Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

You have to know where Rockbox comes from (maybe read up the history on rockbox.org). Essentially, it was created as a replacement firmware for mp3 players, so it was/is OS + mediaplayer.

The two issues you mention come from there:
1) touch interface has only been introduced recently into the codebase and is improving every day. The players where Rockbox used to run on only had hardware keys.

2) Since the OS part of Rockbox is still somewhat present inside, CPU usage isn't optimal. On mp3 players it easily runs on a 80MHz target with plenty of cpu cycles to spare. So I am sure things will improve over time because the code really puts performance on the first place :)

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

Ok, a couple of problems I see:
1. When saving a playlist,there's no keyboard support - Just the (poor) on-screen keyboard. In addition, the fonts are too small.
2. What's the backspace button mapped to? I can't figure it out.

Also, a couple of questions:
1. Is there any way to set the root directory for file-scanning? If not, can that feature be added?
2. I'm looking at customizing a wps - Would it be possible to add a close-button to it? What extra code would be needed to be added to this port to make it possible?
3. Would it be possible to simply compile this for standard Desktop Linux(i.e. Debian)? What would need to be changed?


Thanks.

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

P1: to be expected, will need more work also at the base (rockbox itself)
P2: no idea ;)

Q1: I'm sure it is possible, as the simulator versions of target builds can do that. But it would take some flexibility out of the system. But a better root bout be OK
Q2: That would be shutdown or powerdown, as that's what Rockbox normally does on an mp3 player
Q3: there are sim builds of various targets, but I don't know if you can make a sim build of RaaA

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

I thought maybe that could be a config option, like "database_scan_start_directory". Haven't looked into it yet.

Shutdown is one area in the code that needs fixing, I'm not sure if it will work out of the box. That's also the reason for most of the "known issues" in the wiki.

Should be possible. Get the source and select "application" with SDL as target. N900 screen size is 800x480.

Thomas

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

Petur, could you try this one?

Windows 7 has two bluetooth connect buttons in the GUI, one for the play/pause/ff/rew "buttons" and one for the headphone output.

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

I don't know if its only me but rockbox can't browse to my emmc. When I browse to /home/user/MyDocs only .documents, .images, .sounds, .videos and DCIM are shown. I tried a bit of searching in this forum but doesn't seems like anyone faced the problem. And my emmc is partitioned into 20Gb MyDocs and 3+5Gbs for nitdroids.

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

Hmm, browsing to /home/user/MyDocs shows all my folders in there. Maybe a permission problem?

Rockbox uses normal C function like opendir() or open() for file I/O, nothing magic in there as far as I know.

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

I am really happy for this port. The only thing i miss is the bookmarking. I listen to a lot of podcasts, and it would be great if rockbox remembered where it was so the resume play fuction worked like rockbox on my rockboxed sanza fuze player.
Would be one less device to carry around.

Would it be hard to get this to work?
Any ideas and tips on how to do it?
Or is there a work in progress on this?

Is there anything needed except installing the dev. environment and the rockbox source from the repo mentioned above?

Regards,
BitWit

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

I'm currently working on it:
http://repo.or.cz/w/maemo-rb.git/com...15880711e2a785

It's still not working as expected, I have to dig further.

Should be fine. You'll need scratchbox and the build dependencies listed in the "debian/control" file. I build from that git tree, too.

btw: Since yesterday we have embedded album art support! Will be in the next release.

Cheers,
Thomas

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

For those who are not following Rockbox closely (via rockbox.org): Thomas now has commit access to the Rockbox server :)

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

I wonder if it could be possible to make it faster when selecting a song from database>track ?

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

I haven't looked into that yet. Looks like it's searching for files in the same directory as the selected track. petur, can you comment?

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

Quick development update what will be in the next release:

- Embedded album art support :D
- Working last.FM scrobbler file output
- Fixed "recent bookmarks" feature

Rockbox is currently in the bug crunching phase for 3.8, so I'll wait a bit until the dust has settled before doing the next maemo build.

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

The database stuff is not my cup of tea ;)
I use directory based playback myself, and coding-wise only look after the recording stuff...

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

Just wanted to say this is a cool and interesting effort, will give it a shot soon. Thanks.

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

New release is in extras-devel. It contains quite some remarkable features:

• Embedded album art support
• Fixed bookmark handling
• Prevent stuck up/down buttons on N900 with shared cursor keys
• Fixed Last.FM scrobbler log file
• New threading code uses less CPU
• Fix rare hang on shutdown
• Small fixes to the metadata parser
• Update to rockbox SVN code

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

Would it be possible to make the volume buttons work when the screen is locked?
I would also like the camera button to skip to next song, when the screen is locked - possible?

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

I don't see anything on dbus while the device is locked, so I guess that's a "no" :cool:

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

How can it be done in the default mediaplayer?

