PW4 Using bluetooth to listen to non-amazon audiobook

[a0044c]

Hi All

I have a JB PW4 on 5.10.1.3 (thx @ilovejedd).

I'd like to know if there is a way to play non-amazon audiobooks using a bluetooth connected headset?

I've searched but cant find anything recent on this. I'd really appreciate it if someone could point me in the right direction.

[stumped]

can't be done
there is no mp3 decoder in kindle PW
the only format it can decode is audible

[a0044c]

perhaps another application exists for playing m4b/mp3/etc?

the unit happily displays epubs if i use koreader after all - not audio decoding, i know.

---

Any idea if mplayer would function on the pw4 as with older pw's?

[stumped]

A legit MP3 decoder needs a llcence.
Old kindles had one, newer ones do not
If you are all in on software piracy, you may find something, but I doubt you will find it here

[Quoth]

Though MP3 is now out of copyright.
Likely Amazon only want Audible on a PW4.
The PW3 does text to speech via USB audio, no idea if it does MP3s. Ghastly interface and you need to install two official Amazon downloads.

The Keyboard and DXG have a 3.5mm jack and do play MP3s, but terrible interface, useless except for text to speech.

Use your phone.

[dhdurgee]

Originally Posted by a0044c

perhaps another application exists for playing m4b/mp3/etc?

the unit happily displays epubs if i use koreader after all - not audio decoding, i know.

---

Any idea if mplayer would function on the pw4 as with older pw's?

Don't know, but as I have used it on my K3 I might be able to check it out. Using kterm when I have a bluetooth device detected shows the following possibly related processes running:

root      2319     1  0 12:14 ?        00:00:00 audiomgrd
root      2331     1  0 12:14 ?        00:00:00 btd -f
root      2342     1  0 12:14 ?        00:00:00 bsa_server -d /dev/ttymxc2 -u /var/local/zbluetooth/ -p /opt/brcm_4343w/bluetooth/firmware/BCM4343A1_001.002.009.0083.0380.hcd -lpm
root      2359     2  0 12:14 ?        00:00:00 [kworker/u2:0]

I am making this guess due to the start time and presence of "audio" or "blue" in the text of the process. The question is if mplayer can work with whichever of these handles audio.

Dave

PS: copied the mplayer binary onto the PW4 and it will run from kterm, so need to try the various options and see what happens.

[dhdurgee]

I have now installed usbnet to my pw4 and successfully configured so that I can ssh via WiFi to it. I copied some mp3 files over, connected my bluetooth headset and attempted to play one with mplayer. It acts as if it is playing, but no sound. Here is what I see in ssh:

[root@kindle root]# /mnt/us/extensions/mplayer/mplayer /mnt/us/music/01-Diamond_Star.mp3 
MPlayer 1.0rc4-4.4.5 (C) 2000-2010 MPlayer Team

Playing /mnt/us/music/01-Diamond_Star.mp3.
Audio only file format detected.
Clip info:
 Title: Diamond Star
 Artist: Point Valid with Catherine A..
 Album: Diamond Star
 Year: 2009
 Comment: Track 1
 Track: 1
 Genre: Alternative Rock
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [mp3lib] MPEG layer-2, layer-3
AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 128.0 kbit/9.07% (ratio: 16000->176400)
Selected audio codec: [mp3] afm: mp3lib (mp3lib MPEG layer-2, layer-3)
==========================================================================
[AO OSS] audio_setup: Can't open audio device /dev/dsp: No such file or directory
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: confmisc.c:768:(parse_card) cannot find card '0'
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: conf.c:4154:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such file or directory
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: conf.c:4154:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such file or directory
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: confmisc.c:1251:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: conf.c:4154:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: conf.c:4633:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: pcm.c:2211:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default
[AO_ALSA] Playback open error: No such file or directory
DVB card number must be between 1 and 4
AO: [null] 44100Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Video: no video
Starting playback...
A:  19.7 (19.6) of 310.0 (05:10.0) 19.6%                                                                                            

MPlayer interrupted by signal 2 in module: play_audio
A:  19.7 (19.6) of 310.0 (05:10.0) 19.6%                                                                                            
Exiting... (Quit)
[root@kindle root]#

So either I need to add some options to mplayer or perhaps some additional drivers need to be added or the bluetooth configuration must be tweaked.

Anyone familiar with bluetooth audio support on linux? I would appreciate some guidance before I go further.

Dave

[dhdurgee]

Just did a bit more searching and looking over my pw4. It appears that ALSA is part of the pw4 linux support. Unfortunately aplay -l shows no soundcards found even with bluetooth enabled and my headset attached.

