Rockbox Player - Project to design and build a Free/Open hardware audio player

[608zz]

Moving my post away from the off-topic idea that it previously generated:
I am very interested in buying a flash device that uses high-capacity expansion cards, is efficiently powered by a single AA battery, has a jack for an external, unpowered, stereo mic and has all the capabilities of the Rockbox H120 port.  Essentially the H120 running Rockbox, but as a small, efficient, flash-based device.  The 32GB CF-cards should be available soon enough, so an appropriate replacement for the H120 could easily be accomplished by someone with the proper ability.  There is much unmet demand for devices like this - Ask the folks who prefer the iAudio G3 and/or Iriver H120, and/or people who want small devices that make good quality recordings.

[portable]

Check this out
http://www.tinkdoing.com/eng/005.html
http://www.tinkdoing.com/eng/011.html

As I suspect, there are hardware with similar requirement to yours exists. You just need to find one and make Rockbox work on it  

[608zz]

Check this out
http://www.tinkdoing.com/eng/005.html
http://www.tinkdoing.com/eng/011.html

As I suspect, there are hardware with similar requirement to yours exists. You just need to find one and make Rockbox work on it  

Hey, I'm not looking for ideas of devices to port Rockbox to and that's not what this thread is about.  Furthermore, the device that you're suggesting to me is nothing at all like the device that I envisioned. 
* First, that thing has no screen.  I specifically said that I want a monochrome LCD.  Rockbox needs a screen.
* Second, the SD-card sticks out.  I specifically said that the card must not be exposed on the exterior of the device. 
* Third, it's not powered by the AA battery-standard.  I specifically said that it should run on a single AA battery. 
* Forth, lack of screen means no feasible recording ability.  I specifically said that the device needs to have a jack for an external mic.

[jbond]

My requirement is almost exactly the reverse. I want a Creative Zen Xtra with a phat 2.5" disk, USB Mass storage and RockBox. Since I can't have that based on the Zen, I'm investigating ways of getting it, starting with other hardware and ultimately perhaps as a kit.

One possibility has been a gutted iPod with a broken hard disk mashed with a 1.8" to 2.5" connector to a 120Gb disk and all stuffed in an old tobacco tin (An altoids tin is probably too small for the disk!).

I should add that I have absolutely no interest in DRM.

As we're all still waiting for an iPod killer, I'm also interested in supporting any manufacturer prepared to turn their back on DRM and build the device we actually want with open source firmware and the features Apple won't give us, like easily upgradeable hard disks, replacable  batteries and USB mass storage. Once the basics are sorted then we can start working on the extras like USB host support, onboard bluetooth and so on.

I want a brick in my pocket that holds my entire media collection so I can take over other people's stereos. Not a penny sized player that only holds an hour or two of music. Key to this is the 2.5" disk. Mainly because they're cheap and with high capacity. And 2.5" based hardware has all but disappeared.

[saratoga]

As we're all still waiting for an iPod killer, I'm also interested in supporting any manufacturer prepared to turn their back on DRM and build the device we actually want with open source firmware and the features Apple won't give us, like easily upgradeable hard disks, replacable  batteries and USB mass storage.

FWIW the ipod battery and hard disk are pretty easy to upgrade (you just unplug the old one and plugin the new), and it supports USB mass storage.

[Davide-NYC]

My requirements would be:

Take the iRiver H1x0 player and substitute the mageto-mechanical Hard-Drive for either massive Flash 30GB+ or a reasonable amount of Flash with an expansion slot.

Upgrade the LCD (not to color but) to a fast, large and crisp 1 bit monochrome LCD. It's about legibility not eye candy. You can't listen to color.

Then add a Real Time Clock. This is sorely missing on the H1x0 in my opinion.

Oh and I repeat the "nothing must protrude" request. Nothing must protrude.

Dreamy inclusions would be to upgrade the mic-pres, add phantom power and balanced inputs.

All in a pocket friendly size.  

[jbond]

FWIW the ipod battery and hard disk are pretty easy to upgrade (you just unplug the old one and plugin the new), and it supports USB mass storage.

The iPod disk is a 1.8". Good for physical size and power consumption. Bad for data size and cost. I'd prefer 2.5" Now maybe this will change as the new perpendicular encoding disks start to appear.

The thing about the battery is it would be nice to carry a charged battery and be able to swap it on the road. Although there are solutions to this with external boxes.

