geekmaster kindle video player

[geekmaster]

FYI, I made a "Geekmaster Video" extension for KUAL, which has a submenu with a list of videos to play. It works well, though I plan to automate the list of available videos (currently manually editted into the KUAL extension files) before publishing.

If there is sufficient interest, I could publish the "unfinished" version, which you could manually edit to support your choice of videos.

Also, I have a version of gmplay that supports sound (which still needs compiling and testing), but I have so many other things I want to add to it before releasing a new version, including a much faster framerate on DX and DXG by using a smaller video size.

[geekmaster]

He said they can even play "Big Buck Bunny" on iMX.508 (i.e. K5) too.

But gmplay also play full speed on i.MX3.5 (i.e. K3) as well.

Though technically, if make use of the 20 layers and 16 pixel processors in the i.MX508 (and newer) series, I can do updates at up to 50 FPS overall, though individual pixels still take 125 msec to switch state. Software can compensate for the slow pixels by spreading changes over the screen over time, whiles a continuous series of changes (the 20 layers mentioned earlier) take a full pixel switching time. The perceptual impressions make it seem much more like a high frame rate, as shown in the above video (apparently filmed off the eink screen). We can do this too, but the code will grown as we add that complexity, and we will not be able to do that on a K3 (and perhaps on a K4 only when booted to diags mode).

[geekmaster]

I have added K1 (i.e. "Kindle: Amazon's Original Wireless Reading Device (1st generation)") support to my kindle video player. It is identical to the existing version 1.5a, except it has support for the K1 2-bit per pixel framebuffer, relocated to "/dev/fb/0".

I am working an MANY HUGE improvements (for all eink kindles), including a significant speed increase for old kindles such as K1 through DXG, but especially, I am adding sound support (for those kindles that support sound). As you may know, amazon is now selling a "USB sound dongle" for under $20, which currently supports only the newest kindles, but they have announced plans to support older kindles as well (or you can DIY). Besides that, just for fun, I plan to add OPTICAL sound to older kindles, using the power LEDs and/or frontlight modulation, so you can drive amplified speakers (perhaps stolen from an old destop PC) using only a photocell positioned to receive modulated light emitted from your kindle.

I suppose I should post my latest source code (and K1 binary, which is NOT compatible with newer kindles). I may do that soon, ESPECIALLY if somebody posts in this thread requesting a copy. I am not sure how many folks are interested in such a thing, considering that the K1 was only available in the US, and that amazon's entire stock sold out in FIVE HOURS, and then it took FIVE MONTHS before amazon was prepared to ship any more Original Kindles. Anyway, I am truly fascinated by my K1s (I have two so far). They are enough alike AND different from other eink kindles that they have certainly grabbed my attention (for now), and they show up on ebay for as little as $30 now and then. If your scroller (and menu selector) switch is flaky, I have discovered that it "fixes" itself with use. It seems that the switch contacts (old technology) must oxidize, and using the scoller wheel makes it slowly get better until it works perfectly. I discovered this only AFTER ordering a $0.99 replacement roller switch (still unused).

Again, if you WANT a copy of gmplay with K1 support, just say so here...

EDIT: I just noticed that when I hover my mouse over the amazon link to the K1 (above), MobileRead automatically appends a tag, apparently so they can get credit for anybody who purchase a K1 after clicking my link. I have no problem with that, and in fact I support it (so that my large volume of posts here can have some life after I am gone, hopefully).

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by geekmaster

As you may know, amazon is now selling a "USB sound dongle" for under $20, which currently supports only the newest kindles, but they have announced plans to support older kindles as well (or you can DIY).

I am curious whether you have a source for the statement highlighted above.

As far as I know the Kindle Audio Adapter is only "officially" supported on the 7th gen Paperwhite. Although it has been found to also work on the Voyage and Oasis I haven't yet seen any statement of support from Amazon for those devices. And the only mention of older devices I have come across is a statement from Peter Korn of Amazon that older devices would NOT support the adapter because they lack sufficient RAM to run Amazon's VoiceView TTS software. (At 23:00 of this interview, "...unfortunately we won't be able to bring this to previous generations.")

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by jhowell

I am curious whether you have a source for the statement highlighted above.

As far as I know the Kindle Audio Adapter is only "officially" supported on the 7th gen Paperwhite. Although it has been found to also work on the Voyage and Oasis I haven't yet seen any statement of support from Amazon for those devices. And the only mention of older devices I have come across is a statement from Peter Korn of Amazon that older devices would NOT support the adapter because they lack sufficient RAM to run Amazon's VoiceView TTS software. (At 23:00 of this interview, "...unfortunately we won't be able to bring this to previous generations.")

That "not enough RAM" sounds like totally bogus politi-speak. Even the K2 supports Text-To-Speech:



Regarding where *I* heard about plans to support older kindles, that is currently in active discussion right here at MobileRead (where it is claimed to have been tested and is working on a PW2):
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...67#post3317667

As discussed in MobileRead threads on this subject, the (alleged) amazon-imposed per-device limitations appear to be a marketing decision, not technical. And we can get past their bogus anti-consumer "official" limitations with a jailbreak anyway, right?

But beyond problems with license distrubution for text-to-speech files, an official amazon USB sound device can be used for non-TTS things too (such as multimedia sound, movie sound-tracks, music, and your kindle waking up and shouting profanities in the middle of the night when it receives an unwanted OTA update)...

Regarding RAM consumption, I had (phoneme-based) text-to-speech on my Apple-II, and it had only 24KB (kilobytes, a THOUSAND times smaller than a megabyte) of RAM. So yeah, claims from some amazon/lab126 lackey, bogus, B-O-G-U-S. Period...

