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Rockbox Developers Talk Open Source Firmware
angry tapir writes "I recently caught up with some of the key developers of Rockbox: An open source firmware replacement for the stock firmware shipped on MP3 players. The project, which has been active for over a decade, currently supports products from more than half a dozen manufacturers, including Apple, Arhcos, iRiver and Toshiba. It involves extensive reverse engineering to figure out how the devices' stock firmwares operate, as well as the challenge of developing for greatly varied targets. You can read the interview here (or the full Q&As with the project's founder and some of the developers involved in it)."
Do people still use them? Even the most basic dumbphone these days supports music playback..
= AWESEOME
"Over time it's only grown to be even more challenging as over the years the companies involved have gotten more and more 'secret'. In the beginning you could actually read markers on chips in the devices and then search for the chips online and find data sheets for them that told us how to program them."
i've done reverse-engineering, and yes it is exciting, but it doesn't really get results: it's damn hard work, and for what? you're always behind the times - never innovating, always riding on the coat-tails of companies who, as linus notes on page 2 of the interview, end up making hardware design mistakes, and you invested _how_ much time in order to find that out?
so we set up http://rhombus-tech.net/ as an initiative to create open hardware that is actually desirable as mass-volume products, with free software developers being actively engaged and consulted on the hardware _and_ software development at every step of the way.
there are several such initiatives that could really do with working together - the most recent one is the plasma "spark" tablet - except that there, unfortunately, they appear to have picked a tablet from a company that is known to be willfully committing GPL violations (zenithink). not too many people spotted that one, in amongst the otherwise-exciting news reports, whoops.
For sport. More rugged than any phone, long battery life, and disposable-y cheap if it gets smashed or wet.
Also I have to display my lack of iDevices as an anti-fashion statement ;-)
A friend of mine has a cheap mp3 player that he bought a couple of years ago. He flashed it with Rockbox and has had his battery life more than quadrupled!
I don't know why companies are so loathe to take advantage of free software like Rockbox and, instead, insist on writing their own, lousy firmware. There are people out there who will do it better, and for free!
Just imagine how much better things could be if closed source software were outlawed...
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
I've been running rock-box on a succession of Sansa mpfree players for close to 6 years now, and I love it.
RUGBYRUGBYRUGBY
currently supports products from more than half a dozen manufacturers, including Apple, Arhcos, iRiver and Toshiba
But less than a dozen right? Wouldn't it be easier just to give the number - or go the full hog, list the half dozen and say "...and more", rather than stopping at four? And it's "Archos". Spamming all those techworld.com.au link must be intensive business.
I love rockbox but my gigabeat died and I need a replacement, what can I get today that'll run rockbox nicely that's >=40G ?
Gigabeats were great but they're getting on a bit now to the point where the harddrives are dying and replacing them is more faffing than I'm interested in.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
I've had my iRiver for about 7 years now and it's still pretty happy. Sure, it's big and clunky and one day the HDD will fail, but when it does, I reckon I'll just put in a new one and carry on.
I much prefer having my phone separate to my MP3 player, simply because the battery life is better and also that when I'm listening to a song I don't have it disturbed by an incoming call from a recruitment agent.
Summation 2
"Firmware" is a word like "software," "hardware," or "clothing" -- you cannot have "one firmware" and there is no such thing as plural "firmwares." You cannot have "a software" or "a clothing" -- you have a piece of software (or: a program), a piece of clothing (or: a garment), a piece of firmware (a firmware set, a firmware package, etc.).
Please correct the article here: "how the devices' stock firmwares operate" -- that should be "...stock firmware operates..." as the device has one set of firmware, composed perhaps of several programs or packages.
I registered on their bug tracker but cannot decipher to whom or how I should report this grammar error as a documentation flaw -- any suggestions?
Why would I want to drain the battery of my phone by listening to music? That thing does not last long enough as it is...
When it comes to changing a song or doing whatever, I can just reach into my pocket and press the right buttons. This is impossible with most phones.
