- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
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I will always prefer my iPod Mini with extra storage, new battery and Rockbox like this guy did, and the reasons are:
- better overall build and audio quality
- way cheaper (70-80$ vs 249$)
- better software support (Rockbox is FOSS and has been going on for ages and it’s not gonna stop)
- it actually upcycles old hardware instead of buying new devices and creating more e-waste
- nostalgia value +100 points
Nice project. $249 seems a bit high, but I guess it’s like the Fairphone, they can’t save as much as the large manufacturers do.
Holy f*** $250? Wow well it is not for me then :(
I’m genuinely curious if someone’s published a BoM cost breakdown, I’m wondering if there’s a couple of super high tickets items in the like the scroll wheel and custom PCB cost.
The cost of the scroll wheel cannot possibly be more than 10€ and the pcb cannot be more than 1€ battery is about 4e and display can be 7-8, chip is 2-3e and passives, connectors etc brlow 5. The manufacturing costs of the thing are likely below 40€, even in small volumes. Assy costs are probably about 20% of the total.
Part of the high cost may be investments in moulds for the casing and r&d cost.
Yeah, I took a bit of a poke last night, there’s a couple of ICs in there that could add up a bit I guess, but even being generous I wasn’t getting much last 80.
The cases I saw had the look of a 3D print about them. Original goal seems to have been around 10000, so maybe they’re amortizing the r&d across 40 units, little bit of profit and then went and sold 400 of them - nice win for them if so!
To make it clear I don’t begrudge them their profit especially as they’re open sourcing the thing. The concept and high price has got my creative side going for sure, an ESP32-S3 pro dev board looks like it could handle an sd card, screen, MP3 decode and output to an I2S amp all by itself + BT headphones and WiFi track downloading and battery charging. Slowly talking myself into building a portable podcast machine.
Hey, one of the people working on Tangara here. The case we’re shipping with will be CNC’d polycarbonate, though the same design also works for home 3d printing.
The price is a lot of little things adding up, and we want to be able to do smaller runs post-campaign and still have it be worth our time. I also wish it could be more affordable, but that’s how it be with indie electronics.
Good luck if you do decide to make a little podcast machine! Just be aware that afaik ESP32-S3 can’t do bluetooth audio (see: https://github.com/espressif/arduino-esp32/issues/8675).
Thanks, really appreciate the feedback! Really good luck with the project, love seeing these kind of devices making it into the wild. Yeah totally appreciate the nature of indie electronics/manufacturing in general and your work totally makes it easier and more approachable for a lone wolf like myself to churn out something functional!
Thanks for heads up on the BT audio, my little investigation the other night lead me to the datasheet for the ESP32-S3, the list of peripheral options is amazing, I’m sure I’ll figure something out!
Thanks again and good luck with the project!
It’s a project by an Australian team, so one would assume two things:
- It’s in Australian Dollars.
- Australia has experienced severe hyperinflation overnight (or earlier today, for many of us reading this)
What hyper inflation? I think you need to check your sources mate.
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Can I get some sauce for #2? News says nothing of it
The only source is the absolutely bonkers price – that’s why it’s an assumption.
In all seriousness, if I were to release open source hardware and software, I’d charge a price like that to ensure that my time would be reasonably compensated for what’s clearly going to involve small production batches of hand-built-in-the-first-world items.
It was a joke.
I think it has something to do with Taylor Swift
It all has to do with Taytay Swizzle. WAKE UP SHEEPLE! She will be crowned Empress of the World by chief Illuminatus Warren Buffet and the antiChrist Catholic puppet Joe Biden during the Super Bowl halftime show! Only Trump and Dildoboy Nugent can save us!!! /s
It’s a neat project. Costs as much as an iPod :P
Looks like the first iPod, the brick.
It sounds like that was intentional.
Is that a click wheel? I’ll be surprised if apple won’t sue them over that.
Capacitive touch wheel.
Well if Apple owns IP on it, I guess it would have to be a patent. The hardware would be quite different I guess, so would be a design patent with a max of 15 years from 2001 when the first iPod was released.
I’d guess Apple wouldn’t sue, for a design out of patent (so no obligation to defend it) and that they don’t even use anymore. (I ANAL)
Cool cool cool. I miss my old iPod with the click wheel, so I hope you’re right. I’d love to get an open-source hardware device using one now.
