Porting rockbox to n900
 

Hello,

I'm currently porting rockbox to the n900 as I wanted a decent player which can browse the music by filenames -or- id3 tag.

Also it supports gapless playback and crossfades and is very configurable to one's liking.

Rockbox can be compiled as an application using SDL. Out of the box it's horrible slow/unusable.
(There was a previous effort on the forum in 2009).

Here's what's already working/improved:
- Proper blitting for the lcd framebuffer
- Use libosso to suspend the screen update if the display is off (saves 30% CPU time)
- ARM assembler optimizations for decoding
- Fix up/down keys for German keyboard layout
- Ignore /dev, /proc and /sys in database scan
so we don't run into an endless loop

Open issues:
- Proper packaging (I'm a .rpm guy... hmm)
- Figure out all touchscreen "gestures" in rockbox
- Theme for 800x480
- Create a dedicated n900 / maemo target in rockbox
and get rid of all the dirty configure/Makefile hacks.

Besides that it's pretty usable already.

Anyone wants to help with packaging?

Wiki page (including download instructions):
http://wiki.maemo.org/Rockbox

Cheers,
Thomas

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

Status update:
- Implemented gstreamer audio backend. Reduced CPU time by 25%
- Detect external volume changes f.e. via the buttons and adapt rockbox's internal volume to it
- Switch off display updates if rockbox loses input focus (-> run in background)

Next on the list:
- Audio output if phone is in silent mode
- Battery monitoring

Thanks to Tim-Philipp Müller for helping me with the gstreamer backend.

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

Can't wait for this. Wish I was more up on developing so I could help.
Keep up the good work though.

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

+1

Rockbox is up there amongst the best players on ANY platform, let alone the portable devices it runs on.

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

Thomas,

I am a rockbox developer (although not active at the moment), and I would like to see your work merged into the rockbox repository.

Please feel free to join us at #rockbox on freenode and submit patches to our tracker.

We already have an initiative going for converting Rockbox to an app, better known as RaaA, and this is working on Android already.

Thanks for your work so far! I will try it out as soon as I find time.

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

Hehe, I talked to kugel from #rockbox yesterday. The code is "finished" including battery monitoring and playback handling on incoming calls. I already use it daily :)

I am now going to polish the "final" code and will
split it up for the tracker. My plan was to write a port announcement to the mailinglist the next days.

Just give me some more days and it will all be upstream.

Cheers,
Thomas

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

Goodie!
Just shows how active I am these days, didn't even spot your activity there.....

I look forward to also use it every day :)

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

Hi,

Just a quick note: The maemo port now has a git repository:

http://repo.or.cz/w/maemo-rb.git/

This also brings a dedicated "maemo" application target and cleaner code as before.

I even think we can get this up and running for maemo v4 devices... at least I prepared the code for this target, too :)

Enjoy,
Thomas

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

+1. The shelving of Instictiv really killed my hopes of getting gapless playback on the n900. Having installed rockbox on an old sansa, I can't wait to see how this port goes. Thanks for doing it.

Re: Porting rockbox to n900
 

Hi,

here's a "technical preview" of rockbox on the n900:
http://maemo.org/packages/view/rockbox/

There's also a n8xx package, it works on my n900
though I have no idea how good it runs on the real hardware.

Complete source code is in the git repository.
(I'm waiting on my garage account at the moment, I'll replace
the links once garage built packages are available)

Release notes:
- The application runs fullscreen. To exit, press CTRL+BACKSPACE
on the n900 to activate the task switcher and then close it.

- No volume bars in the cabbie theme yet. Volume is controlled
by the up/down buttons and does not affect the global volume.

- CPU usage goes down if the app is not in focus (=in the background)
or the display is switched off.

- The audio backend on the n8xx still uses SDL.


Welcome to gapless playback, EQ, crossfade and many other cool features on maemo!

Have a good New Year,
Thomas