There's another angle on this which goes back to the start of the thread. A Rockbox reference hardware design could end up as three layers. An unpopulated circuit board, A populated circuit board and case (add your own battery and hard disk), a retail finished box. I think that having these available would drive down the cost of PMPs. At the moment the price of hard disk based PMPs is driven by marketing and competition and not raw materials. It irritates me intensely that we pay a $100 premium for an extra 30Gb when the actual premium should be more like $10. Given the price of 2.5" drives now, it should be possible to make a profit on a mass produced, chinese manufactured  box at around $100 to $150. Not $399.

What really puzzles me with the smaller manufacturers is why they want to get involved in writing their own firmware and why they want to pay the Microsoft tax. They'd be better off (and so would we) if they put the money they would have spent on that into the RockBox project.

[saratoga]

What really puzzles me with the smaller manufacturers is why they want to get involved in writing their own firmware and why they want to pay the Microsoft tax. They'd be better off (and so would we) if they put the money they would have spent on that into the RockBox project.

I imagine a lot of them don't know about Rockbox, and those that do are not very interested in it because of the GPL, which likely conflicts with some of their code (particularly if they're going to support DRM, MTP, etc).

[Larsie]

* Second, the SD-card sticks out.  I specifically said that the card must not be exposed on the exterior of the device. 
* Third, it's not powered by the AA battery-standard.  I specifically said that it should run on a single AA battery. 

If there's going to be a 'DIY' DAP with Rockbox support you'd be able to fix these issues yourself.

You could just hook up your own SD/CF/whatever-slot where you want.

I personally do not like AA battery's but same here, most parts will probably need 1-5 volts or something simmular (depending wether or not it's going to be harddrive- or flashbased). But you could just make a batterypack or solder a AA-socket on there.

And hell yes, I'm interested

[jbond]

I imagine a lot of them don't know about Rockbox, and those that do are not very interested in it because of the GPL, which likely conflicts with some of their code (particularly if they're going to support DRM, MTP, etc).

Call me obtuse, but that's the point. Nobody actually wants Windows DRM or MTP. All they do is get in the way. Especially now that PFS DRM is obsolete with the Zune. And MTP is harder to use than USB mass storage.

Fairplay code baked in so that Rockbox will play iTMS tracks, anyone?

[Michael7]

I want a brick in my pocket that holds my entire media collection so I can take over other people's stereos. Not a penny sized player that only holds an hour or two of music.

Great point, I regret selling my ajbr (with brick being a good description). It fell to the ground a couple of times and the rubber corners protected it from harm.
The only time I get to listen to music is in the car or in the house when Im looking after the children where my ipod is connected to a set of computer speakers so the size of the player is not important to me either.

[608zz]

The size of the device is somewhat important to me, but it doesn?t have to be thin or tiny.  Thick/wide enough to use the AA standard, plus tall enough to have a CF-card compartment, equals an H120 that fits in most pockets.  CF-cards in 16GB are available right now, and it?s only a matter of time before the 32GB cards are here.

[kwaanens]

My requirement is almost exactly the reverse. I want a Creative Zen Xtra with a phat 2.5" disk, USB Mass storage and RockBox. Since I can't have that based on the Zen, I'm investigating ways of getting it, starting with other hardware and ultimately perhaps as a kit.

--snip--

I want a brick in my pocket that holds my entire media collection so I can take over other people's stereos. Not a penny sized player that only holds an hour or two of music. Key to this is the 2.5" disk. Mainly because they're cheap and with high capacity. And 2.5" based hardware has all but disappeared.

My wish is exactly the same as yours. And with a huge battery, so I won't have to plug my player into the wall (or similar) every 5 hours like mye iAudio x5. I'm not scared of size, lots of us have big pockets, bags or backpacks, right?
Nice to hear others who would *not* like another tiny player that holds 100 songs and disappears in your pocket
The biggest player (storage wise) I've heard of was an American one with 100 GB (similar to the iriver 40 gig, but with bigger HDD), and I can't believe that no one has come made a bigger one.

I'm now at the point where I need to remove music from my player in order to put new music on it. That's of course due to flac-use, and I will continue with this. (Live recordings are usually not hifi, and shouldn't be compressed)

- Ketil

[alsaf]

I hook my H120 into my stereo as a convenient way of listening to music when I'm too lazy to look through my CD collection. A dream come true what be to able to play music from my external hard drive that has my music collection stored in FLAC format (rather than 128k OGG of my H120).

I'm not sure if this is the right forum, not sure where to start, but is it possible to hook up a HDD DAP player to an external hard drive?

[pabouk]

but is it possible to hook up a HDD DAP player to an external hard drive?

Yes, it is possible. Most of the players like iriver Hxxx (if not all) have standard ATA (IDE) interface. You just need to open the player and use a suitable power source and an adapter because most of the players contain 1.8" HDD while you would probably like to use 2.5" or 3.5" external HDD.