And have you actually listened to the sound most ADCs and headphone amps in cheap phones produce? Sure, you get what you pay for, but I do not want to pay 500 euros for a phone, just so I can listen to music in a reasonable quality and end up with an expensive phone, that is way to big and heavy to take it with me jogging or cycling.
Cowon has support it for a long time and I believe iRiver as well and I would be highly suprised if Archos doesn't either.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I notice that there is nothing listed on the Rockbox site about Creative players. Why isn't Creative's Zen line supported? I have a Zen gen1 player I'd love to reflash with a better firmware, mostly because it sounds like fun.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
I had my iRiver H340 for less than 30 minutes before it ran rockbox. At the time of purchase it was, to my knowledge, the only way to get gapless playback and high capacity (40GB isn't enough now but it was the best you could get back in the day). I've tried it with a replacement SSD but while it works it is quite flaky and needs regular resets.
It's a shame there are very few high capacity players on the market now, I would love to get a new device which supports:
Lots of storage. Enough to encode all my CDs and a few 'try-before-you-buy' albums. Ahem.
Gapless.
Bookmarking capabilities that work with all files (apparently ipods require you to define things as an audiobook before they support bookmarking)
ogg support so I don't have to re-rip my CDs (I'd compromise on this if everything else was offered - it's only a few weeks of feeding CDs to the PC)
No need to 'make my own playlists' or any other such carp unless I want to. Music already comes with pre-defined playlists: also known as albums.
If this ever happens it will most likely run rockbox - I doubt the hardware manufacturers would do as good a job.
To Linus and the rest of the rockbox devs. Seriously. Thank-you.
What a crazy list... Do you even HAVE a phone (that cost more than $30)?
But at this point I don't yet want to pay "more than $30" per month for my phone. The cheapest Android smartphone plans from Virgin Mobile USA are $35/mo. I pay a fifth of that for my dumbphone.
I'm an AC -- always have been, always will be -- so no one will see the comment, but I have to post anyway, just to give a big thanks to the Rockbox team.
I have an old-ish Sansa (e200), and despite the fact that it's now "ancient technology," with Rockbox, a good sized microSD card (which, BTW, wouldn't be recognized on the original firmware), and replacing the battery once, it still shines. IMO it's as good as any new shiny bling, and I'll probably have it until I do something silly like dropping it into a toilet.
Seriously, Rockbox is a great application. With the stock firmware I would have gotten rid of it several years ago, but with Rockbox there is no need.
I don't want -- nor need -- a smartphone. What I need is a good MP3 player, and I use it every day.
Thanks Rockbox!
I am a sansa clip+ user, I put the Rockbox there for 2 reasons:
* plays SID and MOD
* mp3 player can be used on 'blind' mode! (text to speech on 99% of the menus)
I have to say that the text to speech option for the menus/playback is a must for people like me... I suffer for a corneal condition , so
from time to time I cannot open my eyes for a couple of days... try to use an mp3 without looking the menus etc (except some shuffle only mp3 players...)
Long time rockbox user on sansa devices, cheap and easy and lots of storage. However once I got an android handset with good ad2p performance and some wireless headphones I found myself not using the rockbox sansa anymore. Also spotify(and many others)/network allows for the network to cover for any lack of storage. If I want better quality sound I just plug some headphones in.
That minor inconvenience is worth it when the alternative is carrying around a separate device.
Separate devices plural, including a car charger and a wall charger.
it makes a lot more sense for me to carry it around rather than lugging around a dumbphone, MP3 player, camera, netbook, etc. All at once.
But how much sense does it make in dollars per month to carry a smartphone vs. a dumbphone and a Galaxy Player or Archos 43, when smartphone service is still about five times the price of the cheapest dumbphone plan?
When I had a fifth gen ipod I used rockbox a bit. It was cool at the time and did some stuff I couldn't do otherwise on that model of ipod. (skins, gapless playback, graphic equalizer, some other stuff)
But now I have an Samsung Galaxy s2 and I've given my kids an ipod touch each. There's no way I would replaced the GUI on those things. My eight year old kids picked the ipod Touch and never had a question about how they worked. Power Amp on the Android exceeds the functionality I had in Rockbox. I gave away my fifth gen iPod about a year ago.
