Pandora As A Dap (Rockbox)

[ep0ch]

I was wondering if it's possible to get Rockbox running on OpenPandora? Maybe Rockbox would be the ideal platform to get OpenPandora hitting 100+hrs mp3 playback?? Rockbox isn't an application (yet) but a basic OS, GUI and codec system aimed at existing portable MP3 players. So it would most likely have to be a seperate boot option should anyone ever get it ported. They're a helpful and determined team so if anyone feels generous try sending them a Beagleboard and who knows what might happen!

www.rockbox.org.

 

[Bosbeetle]

Anything that can play, manage large amounts, and scrobble music is fine by me.

 

[Trevsweb]

wouldnt mind a quick booting music os. as i plan on hopefully using this in my car.
would prefer something with big old buttons on the touch screen though.

 

[elwing]

wouldnt mind a quick booting music os. as i plan on hopefully using this in my car.
would prefer something with big old buttons on the touch screen though.

I was using rockbox on my old archos player 20 Go and it was great... much better than archos official firmware.. if the pandora could have a simple dual boot only to play mp3 with huge playtime that would surely be great...

 

[musicalwoods]

If Rockbox were to be utilized on the Pandora, it would be as an application. There are a few dead threads in the Rockbox forums about that question.

 

[elwing]

If Rockbox were to be utilized on the Pandora, it would be as an application. There are a few dead threads in the Rockbox forums about that question.

then it would serve no point, there are much better software alternative... rockbox would only be usefull as a separate minimal boot to provide the maximum battery time...

 

[Miner49er]

I posted a message to the forum regarding this as I use Rockbox on 3 (4 if you count my wifes player) players myself.
The idea was shot down in flames due to having to re-write drivers for the various parts fo the device.

I still think it would be a good idea to have a dual boot to a minimal rockbox OS but I do not have the skills to port it so it would be up to someone else.

Maybe someone more familer with OMAP3/ARM/whatever could pose the question in a more technical manner to the rockbox team - if a reasonable argument could be posed I would be willing to chip in with some other people to supply a rockbox developer with a device.

I would REALLY like to see Rockbox on the Pandora

 

[ep0ch]

I'm suprised you were shot down in flames because drivers need to be re-written. Isn't that the whole process of porting Rockbox to a new device?

 

[elwing]

I'm suprised you were shot down in flames because drivers need to be re-written. Isn't that the whole process of porting Rockbox to a new device?

that's specialy strange when you do think that you will need only a little part of the driver if you want to make a liteweight player OS the last pretty long you won't need lot of the hardware... and since that would be MUCH more usefull than all these threads about windows CE...

 

[Miner49er]

I'm suprised you were shot down in flames because drivers need to be re-written. Isn't that the whole process of porting Rockbox to a new device?

that's specialy strange when you do think that you will need only a little part of the driver if you want to make a liteweight player OS the last pretty long you won't need lot of the hardware... and since that would be MUCH more usefull than all these threads about windows CE...

I guess the reasoning was that "it would be easier to just run linux" but I didn't have the techical knowledge to explain about the much quoted 100hours+ battery life possibility.

 

[w1ll14m]

When porting rockbox they expect someone with a device (and knownledge) to start the project.
They are very willing to help porting and resolve issues.
But they will probably flame you when you ask them 'can you port rockbox to pandora?'

Rockbox runs a lot of codecs that are highly optimised for usage on arm processors running on 80-200 MHz.
They also like to get most out of their batteries (dynamic cpu speed and display brightness and a lot of optimizations (disable unused hardware etc)

at the moment i own an ipod 5g and toshiba gigabeat s.
ipod 5g has a 80Mhz arm core (and a co cpu also 80Mhz)
and it runs a lot of codecs and is pretty capable of playing a mpeg2 video (normal ipod video does that with a dedicated video decoding chip).

Advantages we have:
We allready know almost all hardware used in pandora (we can probably get much more support from pandora devs then you would ever get by e-mailing apple)
Most devices that are supported by rockbox ports takes 6 to 12 months to mature as those devices are really closed devices.
And it takes time to reverse engineer it and create bootloader.
We also have a good cummunity with much knownledge.

I'd say we need a real port, not the rockbox as application project.
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/NewPort

PS
i've been using rockbox now for over 3 years, i will never buy a dap that can't run rockbox.

 

[Miner49er]

When porting rockbox they expect someone with a device (and knownledge) to start the project.
They are very willing to help porting and resolve issues.
But they will probably flame you when you ask them 'can you port rockbox to pandora?'

Rockbox runs a lot of codecs that are highly optimised for usage on arm processors running on 80-200 MHz.
They also like to get most out of their batteries (dynamic cpu speed and display brightness and a lot of optimizations (disable unused hardware etc)

at the moment i own an ipod 5g and toshiba gigabeat s.
ipod 5g has a 80Mhz arm core (and a co cpu also 80Mhz)
and it runs a lot of codecs and is pretty capable of playing a mpeg2 video (normal ipod video does that with a dedicated video decoding chip).

