Cayin N3 Port - Who to contact?

[dconrad]

Hi all,

I miss my little Sansa Clip+, but I like the fanciness of my Cayin. Unfortunately the firmware is a little lacking compared to Rockbox. I'm interested in getting a Cayin N3 in the hands of a developer who can hopefully make this happen. I think there are a whole host of these chinese Hi-Fi DAPs with small changes between each, so maybe once one is done, the next should be easier.

I know there have been a couple threads already where the answer was "a dev really needs one on their desk to do this". Who might I contact about this? Is there an official way to go about this?

[saratoga]

Google says it's an ingenic x1000 device, so possibly someone working on the x1000 ports might be interested.

Usually though ports are done by the device owner (i.e. you) since most developers already have more then enough players to work on. Maybe in this case the device is close enough to something else that someone would want one.

[speachy]

Yeah, the Cayin N3 appears to be based on the same hibyplayer platform as quite a few of our other targets; I don't expect it would take much work to port over Rockbox.

My main concern is that this model doesn't seem to be easily purchasable, at least not in the US; there are also only two available (used) on ebay.

It does seem questionable to go through the trouble of doing a port when the hardware can't be purchased any longer.

EDIT:  I forgot to add, if you're willing to send me one, I'll definitely poke around with it but I can't promise any specific outcome

[dconrad]

I was just about ready to pull the trigger on the used one on ebay, but your note on availability gives me pause. Maybe it really isn't worth the effort on a player that nobody but a few bought. I appreciate your offer to look at it!

I guess I thought they were still selling new - I hate how fast these product cycles move. I'm starting to think maybe I should grab a FiiO M3K since it seems like you're already getting pretty far along with that (and it seems you can still get them new?). Maybe I could help in some way with that too.

I'll sleep on it and see if this is yet another thread on this player that goes nowhere 

[speachy]

The N3 was introduced in 2017, and its last firmware update was in 2018. 

I'm confident adding it will be pretty easy, but my concern is purely their unobtanium state.

The m3k is actively being worked on, and appears to be readily available, but I would never make any promises about that either. 

[dconrad]

So despite how adamant I was about all this yesterday, I came around to the idea it's not worth the effort. It does already functionally do everything I want it to, just with an annoyingly clunky interface. I ended up ordering a HIFIWalker H2 since it looks like its more-or-less the same player functionality-wise but with physical buttons, and (some) rockbox support.

It sounds like the hiby players are somewhat routine to port to since they can actually run rockbox on top of the native kernel rather than having to directly support the hardware, is that right? In that case maybe someday this could be a good exercise for me, but today is not that day   

Now I'll patiently await (someday, maybe) bluetooth support haha

[speachy]

So despite how adamant I was about all this yesterday, I came around to the idea it's not worth the effort. It does already functionally do everything I want it to, just with an annoyingly clunky interface. I ended up ordering a HIFIWalker H2 since it looks like its more-or-less the same player functionality-wise but with physical buttons, and (some) rockbox support.

The H2 actually works quite well, and it is what I'd recommend folks buy if they are looking for something new.

It sounds like the hiby players are somewhat routine to port to since they can actually run rockbox on top of the native kernel rather than having to directly support the hardware, is that right? In that case maybe someday this could be a good exercise for me, but today is not that day   

It took a bit of work to get to the "routine" point, but essentially, yep.  (The hibylinux platform is _very_ well put together, using standard kernel APIs for everything)

FWIW we are working on a native/bare-metal port to the Ingenic X1000 SoC used by these players. 

[dconrad]

The H2 actually works quite well, and it is what I'd recommend folks buy if they are looking for something new.

Excellent! I'm looking forward to playing with rockbox again for sure.

It took a bit of work to get to the "routine" point, but essentially, yep.  (The hibylinux platform is _very_ well put together, using standard kernel APIs for everything)

FWIW we are working on a native/bare-metal port to the Ingenic X1000 SoC used by these players. 

That is very exciting! I'll await news!

P.S. Thanks for being patient with my questions and working on such a great piece of software!