Fiio M3k

[daps]

The touchpad doesn't work well because it isn't physically wired properly, and/or the controller firmware is massively broken. The right 1/3rd of the screen reports two fixed values (for the back and right arrow "buttons") and the left 2/3rds is highly nonlinear which makes the scrollbar a bit janky. By nonlinear I mean this -- If the pad is linear then 1pt = 1mm (for example) no matter where your finger is or what direction you move. But with a nonlinear pad 1pt reported by the pad could be 1mm, or 2mm in another place or 0.1mm at some other point on the screen. And this varies independently in each axis so the problem is compounded. In fact, the pad supports 2-point multitouch, but very unreliably, and only in the left 2/3rds. The touchpad on this device is absolutely TERRIBLE, in fact.

I can easily add an option to change the size of the touch zones, which could be used to make the up/down zones easier to press, but I suspect the issue is simply that the center of the touch is detected poorly -- your finger is very large compared to one "pixel" on the touchpad, and the firmware must calculate the center point based on a huge number of physical inputs from the pad. With bad firmware / bad pad the reported values will also be bad, and it's impossible to fix since it's all hardcoded and hardwired.

Sorry for the long winded rant, but I hope it's explains why the M3K's touchpad sucks.

Isn't the M3K identical to the M3 Pro except the M3 Pro has a touchscreen? Would that make it a good option for a port?

[7o9]

Isn't the M3K identical to the M3 Pro except the M3 Pro has a touchscreen? Would that make it a good option for a port?

M3 Pro has the same SoC but a different DAC (ES9218P). The firmware might be similar to the M3K though which would be helpful.

That ES9218P is used by various other players with the same Ingenic X1000E SoC (Hidizs AP80Pro, Shanling Q1/M0 and others).

[darkstarcumberland]

Hi all,

I have been using this software on my FiiO M3K and love it. I often switch back and forth between Rockbox (for music playback) & the FiiO Firmware (for using the USB DAC feature). I did this every day for many months with no problem.

Suddenly I have an issue where I cannot switch back to the FiiO Firmware. On the SELECT PLAYER screen, when I choose "FIIO MUSIC," the unit freezes, the countdown freezes, the screen stays on indefinitely until I hold the power button. Rockbox can be loaded as normal, but FiiO Firmware cannot.

I have wiped my SD card, reinstalled the default FiiO firmware, reinstalled Rockbox, multiple times, still this issue occurs.

I can use the FiiO firmware if it is the only thing installed on the device.
Once I install Rockbox, FiiO firmware crashes when attempting to launch. Rockbox loads fine.

I think a similar issue has been discussed in this thread but I can't easily follow the technical discussion.

I have not used the "bootloader.m3k" software because I only have access to Mac and I understand it is not possible with a Mac. I do not really understand what that software would do.

I am using the version of the software found here: http://xvtx.ru/rockbox/download.htm
As far as I can tell there are no new versions in the past several months?
Most recent version 1.4.3, date added: 10/13/2019

If anyone has a solution to this I would welcome it.

Thank you for the work on this great software

[amachronic]

@darkstarcumberland I think the issue you're having is that some directory has gone missing. Ran into this a few times myself, although I'm not sure why it happens. I don't remember which directory it is, something like /data/userfs but I'm not sure, I'll have to check on my end. Maybe someone else can say? It's easily fixed by running a script from the xvortex 'bootloader'.

If you know how to start getty on the USB serial port, you can get a shell on the M3K and start the Fiio player manually. It will throw some error and you can find out the missing path that way.

For the record XVortex's port isn't really supported -- us rockbox devs have no control over it. Something like it got added to the 'official' Rockbox repository a while back and it's called the "FiiO M3K Linux" port nowadays, although I have never used that version and can't say if it even works. The bootloader.m3k stuff is for the native port which doesn't have dual boot or USB DAC capabilities -- at least not yet -- so I guess switching is not a good idea for you anyway.

[g.orlandini]

- Charging is very slow (around 0,1 A), not a big problem (Every now and then I can wait few hours for a complete charge)

Hmm, I thought I had fixed that issue... It's caused by Rockbox thinking there is a USB host (like a PC) although there is none. As a workaround you can set General Settings > System > Battery > Charge During USB connection to Force, it should force the full 500 mA charge rate. I'm not sure why Rockbox is getting confused but I'll look into it when I have the time.

