A Ridulous Idea

I have been thinking about the problems with reinventing the wheel. What are the technical challenges to building additional EMPEGish units? Although the existing units use customized motherboards, could off the shelf minature boards suffice? The VFDs appear to be readily available. Could this be put together in kit form? The kernel might be tough but people are already hacking the existing kernel such that there should be a pretty good idea of what's needed. Like I said, a crazy idea.

While we're talking about ridiculous ideas how about this one: Get Windows CE running on the Empeg! Their should be no technical reason why Windows CE won't work, after all IPaq use StrongARM boards and chipsets just like the Empeg. What would be the advantage of this you say? Well mainly one, you could use already available off-the-shelf GPS/Navigation programs among other programs. Oh sure you'd have to rewrite the player program from scratch.. just a random ridiculous idea.

I had an email a long time ago from a guy who was very insistent that we should run WinCE on the player. He was under the impression that you wouldn't be able to connect to a player running Linux from a Windows PC - and that fatal flaw would mean we'd only ever get geeks buying our product.

What are the technical challenges to building additional EMPEGish units?

Well, why don't you try it?

Seriously, making general purpose ARM-based computer mobo the size of empeg's is not the problem. Adding top-quality audio-peripherals and making them work well is another story. VFD by itself is OTS, but PIC that drives it and clever interfacing HW/SW combination that makes built-in LCD controller happy with VFD is definitively not. I think that it took some 5-6 HW iterations to bring empeg to where it is now (but now, when the problems are solved and building blocks ready, they can design three similar devices before breakfast).

Kernel is not much of the problem (after all, it is open source, including empeg changes and everything users here did). Flash eprom programming code is also doable, but don't forget that player itself took 10-15 man years to build and perfect. Also remember that in order to use some of programmable components (e.g. DSP) you have to negotiate with manufactuter, sign NDAs etc.

Finaly, manufacture: even seemingly trivial components (like docking sled and its wiring harness) took quite a time to make, cost significantly and are not always as good as empeg guys (and their customers) would like. Even manufacture of another procuction run of empegs (with no design costs) would be prohibitively expensive.

Believe me, empeg's development took years for reason, and it could not cost significantly less than it did before discounts. Of course, if one is willing to compromise at every step, auto MP3 player can be leashed together much more quickly.

But you did say the idea was ridiculous...

Hm, OTS navigation programs would have some troubles with display, wouldn't they?

Yes, I did say it was ridiculous and I own 4 units (a 60,30,20,20[one for me and my three sons]) so having hardware is not a problem for me but I was just curious about the practicality. The manufacturing expense for a single unit would be insignificant to me but the technical requirements of assembly would be. I had just noted that there were complete "bisquit" motherboards available with ethernet, audio, etc. Those boards were for pentiums however. When you start pricing parts, you can quickly see the price (which was never my issue) of these elegant units. My interest is in continuity and replacement.

There are availble similar items (the BriQ for instance) for a similar price but different functionality and application. The Neo45 is similar but I assume not well executed.

My interest is in continuity and replacement.

Then off-the-shelf boards aren't going to help you. In order to make a genuine replacement, it needs to be built the same way, using the same parts. You can't stuff a mini-Pentium motherboard into a DIN-sized chassis and call it an empeg.

It took a team of full-time developers a lot of time and effort to get the players manufactured in the first place. Sure, if someone else felt like funding the manufacturing effort, it could be done again. In fact, I think that if you were really serious about doing it, Hugo and Rob would be happy to put you in touch with the right people. They'd love to see their baby get a new lease on life. I just think that if you knew just how much hassle it is to make one (it's more than just soldering a couple of chips onto a board), you'd shy away from it.

