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Neuros Audio Releases Its Hardware Schematics
iswm writes "Neuros Audio has released the schematics to their Neuros Digital Audio Computer. Now with open source firmware, hardware schematics, ogg support, tons of other cool features, and an amazing price tag, The Neuros is looking like an awesome competitor in the audio player market."
Maybe Slashdot can make some money by letting them license their name. Then all the Nerds could recognize each other in real life by observing their official Slashdot audio player.
Ogg support is very nice, but I hope this device can play other formats as well. One of the things that is making media-playing consumer devices so popular today is the support for all different formats of media. DVD players that can play every type of file format out there, and car cd players that can play mp3. The key to success is multi format support.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
I have one of these ( practically smuggled from US), and it is impressive what they did. It works perfect, it's open, it works with Linux, you can hack it, you can broadcast radio, etc, etc.
Kudos to the Neuros Audio! Keep it open!
So far all the hardware players had that "Ipod Killer" tag, which isn't the TFA :).
Open firmware is cool - but hardware schematics are more iffy. All in all, I'd put open firmware over hardware schemas any day :)
Have you seen Simputer General Public License which Simputer uses for their hardware ?. I suppose Neuros has some kind of licensing model at least for defining copyright and that kind of stuff. This is kinda blind faith to re-use or work on.Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
I actually like this idea -- in order to "kill" the iPod (or somesuch nonsense) you'd actually need a simultaneous music store/sync software/player package that was so much better than the iPod that it would be worth the switch. I think it makes more sense to add features and hack-friendliness to get the appeal of niche markets. Smaller groups, perhaps, but just as loyal -- hmm...sounds like a popular fruit-flavored computer brand.
Why exactly ?
For a device supposedly aimed at developers, and with as big as of a hard drive as this thing has, why doesn't it support FLAC?
(What would be doubly-nice is if it supported real-time recording to FLAC from a line level input, but I'll bitch and whine about the absence of that feature when they get around to having it at least *play* FLAC...)
I actually have a Neuros. I bought one about 2 years ago. Honestly, they're a lot larger than ipods, so I doubt that they will catch on with the portable audio market. It's not really 'pocket-size.'
However, it is perfect for carrying in a backpack. The built in mic is sensitive enough for recording interviews, and the harddrive can hold alot more than other portable recorders you can buy.
FM transmitting- I love it, but it's not really powerful enough here in the Washington, DC area with all the background noise to be picked up more than 3 or so feet away.
The sound quality is decent, but the included headphones broke within two months. I did go jogging with them, so that might be the reason.
Also on ThinkGeek, the product cannot be sold outside the US, unlike the iPod. Sigh.. I was looking very much forward to it!!
If anyone can hear me, slap some sense into me But you turn your head, and I end up talking to myself
It can be the best product ever, because it is geeky... I am not sure it will beat the iPod which has become a de facto standard.
Maybe it's just the iPod name that is becoming a standard with non-geeks. I expect lots of people think they have an 'iPod' made by Creative or Philips. The same way everyone now has these 'mp3 files' that are actually Windows media, AAC or Ogg.
There's stilly plenty of opportunity for iPod to lose its dominant position... especially since MS are in the market.
Homme petit d'homme petit, s'attend, n'avale
I've NEVER hooked my Neuros up to a Windows machine.
I use a sync program called NDBM (neurosdbm.sourceforge.net). It's written in Java and runs perfectly on Linux.
There are other Sync managers, too, if you refuse to install Java. Sorune (http://www.sorune.tk/) is written in Perl-Tk.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This would be an awsome product to hack on. I've been thinking about putting together a car-based mp3 player, and with the firmware now open and most of the functionality there that I want, this might be a better platform to work off of. I was originally planning on going with Mini-ITX hardware (or nano-ITX when it came out), Linux BIOS + LFS system on CF, and entirely custom software (with heavy using existing libraries). This would be much simpler, and result in just as good of a system.
On the I don't think it stands a chance at doing well in the marketplace though until it cuts it's size down some. The seperate player and hardrive backpack is fine (and infact prefered) for a car based system, but way to clunky for a handheld.