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

The meego "mce" sources seem to mention a "silent" locked mode which just disables the touchscreen. Though I was unable to enter/trigger it.

I can see something on dbus with the default media player, though that feature doesn't seem implemented in the meego version of mce. Seems like an undocumented interface to me, guess only David Weinehall will know :)

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

New version is up, fixing a rather simple and nasty bug:

• Fix/enable assembler optimizations on public build
• Change play/pause button so that it shows the click action and not the current state

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

Great work, guys! I totally love RockBox on my Cowon D2, now N900 got the fun of RockBox.
I have just one question: is it possible to make rockbox interact with Bluetooth headsets like BH-905?

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

If it doesn't already work, maybe the controls send out different codes? It already works great with my Plantronics backbeat 903

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

Yep... I see, that BT support is listed, but my BH-905 does not seem to work. How can I check the codes it sends to my device?

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

lshal -m

(iirc)

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

Yay! Simple reboot solves everything. Seems that default player got hold of the dbus. Anyway, thank you, petur.

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

np, have a nice weekend :)

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

Hi! Another thing that I wondered if it would be possible to fix is the playback stopping everytime trhe power button is pressed, this is very annoying since one of the best features on rockbox is its gapless playback.

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

Easy solution: Don't press the power button :D

Not sure why it doesn't happen for the builtin media player. Perhaps it's related to rockbox running in fullscreen mode, the audio stream gets suspended by the OS without a notify (if we got notified, rockbox pauses and outputs a yellow notification message).

Did you notice it continues the playback after some seconds? Might really be related to the fullscreen mode (which will be switchable in the future).

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

Yes, it resumes after a few seconds but is very annoying since the double click lock is very handy. Well hopefully you are right and it will be fixed once switching fullscreen on and off is implemented

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

New rockbox release is in extras-devel:

• Implemented RTC support (timestamps in last.FM scrobbler log)
• Working sleep timer
• Working idle poweroff
• Support for antialised fonts (not in use yet)
• Update to latest rockbox SVN code

Enjoy!

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

I've been a lurker here in the forum since I've bought my n900 and now I've just registered in order to let you know that I'm sooo grateful to you to have ported rockbox. I'm a rockbox user since years and having it running on my mobile is awesome.

The real thing I'm missing at the moment is the ability of running it in a window and not fullscreen. I'm a wrong if I suppose that running rockbox that way could also benefit the general performance and maybe the sporadic audio skips I'm experiencing from time to time would be resolved?
So now I just hope that it will be implemented soon.

Thank you so much again.

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

I am loving Rockbox so far but there are a few gripes that prevent me from using it on a daily basis:
- Cant adjust volume with volume button when N900 is locked
- No configurable keys (Eg: I prefer to use space as the pause/play key and also have a dedicated key to go to the now playing screen)
- No pause when I unplug headphones
- Japanese characters are displayed as squares (Sazanami Mincho font works but font is too small to read)

I have experience in C programming and might be able to help if I have access to the source code and details on how to compile.

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

I tried looking into this for two hours. Looks like there's again some undocumented magic going on for making the volume buttons accesible while the device is locked.

Rockbox currently doesn't know anything about a real keyboard yet.

IIRC unplugging the headphones sends a dbus event. Should be easy to implement. Better even would be a dbus server interface on the rockbox side and let headphoned handle this.

Build the font converter and convert your usual japanese font to a larger size.

Look here for starting points:
http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/MaemoPort

and

http://wiki.maemo.org/Rockbox

My main activity currently concentrates around making windowed/fullscreen mode switchable.

Cheers,
Thomas

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

http://maemo.org/api_refs/5.0/5.0-fi...746be7446c1423

Because you call osso_initialize, you have a way to accept method calls. :)

http://maemo.org/api_refs/5.0/5.0-fi...7990c354a638bf

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

I played around with "#define MCE_TKLOCK_MODE_CHANGE_REQ "req_tklock_mode_change"" as the one from the URL above is just a notification signal. Still didn't manage to get the OS to send me volume key events while the device is locked.

Perhaps there's some special handling activated by the name of the application, see the old fmtransmitter (libplayback) hack to output audio while silent mode is active.

Thanks!

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

New rockbox release is in extras-devel:

• Fix premature idle shutdown after last track finished playing
• Update to latest rockbox SVN code

Enjoy!

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

That link pointed to the prevent keyboard off method call. When called, it will allow for the volume keys to work, but you can't use them for rockbox's volume: maemo will automatically adj. the system volume.
if you get it to work, diablo can't do the same, so don't enable it there please

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

i am sorry but rockbox doesn't create bookmarks at all. it doesn't even ask for it althoug i have set the option to do so. maybe i don't know how to handle it right. may you help me?

in any case iam so gratefull for your work.

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

Thanks!

It works great so far. And this version now starts the file browser in MyDocs and not in /.

Hooray!!