Do you think Hugo and the gang realized how much hassel it was going to be? I ask only because there are many things that I've done and I'm proud of. But when I ask myself, would you do that again if this time you knew it was going to take 2 months and not just a weekend? Although, it is based more on my lazyness than any sort of effort/payoff ratio. Good thing that I am also good at underestimating jobs or I wouldn't do anything cept sit at my desk and drool on my mouse pad...zzzzz

Maybe replacement was a bad choice of word. My interest is not tied to any particular hardware but the concept of accessible music. I have obviously enjoyed my empeg but with the falling prices per GB, I see hard drive storage for music as the present and certainly future. I am such a fan of the things, I bought one for my 15 year old's car we haven't even bought yet.

Unfortunately, the high risk of discontinuance of products is the fate of early adopters.

My interest is not tied to any particular hardware but the concept of accessible music.

In that case, yeah, you can assemble lots of off-the shelf parts and make a car computer that plays MP3s. Others have done it, there have been many discussions of those sorts of systems here on the BBS. None of them, so far, has been better than the empeg in terms of quality, convenience, durability, and usability. The empeg is the ultimate end-result of taking that idea ("what if I used a hard disk to store music in my car?") to its logical conclusion. Any frankenstein system, although functional, would fall short of the empeg in terms of the purest execution of that concept.

I'm sure the empeg guys are working on taking that idea even farther and making it even better now.

I'm sure the empeg guys are working on taking that idea even farther and making it even better now.

And I'd bet he's not guessing either.

Agreed, Tony (my first reply to huh was similar), but thinking about alternatives if our EOLed toys die is natural.

In order to have something remotely similar to empeg, the greatest chalange would be quality of audoi hardware, packaging and, above all, player SW. If forced, I would probably try and lash together something of my own: one of those Cappuccino or whatever boxes under the seat, external USB audio box (instead of internal chip or card), remote LCD, Sonny stalk or similar and Linux. I would then start with DigitalDJ or similar and slowly build my player SW. However, that would still be crude (if fun) substitute, not replacement.

But at least it prevented one moron from buying it, right?

Running WinCE on the empeg would primarily be a waste of time. Might as well run GPS on a CE handheld. The benefits of CE come with a complete mature product designed around it and its feature set. The empeg has enough processing power, but what could you do that you can't already do with linux? Pretty much nothing. One major thing you're missing is a nice large bitmap display.

I think you might have a hard time getting it off the ground anyway. Plus actually getting the applications to run properly - certainly if you wanted them to run on the current display. You'd have something along the lines of the AutoPC, but without all the interface buttons and more than likely some specialized hardware (including flash slots). Plus all the work of porting the player application... Ugh.

Bruno

There's also the issue that every one of our programmers would have resigned had we asked them to work with WinCE.

Rob

Maybe the challenges are insurmountable (although conquered once). I've not looked at the source code for the player but what I was mulling was "portability" as in code. Agreed a kernel compiled for the player as is would obviously not work in off the shelf components. Could the kernel be modified to fit an arbitrary standard off the shelf configuration?

The VFD SW was mentioned as being very tough, could that SW be shoe horned into a new kernel compiled for an off the shelf motherboard with audio included on board?

On portability, for the ultimate next iteration of the EMPEG, I believe a couple of markets could be served with the car player being nothing more than the docking sled now with a slide in/out player in the form (as in format) of the Rio Riot. You have the best of both worlds and more importantly common development, manufacturing, etc. The car player would just be an extension of the portable. Linux is now being run on PDAs so why not a Rio Riot/Car Player.

I personally would have no problem with a backlit LCD. In the "car" mode, the back light could stay on a simulate the VFD. The visuals are fine (at first) but I personally think too much emphasis is on that aspect in the SW... especially as one uses the unit on a longterm basis.

Any thoughts?

>There's also the issue that every one of our programmers
>would have resigned had we asked them to work with WinCE.

I knew there was something special about your team that I liked.. this just articulates it.

We could compile up the player software to run on x86 linux, mips linux, or anything else that took people's fancy; the issue would be whether there was a commercial reason to do so. The visuals use a lot of assembler, but there's little if anything ARM specific elsewhere.

The software is the hard bit; getting the hardware up & running linux is relatively easy for most platforms out there nowadays.

