Pyra as a Music Player

[sirjorj]

First post here! I have been following this project for a while and I'm pretty excited that it is nearing completion.

How well would this device work as a music player? Could I load up a 32GB SD/uSD card with my library, plug in headphones, and use a Pyra as an iPod replacement? If I close the screen, would it go to sleep and stop the music? Or would the screen stay on and the device would use a lot of power to just play music? Will this thing have a power-efficient music player mode?

 

[TrashyMG]

First post here! I have been following this project for a while and I'm pretty excited that it is nearing completion.

How well would this device work as a music player? Could I load up a 32GB SD/uSD card with my library, plug in headphones, and use a Pyra as an iPod replacement? If I close the screen, would it go to sleep and stop the music? Or would the screen stay on and the device would use a lot of power to just play music? Will this thing have a power-efficient music player mode?

You can load SD cards larger than 32GB. the Lid settings can be done just like any other laptop, you can set it to just blank the screen instead of going into a suspend mode, which may be the default setting anyway as it is on the Pandora. The CPU speed is on demand, something like music playback won't tax it. The prior Pandora handheld despite being 6 years old can do all this is more.

 

[sirjorj]

Excellent! That is great news! Thanks!

 

[tigerroast]

I doubt there'd be much drive to get Rockbox running on the Pyra, at least as a standalone image as opposed to an SDL app, but I'd like to dual-boot to a power-sipping OS for long-listening. It would probably be more efficient to minimally install Arch onto an SD card and boot up Rockbox as the one and only start-up app. Just write a simple unit file for it and then systemctl enable rockbox.service.

Kinda redundant to have such a specialized OS on a multi-purpose device though, especially if the power savings aren't that great.

 

[ible]

maybe run a unikernel? but yeah, probably the default OS will become very power efficient within a few years, if the pandora's development has anything to say.

 

[pyrat]

nearly sci-fic: Could rockbox run on the M4 alone and keep the A15 suspended ?

 

[Caine]

First post here! I have been following this project for a while and I'm pretty excited that it is nearing completion.

Hi Sirjorj, welcome to the community.

How well would this device work as a music player?

Like the Pandora, the Pyra will work pretty great as a music player. There are a couple of things to keep in mind:

• For a music player, the device is quite big and not as easy to pocket.
• The audio-port is on the back. So you probably need a headset with a 90 degree angle plug, use Bluetooth, or have really big pockets.

 

[WizardStan]

nearly sci-fic: Could rockbox run on the M4 alone and keep the A15 suspended ?

Maybe not rockbox, but some barebones music player could.
The problem will be exactly the same as the Pandora and its DSP though: who will write such a music player?

 

[sulu]

Maybe not rockbox, but some barebones music player could.

There is a thread from 2012 in the Rockbox forums about using an M4. [1] Unfortunately it doesn't end with a final result, but the general tone seems to be that it shouldn't be too difficult, if there is enough RAM available (2-4MB), which in turn shouldn't be a problem on the Pyra.

[1] http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=33836.0

 

[_jr_]

Wouldn't any M4 based solution have to go through the main OS to access mass storage, audio, and controls?

 

[WizardStan]

Wouldn't any M4 based solution have to go through the main OS to access mass storage, audio, and controls?

As far as I know, the M4 has direct access to all the same things the A15 does, we'd "only" need to write drivers for them.
Alternatively, if the sound chip has a sufficiently large buffer, the A15 could sleep for a second, wake up, grab the next 96K, repeat. Wouldn't save as much as if it were fully asleep, but it'd be better.
And if that won't work either, then if all it needs to do is copy RAM to the sound chip the A15 would be sufficiently idle that it wouldn't use a lot of power.

 

[levi]

Yeah, but the more you do to interface the A15 with the M4 running rockbox, it starts to become a lot of work compared to just running an mp3 decoder on the A15 and sleeping the rest of the time in full Linux.

 

[Alperoot]

Sorry, but isn't $500 - $600 a bit too much for a music player? I mean, Pyra is great with all its abilities, not just one ^^

 

[ible]

well, use it for the music player ability, and more .

i wrote a music player for the bitbox (cortex M4F, though just using integers, so don't need the F -- pyra M4's are F-less), but it's really rudimentary -- it just streams a specialized wav off the SD card.

 

[Plume]

pyra M4's are F-less

What's the point of a music player, if it can't produce an F

 

[mr.white]

Maybe not rockbox, but some barebones music player could.
The problem will be exactly the same as the Pandora and its DSP though: who will write such a music player?

Would it not possible to just use the Pandora Rockbox port?

 

[WizardStan]

Would it not possible to just use the Pandora Rockbox port?

Not on the M4s.

 

[sirjorj]

Thanks for all the feedback. And yes, I do not plan on getting one JUST to use it as a music player - I was just curious how well it would fill that role. Personally, I just want to be able to run git+clang/gcc+emacs on a pocket computer that has a physical keyboard!

 

[ible]

like for everything but emacs

 

[Caine]

like for everything but emacs

You are entitled to your opinion. Even if you are wrong