Release Rockbox as an app


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froggyman

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Rockbox is normally a replacement firmware for a wide variety of DAPs/MP3 players (you can learn more about that here: http://rockbox.org), but it is also available as an android apk and an SDL app for the desktop. The last one is what this is considered. You should be able to use this build to play music files, such as FLAC, AAC, MP3, Ogg, etc. You should also be able to play some simple games included in this under "plugins" and may even be able to play Doom and Gameboy (Color) games.


This is just a test build, and I need some testers so I can get some feedback on it. You can download the zip of it here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12095030/rockbox.zip . Its not in a pretty .pnd yet, just a simple executable.


You may want to download some 'extras' for this build as the default font will be tiny. You can download them from http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/RockboxExtras . (someone should try running Doom on this...)


Please post any feedback out have on this and if you find any bugs or usability problems on the way. In the future I'll try to learn more about the pandora's SDK and try to package it up in a .pnd and post it in other places.
 
Well I ran it and it works...


Font is tiny as you mentioned... I had to wrestle with the controls and I didn't know how to quit the rockbox.


Also it didn't seem to want to play my OGGs, I'll try more files tomorrow if I have some time.


What was quite nice is that my 2:30hrs of battery life were reported as 6:30hrs... so maybe it will make a very nice light-weight player! :)


Would be good if we could even boot up to this as mp3 mode or something! :)
 
Great, I will return with feedback when I can.

For reference (when it comes to PND building time) you can't go past this:


http://www.gp32x.de.../58490-yactfeau


Assuming you're cross compiling of course, Yactfeau takes all the pain (and all the reading ) out of PNDing an app.
Click to expand...

Actually the dev leading this port of rockbox is planning on adding that into the standard rockbox compiling. You can check the status of it here: http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/PandoraPort

Well I ran it and it works...


Font is tiny as you mentioned... I had to wrestle with the controls and I didn't know how to quit the rockbox.


Also it didn't seem to want to play my OGGs, I'll try more files tomorrow if I have some time.


What was quite nice is that my 2:30hrs of battery life were reported as 6:30hrs... so maybe it will make a very nice light-weight player!


Would be good if we could even boot up to this as mp3 mode or something!
Click to expand...

I'm not sure if battery life is being reported correctly. And not all codecs are supported at this time. I'll try to ask thomasjfox (he's the guy working on this port) about some of that though, and see what he says.
 
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EvilDragon said:
PokeParadox said:
Font is tiny as you mentioned... I had to wrestle with the controls and I didn't know how to quit the rockbox.
Click to expand...

Press select ;)
Click to expand...
Haha Yes thanks ED... I got that far before sleeping last night. But I still couldn't make it play anything. Nor could I change the tiny tiny font to something better for the Pandora screen...


I then realised the N900 port works nice and started trying out that version... :p


Back on topic... I don't know what I'm doing wrong with regards to music, I select a song and tap right to play it, it reads that tags ad basically sits there...


OGG seems to crash something that stops the dpad working too.
 
I read some messages that ThomasJFox left and he said that he wouldn't even recommend using it for daily use yet as there are quite a few problems with audio being played. Hopefully he will have time to fix those problems so you can all enjoy your music through rockbox.
 
thomasjfox said:
My original plan was to fix the audio issue and then provide gruso with an exclusive .pnd for pandorapress.net ;)


Anyway, here's a working .pnd version for the Pandora:


http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/pandora.cgi?0,0,0,0,6,343


Still needs fixing in the audio section as it sometimes clicks/pops.


Besides that all codecs should be usable and it features the cabbie v2 theme for 800x480.
Click to expand...

Oh... Sorry about that. I just saw it in the /tools/configure file when compiling rockbox one day and was kinda curious about it so I decided to compile it and see if it worked for other people.
 
This is fantastic! The touch friendly 800x480 Now Playing screen is everything we've been missing. :)


I am having a little battle with the controls. I eventually discovered that the d-pad takes me back and forward in the file tree / menus, and switches function to track seeking on the now playing screen. The left nub function is a little ambiguous. Definitely have to implement some ABXY control too, I'm sure that's already on the table.


