This article by LinuxDevices.com's Rick Lehrbaum provides a profile of the embedded Linux based empeg car audio player, including what it does and what's inside — from both a hardware and software perspective. The article also discusses empeg's efforts to mobilize a collaborative open source user community around the highly programmable product. Lehrbaum writes . . .

“The empeg car player, now in its second revision, is basically an in-dash digital music player with a capacity of up to 600 hours of high quality music. You load it with downloaded MP3 files from your PC — transferred via USB, Ethernet, or a serial port to a pair of internal laptop-style hard drives — and then you snap it into its docking bay in your car and you're ready to enjoy a seemingly endless choice of your favorite audio entertainment. Additionally, an available FM tuner module option lets you equip the unit to also perform the functions of a car FM radio.”

“But don't be misled. Despite the appearance and features of a modern car stereo, inside empeg's car player there lurks a full-function embedded Linux computer! As you'll see, a growing community of empeg enthusiasts is busy creating fun and entertaining applications that run in the empeg system. In short, your car may never be the same once you've added one of these clever devices!”

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This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.