It would be interesting to use one and see if it feels the same. The original iPods had this very specific feeling to them. If it was replaced with say a glass capacitive circle or it if had different haptic feedback then it would feel quite different.
20 hour battery life of use is actually far better than I thought it would be. Wonder what the pi equiv build would bu
That’s actually so low imo. It just plays music and doesn’t connect to internet right? Should last for like a week at least.
It needs a serious optimization. iPod Nano 7 lasts 30 hours with a 240 mAh battery. So with 2200 mAh, it should last like 10 days at least.
Ipod shuffle lasts 12 hours with an even smaller battery
It has a 150 mAh battery, so even with Shuffle’s optimization level, 2200 mAh should still last more than a week for Tangara. I gave Nano 7 as an example because it’s what I have. Of course I’m not expecting Apple level optimization but they can do much better. Otherwise 2200 mAh is an overkill for such a device.
20 hours of playback. Not 20 hours of idle.
Hmm if it’s 20 hours of constant playing then that’s much better
The Pi in any form is a much larger system with a whole lot more clock cycles, larger architecture, and more peripherals like a full memory management unit, graphics hardware, etc.
On the flip side IIRC most ESP32’s are 210MHz and just dual core. It is microcontroller versus microprocessor, so probably 10× less power or more.
A Raspberry Pi Pico would be sufficient for this. It uses the RP2040, which is comparable to the ESP32, minus the WiFi.
Actually not really. The pi pico has no functional, good low power states currently developed. That is essential for a mobile device. A pi pico would simply drain the battery in sleep mode very quickly.
Tons of MCUs could do the job. Some STMs would also be good for it. The pi pico is more focused at non-mobile applications though at the moment like a very cheap general MCU for things that are USB powered or mains powered.
For something like this, you would use the RP2040 chip rather than the whole Pi Pico module. The RP2040 uses 180µA in its lowest power sleep mode and the flash and regulator will use a few more microamps. The battery would still last for over a year in standby. Of course it could just be turned off when not in use. Without an operating system, the boot time should only be a fraction of a second.
The ESP32 uses 800µA in sleep mode if you want to retain the memory contents or 10µA with only the RTC memory retained.
A low power STM32 would use orders of magnitude less power in sleep mode than either the RP2040 or ESP32 though.
Yes, I know. I have designed with the RP2040 and 180μA is extremely high power usage for deep sleep mode.
The ESP32 has far more sleep modes than that that each use different power, you are just talking about its light sleep: https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/latest/esp32/api-reference/system/sleep_modes.html
You are comparing the deep sleep of the pi pico to the light sleep of the ESP32 where the coprocessor is still running. The rp2040 light sleep mode consumes 7mA. It is literally orders of magnitude different. https://learn.adafruit.com/deep-sleep-with-circuitpython/rp2040-sleep (they only did light sleep.mode because deep sleep wasn’t even available)
As far as the professional chips, they cost on average far more for less and less sleep gains. (A lot of the L series of stm is like 15€ per chip)
You would definitely use deep sleep for this as you would only wake it up to start using it with a button press. Whether they would use light sleep or deep sleep, there is an order of magnitude difference in sleep power consumption.
Tembra, his music downloaded. Darmok and Jalad with the AUX cable.
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Shaka-khan, when the beat drops
Arnock, on the night of his joining.
It would be a neat gift for anyone that enjoyed the first generation iPod.
https://www.westerndigital.com/products/mp3-players/sandisk-clip-sport-go?sku=SDMX30-016G-G46B
$50.
Edit: What’s the point of open sourcing this product? It’s an MP3 player. How does it utilize wifi? Does it run apps? Can it access a file server to download new media? The video and article doesn’t go into that at all. BT is nice but Sandisk $50 clip players have had that for a long time.
This seems like 5x the price for a dev product.
does the sandisk do 2tb of flac?
It supports FLAC but goes only to about 64 GB micro SD cards. Although they made newer models since, but every one seem to have missing important features, like Bluetooth only or lack of SD cards support.
You can’t hear flac. But no it doesn’t do 2tb. Is this $250 device water resistant? Does it have a clip? Does it have an FM tuner?