What I need to do now is hit the Rockbox site, RTFM and learn more about how it's all laid out so I can give you some better feedback. Top stuff so far though.


Oh I did manage to crash it once, by violently wiping the seek bar back and forth with the stylus while a 1hr track was playing. Can't really explain why I was doing that.
 
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This certainly seems to me the by far best option for music on the pandora.


I want to play music in my car and nothing seems to be able to fulfill my needs besides Rockbox on the Pandora: Good Audio-Out. Nice Touchscreen-Controls, easy/useful Mapping of Buttons, perfectly readable from a bit further away and (now come the part where most players fail): Finger-Browsable Library while driving. I HATE deciding on what I like to hear before I go. Only interface I yet came across that suits my needs is ipod, but missing memcard support and bloody iTunes to sync makes it uninteresting.


So THANK YOU! (yes that has to be all uppercase).


It works really good already. Some issues I noticed:


Violently jumping around (like Gruso noticed) crashes Rockbox sometimes. Not only forwarding within a big file, also skipping many, many files in a Row manually kills it. Looks to me a bit like an issue with not being able to get data fast enough and crashing. Nothing serious...I can browse more slowly ;)


- Ocasional crackle and pop.


- Saving the position within an audiofile works but sometimes, when you go back to that file it continues to play from the right spot but the time-counter starts at the beginning of the file (nothing really important, just like to notice)


- Accessing the options screen "LCD" freezes Rockbox over here instantly.
 
Gruso said:
Oh I did manage to crash it once, by violently wiping the seek bar back and forth with the stylus while a 1hr track was playing. Can't really explain why I was doing that.
Click to expand...

I lol'd so hard, thank you Gruso.


Also, can't wait to try Rockbox on my Pandora. Thank you for your work thomasjfox, I used to love Rockbox on my iAudio X5L. Now if my Pandora would just ship already :p
 
jottt said:
So THANK YOU! (yes that has to be all uppercase).
Click to expand...
:D

jottt said:
Violently jumping around (like Gruso noticed) crashes Rockbox sometimes. Not only forwarding within a big file, also skipping many, many files in a Row manually kills it. Looks to me a bit like an issue with not being able to get data fast enough and crashing. Nothing serious...I can browse more slowly ;)
Click to expand...
This one definately needs fixing. I'll try if I can reproduce it.

jottt said:
- Ocasional crackle and pop.
Click to expand...
This issue is already known. That's also the reason I told froggyman it's not ready for everyday use,


at least if you are used to the audio quality of rockbox on the n900 :)

jottt said:
- Saving the position within an audiofile works but sometimes, when you go back to that file it continues to play from the right spot but the time-counter starts at the beginning of the file (nothing really important, just like to notice)
Click to expand...
Might be an upstream issue. Can you reproduce it exactly?

jottt said:
- Accessing the options screen "LCD" freezes Rockbox over here instantly.
Click to expand...
Whoops, also crahes on the n900. I've put that on my list, too.


Right now I want to focus on automatic .pnd creation from the rockbox sources,


so other people can also easily build rockbox for the Pandora.


Cheers,


Thomas
 
Could you please make the L & R buttons be used to switch tracks, so that I can use Rockbox while the system is closed? (maybe make it optional, since I know Korlithiel doesn't like that...)
 
Esn, thanks for noting me. I do like the idea, it's just in practice with my PSP it's terrible for my general usage as an mp3 player.
 
New rockbox release is out:


- Implemented RTC support. Now the last.FM scrobbler file contains timestamps


Also shows a small clock in the upper right corner of the menus


- Working sleep timer


- Working idle power off


- Support for anti-aliased fonts (not in use yet)


- Update to latest rockbox SVN code


Regarding the occasional audio pop/click issue:


It seemed fixed at first and it still occurs sometimes.


This needs further investigation/an ALSA based audio backend.
 
awesome, we have rockbox on several sansa-devices and on pandora, the interface truely shines.


btw: thomasjfox == jfoxrocks?
 
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