Advantages we have:
We allready know almost all hardware used in pandora (we can probably get much more support from pandora devs then you would ever get by e-mailing apple)
Most devices that are supported by rockbox ports takes 6 to 12 months to mature as those devices are really closed devices.
And it takes time to reverse engineer it and create bootloader.
We also have a good cummunity with much knownledge.

I'd say we need a real port, not the rockbox as application project.


PS
i've been using rockbox now for over 3 years, i will never buy a dap that can't run rockbox.

Well, I didn't just ask "will you port to Pandora", I simply asked for opinions on what core-developers thought. I just thought the opinions were very negative.

However, reading your words it sounds more positive.

I've been using Rockbox since the early Archos days and, like you, will only buy a Rockbox capable player.

So, it seems we have some interest in this?

I would be more than happy to help with this in any way, both coding and financially. I've tinkered with the rockbox code, I've written a couple of games for it but haven't touched the core though. I've tinkered with the GUI to get it to behave with my old Archos that had broken buttons (brilliantly demonstraing the usefullness of open source software!).

That in mind, there's still no way I could start the project off...

 

[elwing]

So, it seems we have some interest in this?

if we can run a simple mp3 player app for 50-100hours and if we can't get more than 20hours using a linux app then yes, there is prolly some interest, I doubt getting more than 20hours of play will be one of the first priority through...

 

[greendots]

100 hours was the calculated estimation for battery life using an underclocked cpu core only and no screen iirc. Linux would likely have a longer battery life then Rockbox unless power management features where implemented. The only advantage that Rockbox would have is probably a faster boot time and its interface. It would be easier if some one could port the interface and use the optimized gstreamer for the cortex. I think we will have a nicer audio player though

 

[ep0ch]

The rockbox interface is it's worst part! Rockbox can be programmed to underclock the CPU and switch off unnecessary components and will no doubt last much longer than a Linux based player. Rockbox on supported devices usually has longer battery life than the devices own firmware. Also there's no reason why the rockbox codecs can't be ported to use the dsp as well.

 

[w1ll14m]

The rockbox interface is it's worst part! Rockbox can be programmed to underclock the CPU and switch off unnecessary components and will no doubt last much longer than a Linux based player. Rockbox on supported devices usually has longer battery life than the devices own firmware. Also there's no reason why the rockbox codecs can't be ported to use the dsp as well.

Well said, the power management in rockbox is not something to be taken lightly (linux is a big joke when comparing them)

Well the codecs are allready optimized to run at the dsp and average core speed of 100-200MHz you would still get 150-200% realtime decoding.
I don't know about the cortex, but if it could run on like 50 MHz, the dsp on '100Mhz normal' and '200Mhz boost' for the decoding and the main core for rockbox interface.
(Maybe it's even possible to run on only the dsp? and let cortex sleep forever?)
Switch off sgx and other unused devices it could really last a long time on a single charge.

The problems we would face:
Write bootloader (possible assembly involved)
Write codec driver (if we have wolfson codec there is much code we can re use)
Write LCD driver
Write storage driver
Write touchscreen driver
Write button(/GPIO) drivers
Write Powermgmt driver
Get codecs run on DSP

Advantages we have:
*We don't have to reverse engineer the device i will not say the device is fully open but we don't have encrypted firmwares or complicated bootloaders to deal with.
*Most hardware we can get documents on how to use them.
*We could ask devs to give some info on how some 'specific' component is wired to omap.
*pandora is an unbrickable device
*Pandora's pcb is easier than avarage dap.

I'm not much of a coder, but i played around with rockbox sources and my ipod 5g for a while (got my 5g 30gb to run at 105MHz stable and my 5g 60GB stable at 96 MHz.
i'm a big fan of sw eq on rockbox... so needed more power )

There is one huge thing i'd like about rockbox on pandora. It would be the best device for car music (codecs and theme).

A Rockbox port is possible but if a port of rockbox would happen, it takes atleast 6 months to be functional.
the port of Gigabeat S started almost 1.5 years ago it still is a new port.
it took 6 months to get it to play music.


-edit-
Fix typo's

 

[sold]

Would it be possible to boot rockbox from the Pandora's os and upon exiting rockbox, restart the Pandora's os? I think that would be great if it is possible because we wouldn't have to mess about dual booting anything. Any ideas?

 

[w1ll14m]

Would it be possible to boot rockbox from the Pandora's os and upon exiting rockbox, restart the Pandora's os? I think that would be great if it is possible because we wouldn't have to mess about dual booting anything. Any ideas?

Rockbox is also very good at dual-booting between original firmware and rockbox.
Sometimes even the possibility to load original firmware from rockbox (means shutting down rockbox and boot of) RoLo (ROckboxLOader) might be intresting for that.
Besides pandora will get a nice bootloader which give us a lot of options how and what we want to boot
I'm thinking about a menu with pandora os as default and 5 secs delay?
i don't think this will be a problem.

-edit-
typo's

 

[lulzfish]

Would it be possible to boot Rockbox while Linux is suspended to disk?

 

[w1ll14m]

Would it be possible to boot Rockbox while Linux is suspended to disk?

Yes, it is possible altough pandora's os should support suspend to disk (aka tuxonice) which it will i expect.
Then i would advice to use sdhc slot2 and configure a swap partition for tuxonice.