Last but not least, I barely listen to my music files anymore. I spend more time listening to Pandora and other streaming music services.
One of the biggest advantages of Rockbox IMHO is the compressor. Hard to listen to a lot of music-- especially classical music-- in a noisy environment without some dynamic range compression.
3G and classic ipods are actually quite usable with rockbox. It's not perfect, but these two ports exist as unofficial.
Try them !! Hack them !! Devs are needed...
aaaaaaa
I think it's a real shame that some people use an article about a successful and greatly appreciated free software project to
a) make snide and uninformed criticisms, some even on the erroneous premise that Rockbox is a Linux based project, which it is not.
b) assert that the RB devs have some responsibility to do something other than what they want to do and intend to do.
c) then try to use thos unfounded complaints to turn attention to themselves and their project.
It is *ridiculous* to criticise the RB devs on the grounds that what they are doing is hard work and/or doesn't meet the requirements of an uninvolved, misinformed and non contributing third party.
It is simply grossly ill mannered to then use that invalid assessment to make a favourable comparison with....oneself! Please.
Rockbox isn't Linux. It isn't a manufacturing enterprise. It isn't trying to sell you a player or a device or a lifestyle or an OS, *or anything*. It's offering a free software firmware for various audio players, many older models and some current. That firmware has many enhacements over the OEM/Vendor firmwares. Some of those enhancements are fundamental, such as broader codec support and longer battery life, while others are extra features such as text viewers, video playback, parametric EQ, crossfeed, 5 minutes games. Other features such as voice menus may even open devices up to people who would otherwise not be able to use them. And people here are whining about it! In-fucking-credible.
I've been running RB on my iRiver H140 and H340 since RB was available for them (that is quite a few years now), and on my Sansa Clip+ since I bought it a little over a year ago. If you don't like the theme? Change it! If you don't like any of the numerous themes made freely available by community members then you are free to create your own, everything is documented. You need the following: a text editor, a freely avaialble icon set and maybe some nice images. Or you could just whine, I don't know. If your iPod isn't yet fully supported you could check out the unstable ports and you might find that the remaining deficiencies really aren't showstoppers. I ran a pre-release "unstable" version on my Sansa Clip+ for a few months without any dramas.
People ought to have a look at those things which have made Rockbox successful and have a life of 10+ years so far. I'm just an interested user, not a RB developer, but I can suggest suggest a few important factors:
Focus: the RB devs focus on realistic and achievable goals and then work towards them, which means stuff gets done, not just talked about or partially done. See the Mer project for an example of big talk, fantastic assertions of what will be achieved, a lot of work, ever changing aims and a big fat zero result for the users.
Enthusiasm: people are hacking on RB, writing code and docs and themes and filing bugs, because they enjoy making *their* device work better. This is related to focus. The results are tangible.
Understanding the changing environment: the desirability of making RB an app was noted several years ago. It's quite a step from a firmware that fully controls a device to an app that works within someone elses environment, and I suspect many projects would have had a huge blind spot here. I'm really impressed that I can run RB as an app on my Archos Android tablet and the experience is very similar indeed to using a device running a full RB firmware.
My feeling is that Rockbox is a very successful free software project. It more than achieved the original aims and then continues to be productive and useful and to excel more than ten years later without terminal in-fighting or alienation of devlopers by users or users by developers. That is called a free software community.
instead of a landline, I've got unlimited and long distance calling on my cell
In our household, we have one landline and two dumbphones, each on a $7/mo occasional-use plan. How much would it cost to replace these with a dumbphone for her and a smartphone for me on a family plan with ample minutes?
cable is simply superior across the board
Cable Internet also has a substantial dry-loop charge for people who don't subscribe to cable TV, such as people who have switched to Netflix and/or satellite.