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

[Llorean]

Rockbox is not based on Linux nor is it designed to be a PDA. It might be handy to take a step back and learn more about Rockbox if you're interested in designing hardware for it.

[Llorean]

Rockbox already supports recording to MP3, WAV, and Lossless Wavpack (as long as the hardware would support PCM recording, and has a fast enough processor to run the encoders). Because Wavpack is lossless, it can then be converted on the host computer to any other format the user wants.

Rockbox also already has MPEG-2 video playback, that runs effectively (24fps fullscreen) on a dual-core 80mhz ARM target at 220x176 resolution (one core is used for video, the other for audio decoding at the moment).

[casainho]

Is this going to be a pda right now or you want to just get mp3 to play?I'm familiar with Atmel and loading linux on a pda (bootstrap).

friendlyzookeeper, did you read the page of the project? At the beginning of the page, as the first objective, you can read: "Make a good quality hardware audio player and recorder;" - So, It will not be a PDA!!

However, the project can change to get It commercial possible.

If you are familiar with bootstrap and Atmel MCUs, can you give an help to make the bootloader for the AT91SAM9260?? -- my first objective is to make a LED flashing in the RockboxPlayerPrototype hardware.

Thank you.

[00christian00]

Casainho,add some smilie once a while otherwise it seem you are scolding him  
I doubt you were doing it,since you are asking for help,but it's really easy to be misunderstood while writing.

[casainho]

Casainho,add some smilie once a while otherwise it seem you are scolding him 
I doubt you were doing it,since you are asking for help,but it's really easy to be misunderstood while writing.

I am very limited in english :-( - for example, I add to look in dictionary what means "scolding":
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/scold

I just want to make happen this idea of Free/Open hardware audio recorder/player for use with Rockbox. I do not want to cause any problems and I am not looking to get any.

[00christian00]

I pointed it out because i noticed many misunderstand you,so if you put some smiley it's more clear.
That website doesn't explain what "to scold" mean.
To scold mean telling someone that is action is wrong,like what a teacher would do with some children when they don't do homework for example.Sorry it's hard to explain in english.

[casainho]

I pointed it out because i noticed many misunderstand you,so if you put some smiley it's more clear.
That website doesn't explain what "to scold" mean.
To scold mean telling someone that is action is wrong,like what a teacher would do with some children when they don't do homework for example.Sorry it's hard to explain in english.

Thank you Christian

While I wait an answer from you, can you please tell us what are important things to convince your "friends running factories in china", to make this kind of Free/Open hardware? - sorry If I am asking information that should be secret.
I am asking this because of my curiosity, I did read a few messages about "Made in China", in the bunnie's blog - http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?cat=7 , one person working on the Chumby, assembled at China, another Open Source hardware:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chumby

[Der Papst]

Just to throw in my 0.02$...

00christian00: I like both designs you linked to ;-)

casainho: Imo you souldn't focus too hard on a _pure_ audioplayer. If you look at current devices that do more than just audio (e.g. simple games and 2-3 different video formats) you'll notice that they have far far better battery runtimes than daps purely designed for audio.

Take the Cowon D2 as example (rockbox port being worked on). It supports various video codecs, has a nice and large LCD (320x240) and "Rated battery life: 52 hours for music, 10 hours for video" (linky). :-D

If this player should compete to other commercial player I wouldn't go below a resolutions of 220x176 (larger LCD means more space for a larger battery ;-)) and a SoC being able to handle MPEG4 with 30fps easily.

But i agree that a touchscreen isn't needed (though i wouldn't complain if there is one).  ;-)

[00christian00]

The first thing would be to let him see Rockbox.He was always busy these days and didn't had the chance to show him.I would leave the other guys out for now,because except this one they are all completely the opposite of tech geek,and explain the rockbox features will be a almost impossible task
Chumby is open source?!But it does use flash lite 3 which is all except open source.It's partially open i think

@Der Papst
Good,i am not the only one hehe.
Mpeg4 support is not present in rockbox.I don't know if someone could port ffmpeg or some other similar fast decoder.

[casainho]

If you look at current devices that do more than just audio (e.g. simple games and 2-3 different video formats) you'll notice that they have far far better battery runtimes than daps purely designed for audio.

Take the Cowon D2 as example (rockbox port being worked on). It supports various video codecs, has a nice and large LCD (320x240) and "Rated battery life: 52 hours for music, 10 hours for video" (linky). :-D

Simple because they were design for video and not audio! So they have a large and expensive battery. We want also a player that is small and cheap, and we get It reducing audio for 24 hours, for example - so we can have a battery less than half of that one, and cheaper. The money saved on that, can be put on good quality hardware for recording and playing.
 

If this player should compete to other commercial player I wouldn't go below a resolutions of 220x176 (larger LCD means more space for a larger battery ;-)) and a SoC being able to handle MPEG4 with 30fps easily.

I think is a mistake to try compete with that kind of players, because market is flood with them and I think will be easy, quick(already done), to have Linux + some media player like VLC instead of making that on Rockbox. As soon as this devices get SoCs for video, they will also have large memories and batteries that can handle Linux.

But as we can see, portable players are quick getting media players, who will invest in good, only, portable audio players?