I can hear flac is better than mp3. maybe I can’t hear all flac has to offer, but its a better listening experience. also the page 100% says it supports up to 2tb sd. the things you listed literally dont matter to me
That depends on way more than just the file format of your music. With a device like this one, you literally wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.
that is a fair point. works on what I own but I’m not involved enough to know what this is capable of. I’ll be keeping an eye on reviews and future development, and keep my ipod rocking as long as I can
I mean no one can even hear all the way up the bitrate of MP3s. So no one can actually hear FLAC.
also the page 100% says it supports up to 2tb sd.
No I was answering your question that the Sandisk didn’t support that.
e things you listed literally dont matter to me
Cool. I was asking what is so interesting about this $250 iPod and how does open source benefit it? Besides holding so many songs you’ll never listen to them I mean. It doesn’t appear to have functionality a player 1/5th it’s cost does. And no one has given me an answer on what functionality open source could enable for an mp3 player that isn’t already available.
They don’t answer your questions because they don’t like the answers, simple as that. My advice would be to not waste any more of your time on this. That’s what I’m going to do at least. You can’t argue with fanatics.
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when I compare an mp3 file to a flac file, the flac sounds better. theoretical maximum mp3 bitrate isn’t what I experience.
sorry about the 2tb miscommunication. 100% my bad.
even if 2tb is too much, it is expandable, and the one you posted isn’t. personally I have a few hundred gb. some people do listen to more music.
I dont don’t think its worth $250 but its a cool project to be excited about.
for me, open source is mostly philosophical. that won’t mean enough to everyone. I also expect better long term support from an open source project.
Using flac files on a device with this fidelity is a waste of space.
Making a lower quality copy of a file to save a minimal amount of space is a waste of my time. Besides 2TB is enough space for over
7,000hours of basic 44.1kHz 16-bit FLAC listening.Edit: That’s what I get for using a random online calculator. Based on the 39,354 FLAC files I have (of various encoding qualities), totalling 1.19516 terabytes and about 9686530 seconds of audio, I can expect a 2TB SD card to fit somewhere around 4,444 hours of FLAC audio. That still seems like enough.
Totally. Dropping a folder to fre:ac and clicking 2 buttons takes an enormous amount of time.
Also, 7000 hours of FLAC 16/44.1 is about 4.44 TB so your math is pretty off.
That’s what I get for using an online calculator.
Still I’ve got almost 40,000 FLAC files of various quality levels with a duration of roughly 2,700 hours taking up only 1.2 terabytes. Still within the same order of magnitude and still plenty of space in 2TB for a collection I’ve been curating for 25 years. I don’t think it’s worth my time to suddenly manage a lesser quality copy of each of those just for a portable player.
I don’t want this question to sound like it’s in bad faith but how much of this do you listen to, and how much of it just sits there forgotten? My catalogue is about 361 GB (CD rips and purchased downloads) of flacs and I had to make separate folder that I named “!threat of irrelevancy”, that is 36 GB in size, for what I believe is an obvious yet personal reason. These numbers are far exceeding any logical timeframe.
Yeah, this is a question in bad faith from a child to someone that’s been curating a collection of music for more than a quarter of a century.
This isn’t even my entire collection, I’ve got at least a couple orange crates packed with vinyl, CDs, mp3s, concert videos, and even some cassettes for nostalgia. Do I listen to everything I’ve gotten digitally? Not yet, but I don’t plan on stopping my listening any time soon and drive space is cheap, so I figure that I’ve got time.
Your “logical timeframe” is both naive and deeply insulting. I’m going to enjoy my library hobby anyway, but you can just fuck off with your negative attitude.
What’s the point of open sourcing this product?
Some people just like to have the possibility to change and completely own their stuff. Some people actually do change firmware or hardware components. I’d say it’s mostly for tech enthusiasts and tinkerers.
It’s weird to ask “what the point of open sourcing this product”, do you ask what the point of keeping the source closed is?
What benefits do you get from this device being open source? It’s not like a dumb mp3 player is stealing your data. Can it do anything traditional players can’t?
what benefits do you get from that painting being blue? what benefits do you get from eating an orange vs an banana? explain yourself.
This might be the more inane and useless response I’ve seen on Lemmy. You can’t answer the simple question so you throw out a complete change of topic. Pathetic.
I’m making a point, I’m not actually asking you to answer those questions…
That’s not relevant at all.