Lastly, speaking of OGG has anyone had any real-life experiance with the MPIO HD-300? I saw it in Best Buy, and it looked like a really nice system - 20 GB, about the same size as the iPod, felt solid, played OGG MP3 and WMA, was 20 bucks less than the iPod, and supposedly has significantly better battery life. This claim is backed up by the fact that in the past thier flash models have had the best battery life in the industry. On the other hand thier website has horrible english, so I would expect support to be lacking, and I can't find any sites that have actually reviewed the device (just regurgitated the press release, let users post uninformed opinions, and then called it a review). Anyone have some real info to add to this? Especially about its reliability/quality and how well it works with Linux?
The iPod supports AIFF, WAV (always has) and now Apple Lossless formats... Granted it doesn't play Ogg or FLAC but if it is just lossless formats you want they are available.
So you think by releasing schematics they make it easy for competitors?
Tellyawhat: any other established company that wanted schematics could pay a single engineer a month's contract and would get the compete schematic. It's less likely this would be so easily obtainable in the oss crowd, since that would depend on someone with the skills and equipment needed to perform the operation volunteering their time.
You think you could just take those schematics and go into competition with them? Or better still just go around them and build your own?
I am 100% certain you would quickly discover you could not even begin to compete on price - that is, unless you have the resources to put together a hundred thousand or so.
Opening up the platform like this sets a great precedent. They can evolve the player more efficiently while fostering a loyal community. I wish'em the best... and I think I just found my new portable music player.
I've got a Neuros...the USB1.1 version from about two years back. I gotta say -- it's a sweet device.
-- I like the swappable backpack idea because it makes for cheaper upgrading and the ability for more than one person to use the same device with minimal difficulty.
-- I absolutely LOVE the integrated FM broadcast. This hit the market before everyone and their mother was making add-ons for this functionality, and it's still a really handy feature. It means that _I_ always get to hear my music in other people's cars, because no one else has this ability!
-- HiSi (the song-identifier) is a pretty nifty gimick, too, although of minimal use (more to the point is the built-in FM reciever...something that I think EVERY audio player should have -- it costs about 20 cents to include at this point, why not do it?!?!)
(disclaimer at this point -- mine IS the old version)
!!!HOWEVER!!!
The one failing of the Neuros is in its interface. Navigation is painfully slow. You cannot queue up songs while it's playing. Organizing songs into playlists inexplicably takes about 3 or 4 seconds once you've decided upon a song and selected "Add to my playlist". There is no way to play a series of albums, so you are stuck playing alphabetically by song title, by artist (and then within the artist by song title) or album-by-album. See previous statment about creating custom playlists. Oh yeah, and for some reason, it takes about 3 seconds to boot each time you start it. My PC starts faster!!
So, to put it lightly, the interface plain SUCKS! And ultimately, that's what matters. I love the tech aspect of this device. The open-standards are awesome (ogg support used to require a separate version of the firmware -- dunno if that's still true); there's a thriving developer's community which is fully supported by the company. Their customer service is phenominal (a broken mini-audio jack took 5 days to fix -- shipping time to Chicago included!). But the interface needs a lot of work.
And the interface of an audio player is the make-it or break-it point, IMHO. It's what you see every day. How quickly can you play your music? Good interfaces are invisible. You don't notice that they are there. You just notice that you can get the job done and do it quickly. I think this is more important in the portable-audio market than anywhere else. If I have to make the decision whether or not to turn on my device because there is a 10-second lead-in before music starts and a 5-second end sequence, then they've lost me...
I haven't had a chance to get my hands on a generation 2 device yet, so perhaps there has been a massive improvement. However, as of now, my next audio player purchase will be an iPod -- unless someone can point me to a better interface!
~i = an imaginary being~
The best part about this whole article is that it _didn't_ include the phrase "iPod killer". Why I'd want any product to kill my daughter's iPod is beyond me anyway. I paid $400 for that thing and I want it to stay alive as long as physically possible.
Three cheers for the phrase "awesome competitor" instead.