However, I think is best to have Free/Open hardware portable media player than nothing

[Der Papst]

Mpeg4 support is not present in rockbox.I don't know if someone could port ffmpeg or some other similar fast decoder.

No, not yet. ;-) But some are thinking about if the Gigabeat S and the D2 are supported.

Simple because they were design for video and not audio! So they have a large and expensive battery. We want also a player that is small and cheap, and we get It reducing audio for 24 hours, for example - so we can have a battery less than half of that one, and cheaper. The money saved on that, can be put on good quality hardware for recording and playing.

I don't think that the price difference is making SUCH a big difference and i'd be more than happy to spend 15EUR more for a couple of hours more playback.

As soon as this devices get SoCs for video, they will also have large memories and batteries that can handle Linux.

Iirc the SoC you've selected is capable of stuff like MPEG4 so you can bet that any video codecs will used on this device too wasting battery ;-)

[casainho]

As soon as this devices get SoCs for video, they will also have large memories and batteries that can handle Linux.

Iirc the SoC you've selected is capable of stuff like MPEG4 so you can bet that any video codecs will used on this device too wasting battery ;-)

Wasting battery depends on utilization, as we can see in your example:

Take the Cowon D2 as example (rockbox port being worked on). It supports various video codecs, has a nice and large LCD (320x240) and "Rated battery life: 52 hours for music, 10 hours for video"

With the values you wrote, we can see that video takes 520% more battery than that audio.

Please put your ideas on the RockboxPlayerWishlist:
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/RockboxPlayerWishlist

Thank you :-)

[Bagder]

Simple because they were design for video and not audio! So they have a large and expensive battery. We want also a player that is small and cheap, and we get It reducing audio for 24 hours, for example - so we can have a battery less than half of that one, and cheaper. The money saved on that, can be put on good quality hardware for recording and playing.

This reasoning doesn't hold for much scrutiny at all. You can build your player "designed for audio" as much as you like and get NN hours of audio playback and everything is great.

But: if you also instead of using a crappy 128x128 greyscale LCD used a 320x240 16bit color LCD, you would get some more fancy colors for your audio player, it would be somewhat more expensive, it would attract a lot more potential users and it will get roughly the same run-time (given that you don't run it with backlight a lot).

And here's the twist: everyone who enjoys video or browsing album art on their players can do that! On your audio player.

If this player should compete to other commercial player I wouldn't go below a resolutions of 220x176 (larger LCD means more space for a larger battery ;-)) and a SoC being able to handle MPEG4 with 30fps easily.

I think is a mistake to try compete with that kind of players, because market is flood with them and I think will be easy, quick(already done), to have Linux + some media player like VLC instead of making that on Rockbox.

This logic is flawed on several accounts. First, there are already a large number of such players and Rockbox runs on several. They typically don't run Linux and no, "just installing Linux and VLC" is not enough to do anything good and you saying so just shows your ignorance and lack of knowledge in this area.

As soon as this devices get SoCs for video, they will also have large memories and batteries that can handle Linux.

Now, didn't you pick a SoC that even already has a Linux port working on it? Exactly what's the difference?

You do the same mistake as lots of others when you think Rockbox is simply a better option as long as everything is small and tiny. Rockbox is not only an OS but also an application suite and everything in Rockbox has been crafted for portable media players, for usability with few buttons and for long run-times on batteries. I'd like to see you config your "Linux with VLC" to be even near what Rockbox is.

But as we can see, portable players are quick getting media players, who will invest in good, only, portable audio players?

Can you name any audio player manufactured and sold the last 2-3 years that cannot also display video?

[casainho]

You do the same mistake as lots of others when you think Rockbox is simply a better option as long as everything is small and tiny. Rockbox is not only an OS but also an application suite and everything in Rockbox has been crafted for portable media players, for usability with few buttons and for long run-times on batteries. I'd like to see you config your "Linux with VLC" to be even near what Rockbox is.

Yes, I think as Rockbox good for small and tiny hardware. And yes, I don't now very much, I ignore a lot of things, I can't even boot the ARM9 MCU( I hope to learn)

Can you name any audio player manufactured and sold the last 2-3 years that cannot also display video?

The pacemaker, from June 2007. "The Pacemaker is a Pocket Size DJ System. The device features include a 120 Gb hard drive, an SNR of 103, and a slew of basic DJ audio tools. The DJ tools include a Line out Crossfader, a Headphones Crossfader, Bend, Pitch, DJ Pause, Cue, Loop, EQ, Filter, Sound FX, Headphone Jack, Line out jack and a USB 2.0 connector.", without video.
http://www.pacemaker.net/device/

As we can see, thats a device dedicated to portable audio listen and mixing. Not audio recording for example.

Why should we tailor the hardware for video? just because everyone is doing that? why should we go to touchscreen? just because everyone is doing that?

I would prefer to pay for an hardware dedicated to audio than a media player, but thats me

[Bagder]

Why should we tailor the hardware for video? just because everyone is doing that? why should we go to touchscreen? just because everyone is dong that?

You would not "tailor the hardware for video". You would tailor it to be an attractive audio player. That happens to be able to play video too.

Actually. This'll be my last message in this thread.