A web search appears to indicate that I need to install the Bluez package and the bluez-alsa package to get this working.

Has anyone installed these to a pw4? Where can I get the proper packages for the pw4, which uname indicates is an armv7l based system? How can it be installed? I don't see apt-get or dpkg-deb present, so I don't know what tools are used for the installation.

Any further help would be appreciated.

Dave

[dhdurgee]

I had yet another thought and it might provide the missing support.

I recently purchased a Raspberry Pi zero W and am using it with my audio/visual system to overcome the limitations of my "Smart" HDTV and my "Smart" Blu-Ray player. The 0w uses a derivative of Debian Buster and uname -a shows:

Linux raspberrypi 4.19.97+ #1294 Thu Jan 30 13:10:54 GMT 2020 armv6l GNU/Linux

My pw4 shows:

Linux kindle 4.1.15-lab126 #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue Nov 27 03:27:44 PST 2018 armv7l GNU/Linux

Both systems are ARM processors. Both provide ALSA and neither provide pulseaudio. The repositories for the RPi include the missing Bluez packages. This suggested to me that I might find what I need in the Debian repositories.

As it happens this linux kernel coresponds to Debian Stretch and the Bluez packages are indeed there. Would these be compatible with the pw4? How can I install them if they are?

Dave

[NiLuJe]

Nope, Kindle is softfloat, while the Pi will be hardfloat. It's also using a recent kernel (which is less of an issue with Rex/Zelda), and a much newer glibc (which is most likely going to be an an issue).

I don't recall which ancient arm softfloat Debian release people were pulling binaries from.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

Nope, Kindle is softfloat, while the Pi will be hardfloat. It's also using a recent kernel (which is less of an issue with Rex/Zelda), and a much newer glibc (which is still probably an issue).

I don't recall which ancient arm softfloat Debian release people were pulling binaries from.

The first post in the thread
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=321103
says that "other threads" say that armel packages from wheezy or jessie should work for PW3.

[dhdurgee]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

Nope, Kindle is softfloat, while the Pi will be hardfloat. It's also using a recent kernel (which is less of an issue with Rex/Zelda), and a much newer glibc (which is still probably an issue).

I don't recall which ancient arm softfloat Debian release people were pulling binaries from.

Sounds like this is getting beyond my capabilities to address. I was looking to match the kernel versions, which is why I was looking a stretch as opposed to buster which is what my Pi runs. But the debian repositories do appear to be for "hard float" and thus not compatible.

Any chance you or someone else more capable would take an interest in this? I think I can handle creating a KUAL package for the mplayer binary and associated scripts, but building and installing the bluetooth audio underpinnings is beyond my current experience.

Dave

PS: Stop the presses! I missed something when searching Debian repositories. They DO have the soft float versions available. They are "armel" as opposed to "armhf" and can be downloaded. Perhaps you could review the dependencies and tell me if the PW4 meets them:

https://packages.debian.org/stretch/bluez

That is the base module and several others are necessary as well. The question then becomes how do I install a deb on the pw4?

Dave

[NiLuJe]

It won't meet *any* of the dependencies, that's going to be (one of) the tricky part.

You'll have to pull the whole deptree by hand (or possibly with Debian's help if something in its package manager tooling allows to do something like printing the whole depgraph for a specific package. I haven't used Debian is over 15 years, though, so, no idea ).

Or go with a chroot like @knc1 did at one point (with a hardfloat tree, IIRC), in which case you still need the whole deptree, but you bypass the glibc issues, because you'll then rely on the Debian glibc & dynamic loaded. The only compatibility left with that approach is the kernel.

And in that case, you don't really have to bother because people have already made Alpine chroots tailored to the Kindle .

[NiLuJe]

But as far as Debian is concerned, stretch is too new (glibc 2.24). Jessie's perfect though (2.19, which is what the Kindle runs).

[NiLuJe]

FWIW, things get extremely hairy for a multimedia package.

Here's what Gentoo's tooling (equery g --depth=0) has to say about mpv's depgraph:

[ media-video/mpv-0.32.0-r1 stats: packages (3505), max depth (333) ]

(I omitted the actual output, because that's *a truckload* of packages. Keeping in mind that this is Gentoo, so that's the *full* depgraph, compile-time, run-time, and post-merge, with *every* feature enabled. On a binary distro, it'd be slightly tamer, because you only need the runtime deps, and you basically only care about alsa & mp3 as far as features are concerned).