Free/Open digital portable audio player

[saratoga]

So you don't have any analog design experience?

[casainho]

Just a small

[alsaf]

I think this is a great idea and would like to wish everybody good luck in this endeavour.

It has been established that a player of this type can't compete with commercial offerings on price and design. It therefore needs to be aimed at a niche. IMHO, a bit of thought needs to be put to what this type of player can offer that a commercial player can't.

The best thing it can offer is  high storage capacity. Commercial players of this type are quite expensive themselves so an open DAP could compete.

What can an open DAP be used for? Apart from having a player where you have your whole music collection in looseless format, IMHO, thought would need to be put into what this player could be used for and what it could offer in this situation that a commercial player can't.

I think the most popular use is that of the in-car. The design of the player would not matter as it could be stored in the glove compartment and could have a FM tuner gadget to play over the car stereo. The biggest issue with this is how would you interact with this player given consideration of safety issues of driving on the road.

If you could solve this issue then it would be a big winner.

[grossaffe]

I think the most popular use is that of the in-car. The design of the player would not matter as it could be stored in the glove compartment and could have a FM tuner gadget to play over the car stereo. The biggest issue with this is how would you interact with this player given consideration of safety issues of driving on the road.

If you could solve this issue then it would be a big winner.

you could design a remote-system for the mp3 player similar to what some head-units have.  for example, our mountaineer came with buttons on the steering wheel that controls the head-unit.  unfortunately the head-unit that came with the car died, but we bought another one that came with an infrared remote and wired the remote send signals based on the steering wheel buttons.  I think the same kind of idea could be implemented with an mp3 player remote.

[alsaf]

AFAIK all car CD units have the same dimensions so the player could be mounted into that slot and can be manipulated like an ordinary car CD player.

It would be a killer feature if there was an interface like what grossaffe mentioned.

I'm sure there are plenty of car enthusiasts who would be willing to take part in the hardware side of things and let the folk in here concentrate on the software part.

EDIT:

As well as the DIY car enthusiasts there may be a few manufacturer's who could be interested as the car modding sector although small is quite profitable. It caters for a consumer that is young and has a lot of cash to burn. It may well be worth looking into.

[alsaf]

Another off the cuff idea I was thinking an open source rockbox player could be used as is a Karaoke player.

I'm sure that a plugin could be easily developed and there are a lot of karaoke songs in mp3 format. There is another format called cdg, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD%2BG.

The only issue is that a video interface would need to be added to player.

[alsaf]

The two ideas I mentioned is kind of straying away the core idea of an open source portable audio player.

One idea that keeps with this is to design the player for ease of use for folk with disabilities. This is certainly not being catered for by commercial players. Like the in-car player a lot of thought would have to be put into how to interact with the device.

 

 

[grossaffe]

I have one more idea.  you could have a voice-controlled playback scheme like they advertise for that car (don't know what car it is).  you could have a built-in mic that when put into car-mode will take voice commands such as next, previous, artist, song, playlist... i think that could be a nice little feature that wouldn't require any car modification.

[Btwizt]

Probably the one major selling point you could make is customizability. "Your player your way"

[casainho]

Please be realistic

Read the page about - http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/RockBoxPlayer

[talos321]

From Vosonic

Not sure if this will help it appears they are doing OEM type work now.
Maybe someone can/will ask them about designing for Rockbox?

Digital Advertising Solution
Available for OEM/ODM projects and both hardware
 and software can be customized according to different needs.

[adam917]

OK. For audio playback, what about stuff like Amiga MODs/other tracker music formats? We have game music formats (SID, NSF, & SPC) already playable on Rockboxed devices, so why not add tracker formats to the new device?

[gnu]

I don't really understand you suggestion...
Since this thread is about a rockbox player, it will be able to play anything rockbox can play!
So if MOD support is added to rockbox, the rockbox player would play it; otherwise not.