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Welcome to Panela, Matt Harrison's take on mostly Open Source, Linux, Python, innovation in those areas, other buzzwords and Dick Proenneke. It comes complete with the illustrations as needed. Note the opinions expressed here are merely my opinions and not the opinions of my employer.

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Adding music to the rocbox with linux

posted 2005.03.15 Tue
Ok, if anyone is reading this, I thought I might share some investigative work. So after a quick attempt to copy music over to the rocbox failed, I started searching on google for any help. Nothing turned up.... So I looked at the db files on the rocbox and googled for them. Nothing.... So I zipped up the contents of the db files and emailed them to my brother (he's smart and works on low level stuff, smart cards and the like), so I figured he'd be able to give me a head start. Nothing.... So I googled some more and finally came upon this link http://solonweb.free.fr/tech.htm which explains how data is stored on a Philips HDD 100/120 Audio Jukebox. I can't even remember what I searched for, but it turns out that the file structure is very similar (just the prefix of the files were changed (db5000 -> pp5000). More googling on that led me to this http://kvota.net/hacks/philips-hdd100/ which is a python solution for the Philips device (even better). After some quick hacking on that file I was able to upload most of my music to the device. (If you want this let me know and I'll get it to you, most of my issues were with character encoding, which I think I've worked out). Now I need to be fair to my brother. I found those links before he had time to answer me, but he was amazed that there is even a need for the db files. "Why not just have the hardware search for new files and create it's own db?", he asked. I replied that with 20 gigs of data you don't want to scan the whole thing even time you turn it on.... Well after transferring about 5 gigs of music and turning the device on play mode, it said "updating database" for about 10 minutes.... So that seems like the worst of both worlds. Oh well. (I'm thinking about extending the script so it works with amarok. Anyone else interested?? )

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1. a reader left...
2005.03.22 Tue 8:28 am

This is cool. I'm not running Linux on my main PC, but I don't want to use WMP/Music Match to manage my collection. Your findings are pretty interesting. I'd imagine that I could translate pretty easily over to Cygwin... Would be interested in communicating about it if you get bored... I don't see an email link on the blog anywhere.

Chris Hurley


2. Matt left...
2005.03.22 Tue 9:58 pm

I uploaded my script here
http://files.blog-city.com/files/F05/96843/b/create-index.py
Let me know how it goes....
matt


3. a reader left...
2005.05.11 Wed 9:30 am

THANKS A MILLION FOR THE SCRIPT! Check out my rocbox blog site (http://rocbox.blogspot.com). I have been trying to decode the database files myself, I want to write some kind of winamp plugin or something so I can get away from the sloooow windows media player.

If you have ANY other technical research about the rocbox can you PLEEEASE send it to me? I am also trying to disassemble the firmware so we can make this device better!

Thanks!

knighthawk [manningj@gmail.com]


4. Ubik left...
2005.07.24 Sun 8:20 am

Hello,

take a look at

http://scribbleninja.org.uk/iriver/wiki/index.php/Database_Specification

and

http://easyh10.sourceforge.net/

I have an MP3 player which uses PP5000 DB files too. This is a Medion (Aldi) model.

I have not enough programming experience to endeavour such a thing, but maybe the links above will help you and in the end me too ;)

Regards.


5. Matt left...
2005.07.25 Mon 10:24 am

ubik-

Interesting that iriver is moving to this format. I guess there were issues with the folder system of the h320??? This makes the H10 look even less appealing to me than the H320 (I don't really care for the color screen (eats batteries), and don't grok the scroll dial (but I haven't played with it, just looked at the pics)).