Rockbox Ports are now being developed for various digital audio players!
Why not start designing a Free/Open digital portable audio player?
with this we don't need MP3 decoder IC and can have Rockbox (as an application on linux kernel) do the decoding of MP3, OGG, Flac, etc...
USB and audio decoding done in processor! A Player that plays almost any audio codec and that can read from flash cards or HDD!! and that acts as an host - meaning that would be possible to copy music from player to player, nice to share music with friends.
Quote from: casainho on November 11, 2007, 12:53:26 PMWhy not start designing a Free/Open digital portable audio player? Because that would be expensive and probably not result in a very attractive player compared to existing commercial ones.
Quote from: casainho on November 11, 2007, 12:53:26 PM with this we don't need MP3 decoder IC and can have Rockbox (as an application on linux kernel) do the decoding of MP3, OGG, Flac, etc...Rockbox is an operating system, not a linux app. Only the sim works with linux, and its not really usable as a player (yet).
Quote from: casainho on November 11, 2007, 12:53:26 PMUSB and audio decoding done in processor! A Player that plays almost any audio codec and that can read from flash cards or HDD!! and that acts as an host - meaning that would be possible to copy music from player to player, nice to share music with friends.Rockbox already does this except for the USB host, and I don't see how having different hardware would help any of this.
Quote from: saratoga on November 11, 2007, 01:13:03 PMQuote from: casainho on November 11, 2007, 12:53:26 PMWhy not start designing a Free/Open digital portable audio player? Because that would be expensive and probably not result in a very attractive player compared to existing commercial ones.But we could win somethings with this player tailored by us - for example, have all hardware working and perfect rockbox port, quick and easily done!!
Ok, I understand, I read somewhere in site that Rockbox should be made as application, maybe because that are portable devices like phones that could run RB. Anyway, its possible to made a native port of RB for AVR32 since there are a free software GCC-AVR32 for him - thanks Atmel ;-) :-)
What I am trying to say is that now we can have a lot of portable digital music player made in software, because now we have fast and powerful processors, not like in the past that should have also MP3 IC decoders and USB ICs.
Quote from: casainho on November 11, 2007, 01:30:19 PMBut we could win somethings with this player tailored by us - for example, have all hardware working and perfect rockbox port, quick and easily done!! Yes but because you've moved the complexity from software development to hardware development. A better approach would be to simply start a port to an mp3 player that uses mostly documented hardware.
But we could win somethings with this player tailored by us - for example, have all hardware working and perfect rockbox port, quick and easily done!!
Quote from: casainho on November 11, 2007, 01:30:19 PMOk, I understand, I read somewhere in site that Rockbox should be made as application, maybe because that are portable devices like phones that could run RB. Anyway, its possible to made a native port of RB for AVR32 since there are a free software GCC-AVR32 for him - thanks Atmel ;-) :-)Yes but it would probably not work as well as players using an established arch like ARM.
Quote from: casainho on November 11, 2007, 01:30:19 PMWhat I am trying to say is that now we can have a lot of portable digital music player made in software, because now we have fast and powerful processors, not like in the past that should have also MP3 IC decoders and USB ICs.This is true of many (most?) of the hardware platforms rockbox already runs on. If this is what you're trying to say, then my response would be that you should buy a Sansa and develop for that.
Why do you say that?? - The RB works with Assembly and GCC-ARM, right? AVR32 works with assembly and GCC-AVR32 - so It's the same. The advantage, is that for buy a portal player as Sansa uses we can't get one in units but for AVR32 we can get one unit for $20 and all the information about It and Free Software tools for build and debug!
I can understand that RB developers do not want to invest time in developing a player with open hardware, but I don't see why every attempt to do should be shot down it it's cradle.
A first step would be to gather those with knowledge of developing hardware, and start drawing schematics, settle for a pcb design and start investigating how expensive things will be (or whatever... I dont know! ^_^)
I paid 100 euros for my Sansa and I would pay 200 euros for an Open audio player that work with RB.
But maybe this is not the right place for looking at an Open hardware audio player. I started talking with guy at DSPdap, maybe It will be easy to work together with some group of people that is already working on that kind of hardware. But I think that hardware should support RB!! ;-) :-)
... you'll have to spend a lot more over time while developing this and someone is going to have to put up a lot of money for initial investments for design, packaging, PCB, producing and more. That's why open source HW is much harder. You need real money to pay for all the physical stuff that need to be put together and shipped. Spare time and skills are not enough.
But indeed, I'm sure lots of Rockbox hackers will assist with advice and ideas on what to put in such an open player... A first idea would be to not use any DSP! ;-)
I too had the idea of an open hardware player, and I looked at the AVR32 as well(BTW there is a very nice development platform for this that sells for $69-$100).The avr32 is simply an all in one chip, but there are arm chips like this too(Philips makes one that is very similar and made for media players).
At this point I'm not good for much more than ideas.I wish I was good at cad software for schematic capture and pc layout.THAT is CRITICAL to getting a design going. If someone gets a wiki pagegoing, I'd be happy to post some hardware ideas, links to documentationI've found, etc. You'd need someone with the CAD skills to actually get thedesign to the point where you could start ordering PC boards and stuffing them.(not to mention surface mount soldering skills ....)
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