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Reverse-Engineering The Creative Nomad Jukebox
indole writes "As it enjoys a large, growing, user-base, the Creative JukeBox still suffers from Creative's ugly corporate obstinateness. Despite the pleas of its users, an SDK has not and will not be released to the public. A nice little initiative is growing out of the frustrations of creative.products.nomad to reverse-engineer the Nomad Jukebox USB protocol and hopefully design some more functioning software. The Protocol Refrence v0.1 is up and due for an update very shortly. Hack away boys."
They even have a full set of linux drivers on their page! Stop giving money to companies that obviously aren't willing to work for it. Iomega is. Hell, if you look in the credits on the player, the Red Hat logo comes up ;)
PS: Search the Ogg Vorbis mailing lists for 'hipzip'. You'll find that they have a beta version of their player firmware that supports Ogg Vorbis as well!
What did you eat today? http://www.atetoday.com/
So the question is, which portable mp3 players have linux clients? and which are open protocols? those are the first two questions i'd consider before buying one.
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Whoa. I haven't had any of the problems you have mentioned.
My batteries worked fine after a 12 hour charge - they last about 3 hours though. I charged my second set with an external charger that I already had, and they worked fine as well.
As for the no fast-forward or rewind - this bothered me too - however get the latest update from http://www.nomadworld.com and you will get this functionality!
Not to mention the ability to transfer mp3's off of your Nomad to your PC. This bothered me as well - unfortunately you can't transfer "protected files" such as the ones that come pre-installed. Only the mp3's that you put on yourself.
I love my NJB...
It is distributed by the same company, but has completely different origins (i.e. not Compaq research like the PJB). Thus, the Linux SDK for the PJB won't work for the Treoplayer. If one ever appears remains to be seen.
On paper it has the same characteristics as the PJB, but is cheaper. Shorter battery life though.
One of the strong points of the PJB is it's excelent sound quality, even if you connect it to a hifi installation the difference at 128kbps is hardly and at 192kbps is not audible. This cannot be said from any other MP3 player (due to excellent encoding/decoding from Fraunhofer and to good D/A components in the player).
Whether the Treoplayer matches this quality remains to be seen; I think not (it won't be cheaper for nothing, even when sold by the same company). But if you're patient, you might want to wait until it is on the market to see how it really compares to the PJB.
Use the Archos Jukebox 6000 instead. It has a few similarities to the Nomad: it's an MP3 player built onto a ~6 GB laptop hard drive, which interfaces with your PC via USB.
However, there are a number of differences which make it better IMHO. The Archos appears as a FAT32 formatted drive with a drive letter, to which you can drag and drop your MP3 files and directories (yes, that's right: directories, nested as deeply as you like). The Nomad has a proprietary closed means of getting the music to the device, and you need to use their special software to do it. And since the Archos is just a USB hard drive to the computer, you can use it to store more than just MP3s. The display for the Archos is smaller than for the Nomad, but full text of the song title (ID3 tag info) will scroll past, so that's no sticking point.
Windows 2000/98 treats the Archos as a USB storage device, loading the appropriate drivers for that. This is at least a degree closer to being hackable than the way Creative does it. I think most linux hackers would prefer to write a driver for a generic USB storage device than write a driver for a proprietary device with a narrow range of usefulness. Also, Archos, or the people who they license their USB bridge technology from, may be more willing than Creative to open up their interfaces for writing open-sourced drivers.
Here's some links:
Archos website
Review of Archos Jukebox 6000 at Fun MP3 Players
I'm glad you're happy with your MpTrip, but I don't think that I would consider it the best from what I heard.
Check out Dmusic for reviews of all the hardware mp3 players. For CD/mp3 players I believe that the classic cm415 is the highest rated one that you can go out and buy. (only @ circuit city, less than $100) There are several that should come out in the next couple months (cross your fingers). One is claimed to play mp3s off a cd, and be able to rip cds to its internal harddrive much like the nomad. (or PJB for those who prefer the nicer things)The weird thing is the company claims it will be in the $200 dollar range!!!
To bad it won't probably happen..
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Not knowing USA law, is this against the DMCA or other progressive digital laws the United States has?
...
... Just an inquisitive idiot
Does anybody have a recommendation for a similar product without all those shortcommings?
Check out the Personal MP3 Jukebox, for example on thinkgeek : http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/things/3474.html
1) Umm, the Jukebox isn't that complicated. The manual pretty much covers anything. This is after all a fairly SIMPLE device for playing music.
2) Yeah, I have the same problem. I don't use the jukebox as a battery device. I use it as a portable music station. I have a plug for it in my car, a power plug at work, and a power plug at home.
3) I never even listened to the pre-loaded music, but I have a ton of "concept" albums, where the tracks blend fluidly into each other. In every case, I've never heard a gap between my tracks (since the songs never really end). Winamp always has a slight gap between tracks... and its noticeable... I've never had a problem with the Jukebox.
4) Ummm, there IS a fast forward and rewind. You press the "next track" and hold. This is very similar to most stereo system cd players. And for rewind, you press "previous track" and hold. It'll start to rewind.
5) I've never had a problem with tracks stopping in the middle. My guess is there's something about that encoded file it doesn't like. I would probably consider this a bug, and you should try to create an mp3 that does this and send it along with a bug report to Creative Labs. I've already filed two bug reports with them concerning their lousy software, and have received confirmation that these are bugs that'll be addressed.
6) I agree. The case was lousy. I didn't even know I was getting it when I bought the thing so it wasn't a big loss for me.