TW
I, too, have had some issues with the player. In fact, lots of people have. The support forums are absolutely flooded with people who have had problems with their Neuros.
However, I have to say, that DI has stepped up to the plate and made things right for everybody I've spoken with on the message boards and on IRC. Most of the problems are due to firmware bugs that were worked out (or, at least, worked around) - but DI has been good about fixing the hardware problems, too.
They have a very reasonable battery replacement policy ($12 + shipping), and have even been resonable about people "hacking" their players (swapping hard disks, doing the FM transmit antenna mods, etc.). Basically, they stand behind their product 100%.
However, I would caution people outside the States to consider the cost of shipping in case your unit ever has to go back to DI. That's the real killer.
Actually I would even disagree with this post. When I emailed DI about the problems I had with my device, I was shuffled around to a number of different departments with little attempt at a proper fix. Eventually I got tired of running up minutes on my cell phone and decided to bag the whole thing and go with the (wince) iPod.
Thank goodness I ordered through their website and got the 30-day moneyback guarantee. I would absolutely recommend this to ANYone buying a Neuros. Getting it from a cheapy store could mean you're stuck with a $300 link to Neuros' Customer Service department with no other options.
Upon returning my Neuros, I had to wait for nearly five weeks for the credit to be posted to my card. At this point, I was calling them semi-daily trying to get the matter closed. Frankly, I was very displeased with the whole affair.
I own six original Neuros USB 1.1 devices. Five of them are 128MB Flash units. One is the 20GB HDD unit.
One of these does have a problem...apparently with the flash memory. I've updated firmwares in the rest of them and they work well. I am quite fond of my Neuros units.
It may be you got a bad unit. It does happen.
On another note, I just realized that since I have multiple of them, I really ought to figure out what the plural of Neuros is...
It is? With a market-share of less than 1.5% can someone please tell me how on earth they can remotely be a "competitor"?
Hell, HP became number 2 overnight simply by playing nice with Apple. Which just goes to show the sad state of affairs with the quality of competition that Apple is up against.
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i bought a Neuros probly a year and a half ago, i use the battery quite a bit, and can still get an easy 5 hours of play time between charges (2 2 hour trips in the car plus some other running around). and that includes a fair amount of skipping around between tracks. i have had buggy firmware, but i was using a beta so thats expected
A few people are posting about what would be needed to create so-called 'iPod killers.' Now folks, I don't know what exactly happens, but it seems like once a product becomes mainstream, people like to:
1. proudly declare they don't use it (optionally including reasons that only make sense to them)
2. start an open source clone of it
3. and then evangelize it based on moral goodness
Regardless of the open source version's merit, you turn people off at step one. Now, I don't know what Apple has done to you, but a killer audio player is not formed out of spite for large corporations or the mainstream. It is made based on realizing where current players falter (battery life, size, UI) and improving on those. Nobody cares if the firmware is open source except the esoteric readers of Slash.
Seriously, how many projects do you start with the intent to 'kill' another product? And here is a player with Ogg support, now the hivemind complains that it doesn't support FLAC!
The hard disk-based iRiver players do what you describe, including recording direct to uncompressed WAV or optionally to MP3 at configurable bit rates. The line in is both analog and optical -- they have optical in and out, both.
The only problem is that they're buggy. Some people have reported recording glitches when the player goes to store the captured data to disk, i.e. periodic hiccups in the recording. I haven't really noticed it myself, but I normally record voice. A friend has recorded live music without seeing the problem, either, but enough people have reported it to raise my doubts. Also, there seem to be arbitrary recording length constraints in hardware. I believe they are dependent on the bit rate at which you're trying to record to some extent, but 2 hours seems to be the outside limit for a single file.
In the past, I might have said to hang on and iRiver would fix these problems with a firmware upgrade. I won't make that mistake again. iRiver's support for this product has been very poor since it was released, promising various firmware fixes and then never delivering, only to move on to whole new product lines while they leave the old customers with buggy hardware that doesn't do what they were told it would do.
So, proceed with caution. But I have had some decent results recording with the iRiver.
Breakfast served all day!