Rockbox Development > Feature Ideas

Rockbox as a network media player

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Jennifur:

--- Quote from: csavery on May 17, 2010, 05:35:29 PM ---It may also require hardware changes as it isn't a given that the correct signals / terminations have been routed on the board even when a host controller is on the chip. Example circuits I've seen from some chip datasheets indicate different connections for host and client modes. It's probably possible to do a dual mode circuit but the designers may not have chosen to do that.

--- End quote ---

I would doubt anyone would transfer music to the player while the device was acting as a host at the same time. There is only one connector on the device, and carrying a powered hub around with you doesn't seem like a good idea either.

Now, a dock that did this would be nice. Yet, there wouldn't be much of a point of having the device act as a host either if it was to be done in a dock. You could just use the lineout on the USB/dock connector or the headphone jack.

atsakir:
since my original post I googled around and done some reading myself and it is very difficult to implement the host controller stack even on devices than carry a usb host adapter on the chipset. I haven't looked into SDIO based wifi yet but something tells me it will be a dead end in that respect too.

it would have been really nice to have that functionality in rockbox though.... oh, well, scratch that idea then

saratoga:
You're better off getting a WIFI enabled device like an Android phone and developing applications on it.  They provide a network stack and an API to use it with.

csavery:
Jennifur: I didn't mean to imply being used at the same time but the circuit would have to support changing from host mode to client mode since client mode has pullup resistors to allow the host to detect presence. To attach a usb wifi dongle to Rockbox would be cool but as saratoga says for practical purposes almost certainly out of reach - better to use something like Android. I had other ideas for this and explored it briefly as a way to add high quality usb microphones to Rockbox to enable a portable recording studio. With a host mode stack you could use a hub and a few good mics feeding into Rockbox to be saved giving a multi-track studio. Alas, not to be...

Edit: I take this back. There is a way I can think of to achieve this and still work within normal usb mode on Rockbox devices. Build a special cable with a usb host controller embedded. A device like the NXP LPC2361 (ARM7TDMI) available from Digikey for $8 could be stuck in a usb connector and act as a host controller being directed by commands from software on a plugin in Rockbox. It has internal flash program memory and could be programmed to as a "mirror" controller. This would be possible if someone wanted to develop the supervisor code. It has a usb host mode stack built in I believe. Essentially this would be a "smart hub" that knows how to relay data from one client to another.

Both ends of the cable would be clients and in the middle would be the host acting as a relay directed by commands it gets from one client issued by the plugin software.

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