- font size in some pages (Battery view in debug menu) is really small (I need a big magnifier to read!), it should be (at least) double that size for comfortable reading. Is there any option in the menu settings to increase the size ?

Nope, it's hardcoded in the build. I will increase it at some point, I already did that in the bootloader because it was so hard to read. I have to rearrange some debug screens first since they'd become unreadable with a larger font.

Do you advice to reinstall a new bootloader with your improvement "X1000: simplify NAND driver" ? At the moment the bootloader I've installed is working well.

It's not necessary.

I confirm that with your workaround (General Settings > System > Battery > Charge During USB connection to Force) charging is @ 450mA (much better than 100 mA).

Any chance for implement recording ? There's a useful plugin/application (Pitch_detector) for musical instruments tuning that needs it.

So far no big issues in this beta version. Great job

[amachronic]

g.orlandini, in fact I'm planning on doing recording soon. And thanks for reminding me about that USB charging issue, I really need to get to the bottom of that.

[g.orlandini]

It was a (very) minor issue charging @100 mA, but now with your simple workaround charging @450 mA is really OK.
It would be nice to implement recording.

Great job

[darkstarcumberland]

@darkstarcumberland I think the issue you're having is that some directory has gone missing. Ran into this a few times myself, although I'm not sure why it happens. I don't remember which directory it is, something like /data/userfs but I'm not sure, I'll have to check on my end. Maybe someone else can say? It's easily fixed by running a script from the xvortex 'bootloader'.

If you know how to start getty on the USB serial port, you can get a shell on the M3K and start the Fiio player manually. It will throw some error and you can find out the missing path that way.

For the record XVortex's port isn't really supported -- us rockbox devs have no control over it. Something like it got added to the 'official' Rockbox repository a while back and it's called the "FiiO M3K Linux" port nowadays, although I have never used that version and can't say if it even works. The bootloader.m3k stuff is for the native port which doesn't have dual boot or USB DAC capabilities -- at least not yet -- so I guess switching is not a good idea for you anyway.

Thank you for the info and solutions. Clearly I am not a dev  But trying to follow along the best I can. I see there are "daily builds" that folks are using, but I suppose since I only have access to a Mac system right now, I cannot set that up.

In any case it's no big deal, I have two possible "solutions" that work for me.
1. Use the M3K for Rockbox only and use a different piece of hardware for my DAC.
2. Get a second micro SD card, keep the Rockbox installer on one card and the Fiio Firmware installer on the other card, and "update" the device each time I need to switch.

I think option 1 is less complicated ;-)

Thanks again to everyone working on this, appreciate this open source option even when things go a little wrong.

[amachronic]

Sorry, I almost forgot about you @darkstarcumberland...

Code: [Select]

#!/bin/ash
rm -rf /data/userfs
mkdir /data/userfs

Copy and paste the code into a file called fix_fiio_fs.sh (the exact name is not important that's just my example). Put that script on the root of your SD card and run the script from the tools menu. Hopefully that will fix your problem.

Regarding Mac and the native port, I expect that the installer jztool will work fine. The problem is that I can't test it because I don't own a Mac. I need someone who does to compile jztool on Mac and see if it works.

[heyspencerb]

Hey! So I have been frustrated by how tiny the text is in the search menu on the M3K so I hacked together a fix which looks like this:

https://imgur.com/a/Efasvsa

However this fix is hacky and has some bugs, can you look at my merge request and try out my version? I'm hoping something like this could be added in a better way. It will bring you back to the center of the search menu after each letter to make typing faster, and the letters are organized such that the most commonly used letters are the closest to the center.
Here is the merge request:
https://gerrit.rockbox.org/r/c/rockbox/+/3447

The bug I haven't fixed yet is that when you start typing the first five letters or so appear off to the left side of the screen. Also, make sure you have all of the fonts installed as you need them for this to work. Let me know what you think of the idea, and how this could be implemented in a better way.

[amachronic]

Cool. I like that the text entry area isn't taking up half the screen like it normally does.

