Rockbox Development > New Ports
Rockbox Player - Project to design and build a Free/Open hardware audio player
Bagder:
Also, don't be fooled by the fact that they (can) run Linux. These guys don't release the source for their drivers and the manufacturers of the hardwares don't release their docs to us, so a Linux running on them is very little help to actually get Rockbox ported to them...
casainho:
--- Quote from: Bagder on December 08, 2007, 04:56:07 PM ---Also, don't be fooled by the fact that they (can) run Linux. These guys don't release the source for their drivers and the manufacturers of the hardwares don't release their docs to us, so a Linux running on them is very little help to actually get Rockbox ported to them...
--- End quote ---
Bagder, I think I understand you. In this case, of AVR32 or AT91SAM(ARM), Atmel gives all information about microcontroller internals, a full datasheet. And also made a GCC port for AVR32, and IDE for Linux :)
--- Quote from: Llorean on December 08, 2007, 03:19:50 PM ---...Rockbox as a stand alone firmware will always have the potential to get better battery life and performance than MPlayer on Linux on the same hardware. So, if you're actually buying a portable player for portability and on-battery use, Rockbox will always be an alternative if you actually want efficiency.
--- End quote ---
I understand, however, I believe that actual and future hardware will be tailored for portability and on-battery use, AND for multimedia! a good example is the S1mp3 players from China, even these ones are getting to MP4, multimedia! Users will expect a RB system with MP4 for sure.
--- Quote from: scharkalvin on December 08, 2007, 04:16:10 PM ---
--- Quote ---You said AVR32, but they also have an ARM right? - for what I understand, RockBox have good support for ARMs... what would be the good choice? ARM or AVR32? - Atmel have ARM and AVR32 dev board...
--- End quote ---
Well it looked like the avr32 had everything but the kitchen sink in it, including the required AC97 D/A, LCD hardware interface, flash memory interface, USB interface, and even ethernet! Their arm offerings would require external hw to do much of this. The downside is having to work with BGA packages, but that's what the world is going to.
--- End quote ---
scharkalvin, can you help to do some analysis between "AT91RM3400 Development Kit User Guide"(ARM) and "AT32NGW100"?
What is the price of each and what external hardware would be need for each board?
I can get one AT32NGW100 for 90 euros at Farnell or Digikey, I am wiling to pay for one If I can help trying make RB working on this hardware, thinking that this hardware will have long life in market.
In the small company that I work, we don't assembly BGA, just TSOP. My chief told my that maybe in 2 years we will change for wire bounding, so, jumping the BGA tecnhology :) Future looks like for robots and not humans...
saratoga:
I'm not really sure what the point of buying a dev kit is, unless you're going to put it into a set top box or some other large unit. You certainly couldn't make a portable device from one. But if you don't care about that, make sure it has at least 1-2 MB worth of RAM or you won't be doing much with Rockbox.
Bagder:
Well dev boards are fine for development, but then (when you have something going) you of course have to make your own board and cram it into a tiny box to make an actual player out of all this.
scharkalvin:
--- Quote ---can you help to do some analysis between "AT91RM3400 Development Kit User Guide"(ARM) and "AT32NGW100
--- End quote ---
The at32ngw100 is a lower cost (but full featured) development board compared to the "full" avr32 development board. The cpu has a D/A converter, full LCD controller (for a graphic LCD, and someone has posted how to use the LCD from a Sony PS with this). The board also has two 100mb ethernet ports, a usb 2.0 port (slave), as well as 2m of dynamic ram.
The arm development board does not have a full LCD interface (a simple serial interface for LCD's that already have a controler on them). It also lacks USB or ethernet, and external ram.
Both have an interface for flash memory.
The avr32 chip is simply a highly intergrated device, similar to the portal-player chips but with Atmel's own cpu instead of an ARM processor core. It seems to be close to the performance in mips of the arm, but it's only a single core.
The development board would require external boards to be laid out to handle the required glue logic for things like the LCD interface, audio output, keypad interface, and a flash card. Once the overall design using the processor was fleshed out a new pc board holding just the required circuity could be laid out, and it could be sized to fit a portable audio player. I would think that Atmel has the footprint for this package already in a format that can be imported into many pc cad packages, so laying out a pc board for a BGA package shouldn't be a problem (though one would have to deal with a board of at least 4 layers). The board couldn't be 'stuffed' in one's garage, it would have to be outsourced to an outfit that does this things.
I don't think such a player would be cost competitive with anything from Sandisk or Apple, but it should still be in a price range that might make sense for someone that preferred an 'open' device. Even if it had to be made a bit larger than what's available, there are advantages to that. Such as room for a battery with a large capacity for long playing time. Or an LCD display large enough to show video for those of us with more 'ancient' eyes. And controls that are large enough for the fumble fingered crowd. (I admit I'm entering 'old-fart-hood').
For an interface, put a touch screen over the LCD, write some creative software and emulate the iPod touch?
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