iLiad Safe and Easy MP3 for your iLiad

[narve]

Attached you will find some easy launchers, enabling you to play music (or audiobooks!) on your iLiad while reading. As of yet, there is no proper mp3-player (afaik), but this work adequately for me.

Warning: This is an extremely primitive interface. Start the music (in shuffle mode) and go on reading or whatever, or stop the music. No song selection, no title display etc.

Prerequisites: As usual, you need 2.7.1 with the execute-.sh extension.

Step 1: Gather some nice music or audiobooks, put in _one_ suitable folder (no sub-dirs) e.g. on your CF card. Extract the attached zip-file in the same folder. This means that you should have a folder "A-Play" in your mp3-folder. (My folders can be renamed if you wish, I just called them A-... to make sure they were listed on top).

Step 2: On your iLiad, navigate to the mp3 folder. Press "Play", plug in your headset and enjoy. You can navigate and read books as usual. When finished, go back to the folder and select "Stop".

Todo: Must add some icons

I haven't tried this on any iliads but mine, but I hope it works for everybody. If you try it out, let me know if it works or not.

Cudos to the developers that compiled madplay for ARM. See
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7186
for more info.

[henkvdg]

Thank you, it is nice to have some music now.

BUT... (it seems other people already noticed) I can only hear the left channel !!

Henk

Originally Posted by narve

Attached you will find some easy launchers, enabling you to play music (or audiobooks!) on your iLiad while reading. As of yet, there is no proper mp3-player (afaik), but this work adequately for me.

Warning: This is an extremely primitive interface. Start the music (in shuffle mode) and go on reading or whatever, or stop the music. No song selection, no title display etc.

Prerequisites: As usual, you need 2.7.1 with the execute-.sh extension.

Step 1: Gather some nice music or audiobooks, put in _one_ suitable folder (no sub-dirs) e.g. on your CF card. Extract the attached zip-file in the same folder. This means that you should have a folder "A-Play" in your mp3-folder. (My folders can be renamed if you wish, I just called them A-... to make sure they were listed on top).

Step 2: On your iLiad, navigate to the mp3 folder. Press "Play", plug in your headset and enjoy. You can navigate and read books as usual. When finished, go back to the folder and select "Stop".

Todo: Must add some icons

I haven't tried this on any iliads but mine, but I hope it works for everybody. If you try it out, let me know if it works or not.

Cudos to the developers that compiled madplay for ARM. See
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7186
for more info.

[henkvdg]

To be able to hear the MP3's, I had to switch on the sound on the iLiad (I had switched it off earlier). Now I also hear the clicks for the buttons.
When no headphones are plugged in, the sound is heard through the built-in speaker.

Theory: the speaker is using one channel (the left channel) of the sound output, so for the moment only one channel can be switched on, the other is permanently switched off.

This would explain why there is sound only from one channel (for now).

Can anybody affirm this? iRex ?

(Please come with your own MP3-player with a nice graphical interface and control icons with volume control, mute, etc)

[narve]

Originally Posted by henkvdg

Thank you, it is nice to have some music now.

BUT... (it seems other people already noticed) I can only hear the left channel !!

Henk

Hm, I haven't really tried this yet because I have to give up my huge compact flash card to my girlfriend's camera and my huge MMC card is in my camera and I can't find any of the small ones I get with every mobile/camera I buy... so I only tried with one mp3, heard some music and then wen't looking for memory cards. I didn't notice the missing channel, but will try it properly when I've bought a new card.

If one channel is indeed missing, there are two possibilities:

- One is closed down, and we need iRex or a hardware-guy/hardcore developer to open it

- We've got ourselves a mono device... Did the specs explicitly say stereo sound?

[Frisi42]

Did the specs explicitly say stereo sound?

Yes the Chipset ist stereo, in a proper design it should have CD-like quality.

[narve]

Good, so we only need to open the missing channel? Does anyone have any ideas at all?

[yokos]

Thanks narve.
I updated narve's scripts:
# added a png file [foobar 2000's mp3 icon]
# one combined entry in contentlister [for starting & stopping playback]
# removed creation of file _is_running [narve, what was the function of this?]

What do I have to do?
Handling as above described.
[1] Copy the folder 00_madplay [in zipfile] to your mp3 folder. [Why the "00_" in front? I will be the first entry in contentlister. You can change the name of the folder anyway. ;-)]
[2] Click on the entry "Click on me for starting playback."

[EDIT]
# uploaded madplay's -h output
# I tried the -m option [mono output]; but it didn't change status: the left channel is much louder than the right one.

[henkvdg]

It works, but you have to put the MP3 files one level up.

[narve]

Originally Posted by yokos

Thanks narve.
I updated narve's scripts:
# added a png file [foobar 2000's mp3 icon]
# one combined entry in contentlister [for starting & stopping playback]
# removed creation of file _is_running [narve, what was the function of this?]

Good work! I will try it tonight. The _is_running was just for debugging, obviously I forgot to remove it

Btw, by modifying the line
./madplay -z ../mp3/*.mp3 &
to something like
./madplay -z /media/cf/mp3/*.mp3 &
you can put the madplay folder where you want, e.g. in the newspapers folder, so that it is easier to access.

[doctorwes]

I think it's better to keep the two scripts separate. With the combined entry, if you start the player and then switch off the iLiad, I think you are stuck.

[narve]

Originally Posted by doctorwes

I think it's better to keep the two scripts separate. With the combined entry, if you start the player and then switch off the iLiad, I think you are stuck.

Not really, but you then have to click the icon twice, once to "turn it off" even though it is not running, and then once to start it up again.

[narve]

Btw, I sometimes get "segmentation fault" when starting madplay (one of the reasons I sometimes hate unix/linux!). Anybode else gotten this error?

[jæd]

Originally Posted by narve

one of the reasons I sometimes hate unix/linux!

You hate an O/s because of a low-level error message...?

[yokos]

The first line in shell script "export DISPLAY=:0" is superfluous, because we don't start a X Window program.

[narve]

Originally Posted by jæd

You hate an O/s because of a low-level error message...?

Yes
No, I hate it because whenever an c++ application fails I get a segfault and I have no idea of what went wrong. I also hate the "user-friendly" corresponding dialogbox in Windows. But I am more skilled in Windows, so this happens rarely. So I guess what I really hate is programs that crash without some sensible error messages... which is why I love Java