...and you can run linux on a riot, we have one here that does

Hugo

Any thought of making the riot a pda/player?

I hope not - we're not in the PDA market. Personally speaking I'm not a fan of multifunction products - most of the time you end up with the proverbial Toaster Kettle.

Rob

We have at least one nomination for that concept don't we Yz33t??

I agree with you that multifunction products are, in 99% of the cases, a bad idea. But the one category where it's possible that they are a good idea is with portable devices, because making things as compact as possible takes a front seat there. While I would never want a combination computer/audio player/tv/space heater, I might like a computer/audio player/tv/pocket warmer.

most of the time you end up with the proverbial Toaster Kettle

Hey, now that's a cool idea! Make your tea and your bread at the same time. Brilliant! I'm going to start drawing up plans for one right now.

Well, I know at least one person that should go out and buy a Hairdryer Bath-toy.

About the only two things I think would make a lot of sense on the Riot: Firewire and some type of solid-state memory slot (pref CF with adapters for the others). Then you could use it to transfer music you already had stored from a previous Rio product. Or use it to file-taxi images from a digital camera while on the road (it doesn't have to view or do any multimedia stuff at all - but of course video output for the stills would be another cool feature ). Damn, I'd buy one with those features even though I don't need a portable music player at all.

Bruno

Hi Bruno.

Well, Archos recently announced a riot-like device that has a color LCD/TFT/whatever (and video-out) and a slot for extensions. It is able to play DivX videos (in a certain format) out of the box. Among the extensions planned is a camera module (digital photos with 1.3Mpixels as well as (DivX) video). It is also able to read some kind(s) of memory cards, so it is usable as a viewer and transport device for other digicams.
The only sad thing about it is that it only has a 10GB disc.

cu,
sven

I saw the Archos device. I mentioned it somewhere in this thread. At least I think it was in this thread. That might be what prompted the whole "jack-of-all-trades" product thing.

Having a small device to use as an offloader for digicam card pics is very useful. It will be even more useful when I start taking more photos again. Really great for when traveling (that's when most people take the most photos). The devices that are already out there for this purpose are very specific and quite expensive when compared to the Riot and other product categories like PDAs. Having a nice PDA with a built-in hard drive would also be really cool (for many reasons). With something like that you could also preview your images once offloaded. Someday we'll have some really great handheld computing platforms. Someday.

Bruno

When I mentioned the PDA thing, I was not in favor of making a toaster, handwarmer, mp3 player, PDA, coffee maker, etc. I was just suprised they had Linux up and running on the Riot.

I had just read about embedded linux on PDAs. The digicam offload idea is good but there are some many different interfaces. My primary digital camera is a Nikon D1H with firewire only. I also have 995 with usb only.

If you want to see a mess for a swiss army knife PDA. Look at the Handspring. None of the hardware plugins are worth the price. The plugin memory is high$ compared to CF.

I just thought a hard drive based PDA would be really nice. it may get there yet with Microdirves.

By the way, Sandisk is coming out with a 1 GB CF (solid state) for anyone interested. In fine mode, you could store some 400 pictures/card.

Camera offloading would be done by putting the flash media into the portable hard drive device. Not connecting the device to the camera. It's something to use instead of bringing a laptop and card reader on trips. My Olympus only has a serial connector (obviously I use a 3rd party card reader with my PC instead).

Bruno

oh yeah. My Lexar Card reader will not properly read my high speed 12x Lexar Cards which is why I've gone back to the FireWire. Kind of strange. And I sure wish I had not "upgraded" to XP... what a mistake.

What's the word on MS locking down the operating system? I've read some future iteration will not allow display, play, etc of Copyrighted material in any form.

By the way what would a person do with linux on a riot?

Linux on a riot? Probably bring up an xterm, that's the usual slashdot-pleaser

Hugo

... Firewire .... file taxi .... sounds a lot like an iPod :-)

Okay Hugo... i've got a Riot sitting here in front of me... Make with the how to on the xterm....