And for that matter, I am pretty sure my ancient "Speak-And-Spell" had a LOT less memory than my Apple-II. And if you think "Speak-And-Spell"-quality speech is obsolete, just tell that to Stephen Hawking.

[knc1]

I had phoneme-based text-to-speech on a PC, later ported to a PS/2 for an IBM project.
Used the timer/speaker to generate waveforms.

Without the intent to begin with, it was a very good imitation of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I added it to the database based management system I was writing for them, just to do text-to-speech of error messages.

Picture this (which actually happened) -
Leased Asset Manager -
alone in 20+ story building (plus a few security guards rattling around) -
Reviewing most recent pre-release version, alone, at night -
building shut down, not even a fan to be heard -

Hits one of the operator error messages:
Arnold speaks up with: "You are not allowed to do that, dummy."

After he changed his shorts, I got a middle of the night phone call to remove that feature.
(I am probably lucky they didn't remove me. )

I might even have that code somewhere (it would be on paper if it survived this long).
It could probably drive an LED same as it drove a speaker.

And it also did not take a zillion bytes of ram (or much processor muscle).

[geekmaster]

The Apple-II just had one-bit sound (both input and output). Digitized voice was a bit rough when only using clipped zero-cross detection (but significantly improved if differentiated it before zero-cross detection), but still fully intelligible if carefully enunciated (even without differentiation). I read and recorded onto cassette tape a "prototypical" list of phoneme-bearing words, digitized the tape using the Apple-II cassette tape input, then clippout out the phonemes and stored them into an indexed-table. I used a published algorithm for (mostly) acceptable English-to-phoneme generation, and I added a pre-lookup table for obvious pronunciation errors. Anything not in the table went to the algorithm. It worked pretty well, considering the minimal technology. People have done such things recently on Arduinos, and even the lowliest Kindle is one heckuva lot more powerful than an Arduino. So anybody claiming something cannot be done only shows their complete lack of real-world knowlege and/or imagination, OR they are completely P-whipped by the legal and/or marketing departments of the folks who sign their paycheck. And folks who bend over to "authority" figures to question old hacks like us? Well, really now... Ya just gotta wonder...

Regarding driving an LED with PWM sound, I wonder if a dollar-store solar garden light photocell could drive a dollar store headset, when driven by an LED? Pretty darned quiet I think, at best. Yeah, amplified speakers (for those folks who still have them).

[knc1]

Originally Posted by geekmaster

- - - - -
Regarding driving an LED with PWM sound, I wonder if a dollar-store solar garden light photocell could drive a dollar store headset, when driven by an LED? Pretty darned quiet I think, at best. Yeah, amplified speakers (for those folks who still have them).

Perhaps these have disappeared into history - -
But we had some very sensitive headphone(s) once that we used with our crystal radios.
That almost had to be at the micro-volt level or less.

[geekmaster]

Crystal earphones. But long before that, my crystal sets used surplus WWII headsets, which worked quite well if you had a long enough antenna wire.

Or even "more better":

But probably not kindle-powered.

[geekmaster]

Man, I keep finding posts in these forums I do not even remember! I started a new gmplay-2.0 recently, and then I just now found this (and that post is almost FOUR YEARS ago):
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...89#post2152789

And this may be bothersome too:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...09#post2230809

And I see that I struggled to build the asound lib I no longer have. PITA, or is there one around here somewhere I can download?

[geekmaster]

In my previous post, I linked to an old post of mine where I discussed how gmplay drops every-other frame if the frame-drop delay is much less than one second. The problem is a perceptual one, where dropping frames causes a discontuity -- a jump in the animation. Wherease allowing it to speed up and slow down (with up to a second of variable lag, but all frames displayed) is much less distracting. When the framerate is this low, every frame counts, and dropping only ONE can cause a noticeable and distraction jump in the moving characters on the display.

However, when integrating sound, speedups and slowdowns could be MUCH more noticeable than the visual equivalent, but dropping audio frames can also cause clicks and pops and other annoyances (depending on how it is encoded).

As I mentioned in that linked "bothersome" post, there are "DSP" (ring buffer) methods to speed up and slow down audio without skips and without frequency changes. That may be the way I keep audio and video in sync, while allowing up to one second latency to avoid visual skips due to variable eink update delays.

Synchronizing variable-latency video with fixed-latency audio is an interesting problem, when visual perception at such a low framerate has very little leeway for additional perceptual adjustments.

Another thing about frame dropping is that on my K2, the video runs smoothly for multiple frames, then has a very noticeable delay about once per second, every second, even while pausing the framework. I wonder what is going on there, which only seems to affect the K2... Perhaps some interaction with that one-second frame-drop latency?

In any case, the method of dealing with eink update latency and frame-dropping will need revisiting, ESPECIALLY with the addition of synchronized sound. Letting the video and audio get out-of-sync by up to +/- one-half second just won't do...

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by knc1

Duh....
Kindle Stew?

• 1 quart water
• 1 Tbl spoon salt
• Bring to rolling boil
• Add Kindle
• When e-ink runs out of corners, its done
• For a more tender Kindle, simmer over low heat for another day or two

On a related note, Cornell University published a guide called "Pickling your Paperwhites".

[Glorfindel]

[geekmaster]

I was struggling trying to figure out how to build an app with sound again. Thankfully, somebody posted some clues:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...86#post2146686

If you read the notes posted at the end of that post, you may be relieved that I recently obtained a nice MIDI keyboard from the local Goodwill for just pocket change (even with my now much smaller pockets). So now, I have reason to support MIDI on my kindles.

[knc1]

Happens to me all too often also -
Try to look up directions for something and only being able to find my own posts (For a: Who? Me? When did I write that? sort of reaction).