. I am going to try it on my own as well. Two questions: What are the grey numbers on the left of the wiring configuration? I think the black ones are the pin on the serial port, but not sure what the grey ones are. Also, one prong from each of the buttons all connecting at a central wire (where port 4 is)?? Thanks! Brett

[Brett]

Nevermind question 2, still wondering about question 1. Brett

[pasteler0]

The numbers in gray show the pins you mush use if you make it using a DB25 instead of a DB9

[saites2001]

Very adaptable. I like it.