A suggestion: did you try defining a custom keyboard layout and loading it? There's been support for that for an age, I just don't think it's that well documented. You simply create a file with the .kbd extension and put the characters in like so...

Code: [Select]

RY
QSF
JIM
.. etc ..

then you can select the .kbd file in the file browser on Rockbox to load it. There is even a setting for it and it seems to remember your last loaded keyboard & apply it at boot, as long as you drop it in the /.rockbox directory. But it seems there are some missing features, eg. you cannot define multiple pages like the standard keyboard has.

I don't think the font size can be changed right now, but there could be a setting for that. The auto-recentering is a neat idea -- it could also be a setting, although it might appear useless or frustrating at first glance because it won't work well on the "standard" layout.

PS. The tiny text problem is that the 'system font' is 8px. I tried upping it to 16px Terminus to match the bootloader, but it broke the status bar, most of the debug screens, and maybe other stuff. I'm not sure how to fix some of those issues tbh. Anyone else annoyed by the tiny font is welcome to try.

[heyspencerb]

I'm glad you like the idea!

I definitely see what you mean when you say that recentering wouldn't be for every keyboard layout, as it would drive me crazy on the current layout.

As for font choice, I think the proper way to fix this would be to have the font for the keyboard match the chosen font. Right now it doesn't but I think this would be pretty easy by setting

Code: [Select]

pm->curfont = ;equal to whatever font the system is using currently. If you have all of the fonts downloaded I had success by using pm->curfont = 10; I think. You can look at the list and see what font matches to what number with some experimentation I think.

In order to get the letters in the search box to not overlap I had to increase pm->text_w to 11, but this caused the issue of the first letters starting off the screen. If you don't set pm->text_w, or if you set it to pm->text_w = 6 then the text stays on screen but then each new letter overlaps the lasts so its impossible to read what your writing out.

I will try writing my keyboard layout as a .kbd file, but another thing I have in my personal repo is that the first time you pick a letter the keyboard is laid out based on the most common First letters in English, and then it switches the keyboard to be based on the most common letters in general after that. This feature isn't the most important but do you think it would be a good addition as well?

Cool. I like that the text entry area isn't taking up half the screen like it normally does.

I got the text entry to be only the bottom part by changing pm->main_y = 300; this moves the text entry to the bottom of the screen, otherwise it would be covering up the keyboard. The best way for this would likely be to find what 1/8 of the screen size would be or so, set pm->keyboard_margin to be that size, then do some math to make sure that pm->main_y is set so the text entry is still at the bottom.

[amachronic]

I will try writing my keyboard layout as a .kbd file, but another thing I have in my personal repo is that the first time you pick a letter the keyboard is laid out based on the most common First letters in English, and then it switches the keyboard to be based on the most common letters in general after that. This feature isn't the most important but do you think it would be a good addition as well?

I suspect you'd have to type a lot before that kind of tweak saves time, versus the initial confusion of getting used to it, especially if using the keyboard only occasionally. I doubt it's widely useful enough to be worth including. Personally I've never seen a software keyboard do this -- I fall into the "confused occasional user" category

[GSV3MiaC]

Late to the party .. my M3K just arrived (probably be obsolete next week, already hard to find) and I am wondering if/when we will have an 'easily installable' RB version (i.e. one which doesn't require a degree in CS, and three levels of firmware fiddles). Is there any sort of forecast - is that even a feasible goal? Coming from the ClipZip world, I was looking for a simple solution for my old age!

Meantime I guess I can use the Vortex port, although that seems no longer updated, and I think maybe USB/PC connection doesn't work unless you revert to original Firmware?

[dconrad]

Late to the party .. my M3K just arrived (probably be obsolete next week, already hard to find) and I am wondering if/when we will have an 'easily installable' RB version (i.e. one which doesn't require a degree in CS, and three levels of firmware fiddles). Is there any sort of forecast - is that even a feasible goal? Coming from the ClipZip world, I was looking for a simple solution for my old age!

Meantime I guess I can use the Vortex port, although that seems no longer updated, and I think maybe USB/PC connection doesn't work unless you revert to original Firmware?

Hi GSV3MiaC -

It's not quite "click one button" easy yet, but I assume you saw the new installation instructions? It's quite a bit better process than it used to be.