AIGO EROS Q / AIGO EROS K / IRULU Surfans F20 / AGPTek H3 / HIFI WALKER H2

[doghonk]

Hm, weird. Sanity check, are you using headphones to check the headphone port? The way things are wired, an "aux-in" device is not likely to work with the headphone output.

That was it. I was using a 1/8 stereo to dual RCA adapter to run the player into a Grado headphone amp to drive the 'phones. With that setup there was no output from the headphone jack and distorted output from the line out. I tried two different cables with the same result, so it wasn't the cable. When I plugged the 'phones directly into the headphone jack (its an old Grado SR80, so 8 ohms), it worked correctly with good output. Same when I plugged the 'phones directly into the line out (just louder). I still don't understand why the stock firmware had no problem driving the amp cleanly from either output jack, but Rockbox does. Maybe there is something funky with the input impedance of the amp? It seems the headphone output from the player is plenty strong to drive the 'phones, so guess I don't really need the amp (it just pains me to have a nice piece of kit like that and not use it ).

For reference, I didn't do any custom settings yet, other than loading a couple of themes and changing font sizes. To answer your other question: View HW Info --> Audio gives:

TX underruns: 0
(1) ES9018K2M HWVOL

I'll play with the stereo switch mode later and see if it has any effect. Thanks!

[dconrad]

Ok, glad to clear that up. I would hazard a guess you may be overdriving the input of the amp with the LO... You can try setting the Maximum Volume setting lower and see if it improves. The volume of the LO will be fixed to the Maximum Volume setting.

Can't say for sure how the OF is handling switching between hp and lo, but we make the lo the default and rely on the low impedance of the headphones themselves to help detect them. (this is a consequence of how they wired up the hardware). They must be doing some trick that I'm not aware of.

[GD]

Hi everyone! Just joined the RockBox forum. I have a new HiFi Walker H2 and wanted to know if the Bluetooth functionality has been added to the RockBox OS or if the original OS is still needed for things like using Spotify on another device and sending the stream through bluetooth to the HiFi Walker for listening with headphones. If this functionality isn't implemented yet, I would like to install it with dual boot or whatever "hosted" way is possible without losing the original OS. My main question is if installing the "hosted" install will make the original OS (Version 1.8, came with USB-C) screen flipped or will everything work as normal. Thank you for your time!

[dconrad]

No, rockbox does not have bluetooth, and yes both hosted and native versions of rockbox allow you to boot into the original firmware. The screen will still be normal.

[GD]

How do I choose whether it's installing in Hosted or Native via the RockBox Utility? I don't see any option before starting the install, or will it ask me after I press install? I'm on Mac OS Sequoia.

[dconrad]

That I can see why it would be confusing. The current release of Rockbox Utility only does Hosted. The next version should also support Native, but it's not been released yet.

[GD]

Ok, thank you for the info! Should I choose "HiFi Walker V1.3+" o just "HiFi Walker" from the list? I have version 1.8 so I suppose I should choose "V1.3+"… (when using RockboxUtility). Is there anything I could do to collaborate with the Bluetooth development before I install the Hosted Rockbox? Like getting info from the device as it came that could help (maybe running a specific gathering info software?).

[dconrad]

It would be v1.3+, yeah. It should ask you for a stock update file, I believe.

I wouldn't get your hopes up for bluetooth within Rockbox to be honest, it's one of those "well, someday, maybe if someone really gets dug into it" because of just how big of a project it would be.

[GD]

I would love to make any possible contribution to developing the bluetooth option in "hosted", but wouldn't know where to start because I've never compiled Rockbox. If after installing I want to remove the boot loader completely (to return to original configuration), I just select uninstall in Rockbox Utility and then choose software firmware update in the original OS, correct?

[GD]

Ok, so I installed Rockbox using the Utility for mac, and nothing happened. If I copy the patched H2-v18-patched.upt to my HiFi Walker and manually install/update the firmware using the settings option in original firmware, will that still let me choose between Rockbox and original OS when booting (dual boot)?

[GD]

Ok, no worries. Did it successfully and except for having to load original OS for Bluetooth everything else works great! Thank you so much for providing this excellent piece of software. Will only dream that in a couple of years it may have bluetooth in "hosted" install.   

[dconrad]

Ok, no worries. Did it successfully and except for having to load original OS for Bluetooth everything else works great! Thank you so much for providing this excellent piece of software. Will only dream that in a couple of years it may have bluetooth in "hosted" install.   

Great to hear.

I would love to make any possible contribution to developing the bluetooth option in "hosted", but wouldn't know where to start because I've never compiled Rockbox. If after installing I want to remove the boot loader completely (to return to original configuration), I just select uninstall in Rockbox Utility and then choose software firmware update in the original OS, correct?

It's great that you want to help developing bluetooth support - just understand it requires someone with a lot of programming experience. You're going to need extensive knowledge of both C and bluetooth as a whole, as well as an understanding of how Rockbox currently works. It is not an easy task. If it were, it would have been done already!

To return the device to original configuration, you will put an unmodified update file on the device, rename it "update.upt", and run the software firmware update in the original OS, yes. To be honest, I don't know if the uninstall functionality in Rockbox Utility works or not for these devices.

[speachy]

Will only dream that in a couple of years it may have bluetooth in "hosted" install.   

The problem with the hosted bluetooth stuff is that the underlying host platform is _ancient_ -- BlueZ 4.x was EOL'd over a decade ago, and modern BlueZ 5 has a completely incompatible structure and API.  We'd have to re-create a lot of modern functionality, some of which the factory firmware never even bothered to implement.  There are also other problems -- eg our threading model causes problems interacting with the audio layer in a way that is compatible with the way BlueZ wants us to do things.

Meanwhile, on the native side of things, there are no suitable stacks we can integrate -- they either have incompatible licensing (eg Bluekitchen), are poorly suited for our technical architecture (eg BlueZ, zephyr, bluedroid), or are BTLE-only (pretty much everything else) and therefore won't work with the "BT Classic" audio devices that represent the primary use case (ie automobiles).

But like dconrad said, changing this is going to take a decent amount of work by someone who knows Bluetooth very well, and is willing to do this within the limitations that BlueZ4 imposes in order to work on the ErosQ and other HibyOS-based devices -- and most of this work won't be portable to other platforms (notalbly incluidng Simulator builds -- Modern Linux (w/ BlueZ5 or Bluedroid), MacOS, and Windows all require individual ports)

EDIT:  clarified the portability problem

[mrsubway]

Eros Q Native 11/24/2024.  I'm getting just a white screen on the Hifi Walker H2.  I went back to 11/20/2024 and everything is back to normal.                                                                                   

[speachy]

Eros Q Native 11/24/2024.  I'm getting just a white screen on the Hifi Walker H2.  I went back to 11/20/2024 and everything is back to normal.                                                                                   

First, please try the 20241122 daily to make sure this is due to the hw4 enablement work.

Second, we need to know what hardware version you're using.  This can be inferred from the firmware version the device was shipped with.  It's also reported in the debug info/device data menu, under 'lcd version'.  Or both, preferably.

Meanwihle, the person responsible for that native port is out of reach for about a week.  So nothing is likely to happen on this until then.