Rockbox Technical Forums
Support and General Use => Hardware => Topic started by: Raketa on May 29, 2020, 12:54:13 PM
-
Long time lurker, first poster. Some of us are here for Rockbox, the software. Some of us are here just because we want a decent MP3 player suitable for our needs. I don't have a device at hand current to run Rockbox on, so I'd start out as a member of the latter group.
My personal preference is for small players of the SanDisk Sansa Clip family and iPod shuffle sizes. As I understand the current Clip Jam and Clip Sport offered by SanDisk are seriously crippled to run Rockbox and otherwise too (https://forums.sandisk.com/t5/Sansa-Clip-Sansa-Clip/Sansa-Clip-sells-for-hundreds-of-dollars-on-eBay-Worthwhile/td-p/376746). I wasn't able to find what's required from MP3 players hardwarewise to run Rockbox on them though. The main purpose of an MP3 player for me is to play podcasts and audiobooks.
Meet the ESP8266 (https://www.espressif.com/en/products/socs/esp8266/overview) and the ESP32 (https://www.espressif.com/en/products/socs/esp32-s2) system on a chip microcontrollers from China. Fully featured with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth if you care about such things. The ESP32 is the newer version. The ESP32-S2 is the newest version. It's good enough to power HardKernel's open GameBoy lookalike, the ODROID-GO (https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-go/). But this GameBoy is just too big for me to be my MP3 player. The ESP8266 and the ESP32 have quite the development community around them. Just go to the bottom of Expressif's website (https://www.espressif.com/) and under Developer Zone you find 3 official forums. These are just the official forums of course. The Chinese are really good at hardware hacking (https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=3107) in general.
Some people and organizations come to my mind who can possibly help us bringing a hacker friendly, ESP8266 or ESP32 based MP3 player to life. (Preferably in my SanDisk Sansa Clip or iPod shuffle size.)
1. HardKernel. See above.
2. Andrew "bunnie" Huang (https://www.bunniestudios.com/). See above.
3. Crowd Supply (https://www.crowdsupply.com/about). They are a "better" Kickstarter or Indiegogo in a sense that they help their projects to succeed in meaningful ways. See the link. They helped bringing the PocketSprite (https://pocketsprite.com/), another ESP32-based gaming handheld alive. Now this seems tiny enough for me though it looks a little thick, but unfortunately the buttons are even tinier, not suitable to be the control buttons on an MP3 player.
4. @hunterleo hang around here as AGPtek's representative? Last time he was here a year ago (https://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?action=profile;u=62878). That's not a long time given the pace here. :(
5. This may be a little off, but GL.iNet (https://www.gl-inet.com/) is a nice Hong Kong based company specializing in hacker friendly home routers for the open source community. They earned some awards on CES. The connection here may be that routers use relatively simple processors. At least the type of GL.iNet is specializing in. And OpenWRT runs on many different routers.
6. M5Stack (https://m5stack.com/) is a rapid ESP32 IoT development board from China. For learning purposes and kids, too. (Related to Arduino?)
+1. Other stuff, not ESP32 or ESP2866. Dooba (https://dooba.io/) is an open-source embedded development ecosystem from Switzerland. Their dedicated MP3 module (https://dooba.io/en/shop_items/13). (Related to Arduino?)
+2. Volumio (https://volumio.org/) makes open source hi-fi audio software and sell it in a freemium model (or something) along with open source friendly hi-fi audio hardware for home use. So they are not into portables that much as we are here, but at least they operate along similar principles. The founder, Michelangelo is at least is from Italy.
+3. The S1 MP3 player (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S1_MP3_player). Is there one of these which doesn't look and feel so cheap?
There are also many people who are looking for a Sansa Clip replacement on r/BuyItForLife (https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyItForLife/comments/5wy7sq/bifl_request_alternatives_to_the_sansa_clip/).
Now something else. Inspiration. If you are OK with a player without a display (I'm OK with that), the Mighty MP3 player (https://bemighty.com/) is at least a good looking iPod shuffle clone with proper buttons. The problem is it only works with Spotify and Amazon Music, not with your own files.
Design inspiration from Japanese Amazon #1 (https://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%82%B0%E3%83%AA%E3%83%BC%E3%83%B3%E3%83%8F%E3%82%A6%E3%82%B9-Bluetooth4-1-%E3%83%9C%E3%82%A4%E3%82%B9%E3%83%AC%E3%82%B3%E3%83%BC%E3%83%80%E3%83%BC%E6%90%AD%E8%BC%89-microSDHC16GB-GH-KANABTEC32-WH/dp/B07Y59HP3P).
Design inspiration from Japanese Amazon #2 (https://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%83%9C%E3%82%A4%E3%82%B9%E3%83%AC%E3%82%B3%E3%83%BC%E3%83%80%E3%83%BC-IC%E3%83%AC%E3%82%B3%E3%83%BC%E3%83%80%E3%83%BC-MP3%E3%83%97%E3%83%AC%E3%83%BC%E3%83%A4%E3%83%BC-%E3%82%AB%E3%83%A9%E3%83%BC%E3%83%87%E3%82%A3%E3%82%B9%E3%83%97%E3%83%AC%E3%82%A4-%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E8%AA%9E%E8%AA%AC%E6%98%8E%E6%9B%B8%E4%BB%98%E3%81%8D/dp/B086GJB77C).
In the end I really hope I don't have to buy an Olympus digital recorder (https://www.getolympus.com/us/en/audio/digital-recorders.html) just to play my podcasts and audiobooks. But if I have to, I have to. Which one?
All right. Your thoughts? What can we make of this info at all? One night the thought why I don't have a proper MP3 player didn't let me sleep so I had to gather all this info. That's all.
Edited to add. Why do we still care about MP3 players while everyone suggests that we should just use our phones for our music/podcasts/audiobooks listening needs? The question is worth addressing. My perspective:
- MP3 players have physical buttons to operate, phones don't. For some that's a big plus.
- Some people appreciate that their music/podcasts/audiobooks listening don't consume their phones' battery lives. Not to mention in these crazy times some of our phones' battery lives are consumed by contact tracing apps.
- I listen to podcasts and audiobooks. This is often not just background listening like with music. I need to use the controls more deliberately. Meaning, device in hand, finger on the buttons. So for example I can rewind to listen to a segment again if I wasn't able to fully pay attention. While walking the device is at a heightened risk of dropping because I hold it in my hand. An accidental drop doesn't hurt a cheap MP3 player that much that even a medium range phone. Flagship phones? Ouch.
-
Meet the ESP8266 (https://www.espressif.com/en/products/socs/esp8266/overview) and the ESP32 (https://www.espressif.com/en/products/socs/esp32-s2) system on a chip microcontrollers from China.
I suggest picking a SOC with an ARM or MIPS core, and ideally one that Rockbox already supports. Failing that, you could get a SOC that has a full MMU and runs linux and then compile rockbox as an SDL application, although being ARM is still a good idea here since the codecs are optimized for ARM. Doing a full OS port to a new architecture like ESP32 while also designing the hardware would be an extremely long undertaking.
-
The main purpose of an MP3 player for me is to play podcasts and audiobooks.
Podcasting is a big business #1 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvisTHAvaIE).
Podcasting is a big business #2 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYwg3xTBH_c).
So at least the timing for this project is perfect. Even if we are aiming for the opposite of a walled garden like what Spotify is trying to do.