I think the product is amazing. Has front and rear line outs. Headphone jack. DOES store 6 gig of mp3s, and if you know what you're doing you can very easily upgrade the laptop hard drive in the thing to a 20 gig IBM drive. Out of the shortcommings you mentioned, I've never experienced the major two (pauses between tracks, fast forward). The other stuff really are just personal gripes based on your usage. My usage is different and I have no problem with how the Jukebox functions in those areas.
Um No...
You said:
In this case, a company has created something.
As creators, they own it, and they can do what they want with it.
Uhm no... They own the design, and own the protocol as their proprietary knowledge. I own the product if I buy it
If they refuse to improve it, that is their prerogative - without them, the thing wouldn't exist, so surely they should be given the freedom to do what they like with it, without fear of hackers undermining them?
Yes If the manufacturer refuses to improve the product or event to support it, that is their perogative. It comes down to a cost/benefit analysis. Creative, in this case has to analyse wether it is worthwhile for them to participate with the part of the user community that wishes to get better use out of the product.
The only time that any third party is undermining the producer is if they decrypt or reverse engineer the thing, and sell that information, or another product that uses the reverse engineerd information. If I decrypt and/or reverse engineer something, and use it to improve how I personally use the product, am I doing harm? I think not. If I share my knowledge (at no cost) with other people who own the same product and have the same interests, am I causing harm or detracting from the companies revenues? Again, the answer is no.
I think people have to be responsible here - these people should see that their actions are damaging things for everyone, and that they should not just rip other people's work off
Thease people are not stealing anybody elses work, they are trying to understand and therefore get better use of a product they bought and paid for. Creative's lack of participation to the user community in divulging the USB protocol, or in participating with users who want to improve things is IMHO just another form of poor customer support.
Companies like Chilton regularly purchase new cars, dissasemble them, and re-assemble them. They then make money off of the sale of the books they write as a result. They have not stolen anybody elses work.
The latest firmware of the NJB allow you to take music off the device and back to your hard drive, but only if it doesn't have any digital rights management set up. Your collection of MP3 files can be shuffled back and forth from the NJB, but some WMA files can't.
The PJB-100 has been hacked to do all sorts of stuff, including upgrading the hard drive inside to 20 gigabytes. You can even talk to the PJB developers on the mailing list.
If you are worried about the price of the PJB-100 then I would wait for the treoplayer which will be out near the end of this month. The Treo includes all of the advantages of the PJB and is only $399 and has a smaller form factor.
I'm the guy that started the effort to reverse enginner the Rio600, A couple of weeks ago I kicked off a project to support multiple mp3 players under linux/whatever:
See here.So far we have info for, or access to:
So join the mailing list if you have a player you want supported!
On the other hand, if I licensed music this would work fine too. In that case I would have the ability to go buy a tape, or pull out some old eight track tapes, and exchange them for the CD's with whatever record label I had to deal with. Licensing could work well for that.
What it boils down to is that the RIAA wants to have their cake, eat it, then take your cake and the cake from the bakers themselves. It's just a scam and should be dealt with by the government just like any other pyramid scheme since the consumers can't do much about it. And "not buying their products" doesn't help because we don't have the support of a large number of people. The RIAA companies would simply forget about our money.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
1. The manual which comes with this product is very poor and does not go into detail about ANYTHING.. It is a small booklet and leaves you with a billion questions.
2. Battery problems. Just like the manual said, you must charge your batteries for 12 full hours before using them. I charged mine for over 12 hours the first time (did it over night while I was sleeping), and then in the morning I took my jukebox out for a walk with me. The batteries died in a half hour. Lovely. I decided to check out the support newsgroups on this product and apparently I am not the only one who had this problem. It was suggested that I try the 2nd set of batteries that comes with this jukebox. So I did. However, there is no indication on this product as to the status of your batteries charging, you just have to GUESS and ASSUME that they are in fact charging! There is no "meter" which shows you the progress. After 12 hours of charging my 2nd set of batteries, I turned on my jukebox and it read 85% charged... I guess I'll have to accept it. The support group tells me that even though it says 85%, that it really means 100 %. How lovely. How much did this thing cost again? ANd why are so many other people in the support newsgroup experiencing battery/charging problems?
3. Sometimes there are huge pauses between tracks, while the jukebox loads up the track into memory. (very annoying.. it's like a 10 second wait until your next track; mind you not all the tracks experienced this delay, just the pre-loaded music that came with the jukebox)
4. No fast forward or rewind, you can only skip to the next track, or go back to the previous one.
5. Some of my tracks just completely stop playing in the middle, and it moves on to the next track. Yet, the same file will play fine on my pc. And no matter how many times I reboot the jukebox, it will stop playing this file after a minute, as though it got corrupted.
6. The carrying case that comes with it is really not a convenient way to carry it around for walking or listening on the bus, because you cannot access any controls on the jukebox without taking it out of its case - not even the volume! And why I should go out to a store and buy a special case for this jukebox is beyond me, considering how much this thing already costs!
The support group tells me that my 1st set of batteries may be defective, and that I should try charging them in an external charger. Why should I go out and buy one?! My bottom line is that for the money they are asking for this product, it better come with EVERYTHING i need!
In conclusion, the only thing amazing about this product is the fact that it holds 6 GB worth of mp3s. That's all. There is nothing else out of the ordinary, and in fact, everything else about this product is ordinary. Even the EQ settings and spatialization is nothing special.
Does anybody have a recommendation for a similar product without all those shortcommings?
Cui peccare licet peccat minus. -- Ovid, Amores.
Pirating a device designed for pirating.
You hackers have gone too far.
Je t'aime Stéphanie
Try this link for a working version
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