It could do whatever since it is open source and uses ESP-IDF. Adding features like that or coding an entirely new firmware would be well within hobbyist capabilities.
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Not buying anything: $0.
Both our options are equally far away from an open source music player.
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I think most people will continue to just use their smartphone and get a Fairphone or something if it matters to them.
Sounds kind of cool. Does is support Rockbox, yet?
One of my first “hacking” a device was putting Rockbox on a 4 gb Samsung MP3 player in 2010. This device wasn’t meant to play/watch videos, but Rockbox unlocked that capability. It had a tiny screen, but still.
Dude, I haven’t hear the name Rockbox in yeeeeeears! I had that in my first mp3 player that predated the iPod. I don’t remember the name of it, but Rockbox really improved the interface.
They got $136k funding from an original goal of $10k. Did it go to their head?
This is insanely priced, particularly when you see that it literally loses on everything but battery life compared to the original iPod 5gb, let alone the Classic.
Not quite. It has 1TB sd card storage. That’s far, far better. And it has wifi and USB not just FireWire. Ram is less sure but how much ram do you need for playing tunes?
Where did you read 1TB? The webpage says it supports up to 2TB but doesn’t say it ships with an SD card.
My bad. 2 TB.
Aha, I did indeed miss the “external storage” row—mostly because it only uses the “Tb” acronym quite late in the description. I think the difference between Firewire and USB-C is minimal? (ie they are both “fast enough”) but I guess having wifi is a step up (although I always still plug my phone in to transfer music at this point so…)
If you have chrome browser JavaScript applet as the media player backend, terabytes.
I haven’t seen a device that takes full sized sdhc cards in at least a decade.
Brings back fond memories of rockbox on my sansa.
Now you too can play Doom on the worst screen imaginable!
With the worst controls imaginable to boot :)
New speedrun challenge!
oh shit rockbox I had forgotten about that
Rockbox was the shit.
Breathed so much life into my iRiver. And I always had to defend the thing: “it’s older than iPods! It can’t be an rip-off”
Rockbox *is…
It’s still going.
That’s wild!
I use rockbox on a late ipod classic. I find it a very good listening experience, but I am interested in switching to open source *hardware
I’m assuming you mean hardware? Because Rockbox is already FOSS (GPLv2)
Ayo that was amazing on the Sansa Clip+.
Hopefully people take the source and release a full walkthrough on doing this with an entirely off-the-shelf design. I’ve got a full electronics workshop and two 3d printers and would LOVE to assemble my own music player with open source designs.
With optimization that battery should last more than 10 days.
Will be needing to check-in on this over time to see if anything is changed or default functions expand just a bit. I have been looking for a good media device for loading my archived podcast episodes/seasons and audiobooks without having all the extra bloat and/or possible malware that can be on lots of similar and cheaper Android players (or the overkill of using an old phone that doesn’t have a aux port). Main thing for podcasts and audiobooks is variable playback speed settings and stuff like understanding audiobook formats with chapters.
Sadly I (for now) have settled on a sketchy Android device that I would love to root so I can remove a specific flagged app that the Play Store always pops a notification about that is not uninstallable like so many companies do. But since it is a no name brand without firmware images to download from their site. I just I only ever put it online long enough for my favorite podcast app to pull new eps or Audible. Though I am planning to eventually just download and strip DRM from my library for having backups.
So if this thing can get variable speed for podcasts and support open/free formats that are specific to books. Then I am sold. I never got to have an iPod back in the day, so I very much like the throwback look of this thing! I do wish it had more RAM though, as I would imagine that it could limit some higher quality formats/codecs (but I am not a dev so maybe it wouldn’t matter). The price seems fair given it isn’t from just another global mega-corp. I hope they pay their devs well to make sure their official firmware updates stay active, and/or put some profits into future revisions and whatnot.
So just saying…I found a pretty simple iPod classic upgrade…you do the battery and swap out hard drive for a SD motherboard which can handle any SD drive you throw in it…
This is the way
Does the iPod Classic support variable playback speeds and open audiobook formats? I genuinely don’t know much of anything about them aside from how to play regular music whenever my friend that had different Nanos over a few years back in the day. Also can stuff be loaded without iTunes? If so, then I would certainly look into them again!
