4 Jun 07
Firmware version 0.6 available here!

Introduction

The software at this stage contains routines for working with the NOKIA 3310 LCD display (and the standard butterfly display), communicating with the MP3 decoder, communicating with the MMC card and a basic FAT16 implementation. The FAT16 system will do long filenames and support direectories. If ID3 tags are available it will use this information instead of long file names.

Doxygen based documentation is now available online here

Basic Operation

Basic operation of the MP3 player (version 0.6) is as follows:

  1. Insert MMC with MP3's in root directory
  2. Turn on player (press up on joystick if in standby mode)
  3. MMC will be scanned for MP3 files
  4. First MP3 found will be displayed
  5. Press center on joystick to play/pause
  6. Press Up/Down to adjust the volume (while Playing)
  7. Press Left/Right to select song
  8. Press down to enter standyby mode (while paused/idle)
  9. Press down to enter bootloader mode (while in standby)
  10. Press center on joystick to enter a directory (when paused)
  11. Press Up to return to the parent directory (when paused)
If the MMC is removed then the NO MMC screen should be displayed along with the compile time and date. If a MMC is re-inserted at this point it will be redetected. I have verified it working with MP3's at 128kbps, 160kbps, 192kbps and 320kbps. If the battery voltage drops too low then the player will save the state to eeprom and shut down untill recharged.

Current consumption is now around 40mA - 50mA when playing at full volume. When idle the player can use around 20mA. With latest HW and firmware standby mode reduces current consumption to approx 1~2mA. With an 860mA Li-ION battery this translates to over 21 hours of playback.

Features

The software has been expanded recently to include some new features. Some of those features are outlined below. The software can be configured for your hardware by changing defines in main.h and some other files.

Different LCD Types

The software can support different LCD options. To set the LCD screen use make LCD=DISPLAYTYPE clean all to build where DISPLAYTYPE is ALPHA, NOKIA or NO_DISPLAY for Orignal, Nokia 3310 and no display respectivly. An alternative wiring is supported through the NOKIA_ALTPINOUT defining in pcd8544.h.

Battery Monitoring

The system now monitors the battery voltage (a wire needs to be connected from the "VoltageIn" at the top left of the butterfly to the battery connection). The system will not startup if the battery voltage is below a set value. The system will automatically save the player state and shut down if the voltage drops too low during playback. To disable this behavour comment out the definition of PWR_CHK_INTERVAL in main.h. If no MMC is inserted the current battery status is temporarily displayed on the Alphanumeric display. With the NOKIA display the battery charge is displayed as a small icon in the bottom right of the display. The exact battery levels can be set in power.h.

NOTE: The player will not startup if battery monitoring is enabled and the wire is not added between the voltage in and the battery.

Player State saving to EEPROM

When the battery voltage drops below the minimum voltage or the user forces the player into bootloader mode (press down twice while paused) then the current status of the player (play time, song, etc.) will be saved to the EEPROM. A high endurace routine was used so the eeprom should stand up to 10 times it's normal number of cycles. About 100,000 times total. When the player is woken from sleep or power down it will scan the MMC and then resume playing where it was last paused.

Visual Feedback

New visual feedback on the APLHA display including: Battery status, volume and player status. Feedback is displayed for STAT_DISPLAY_TIME seconds and then returns to the filename.

FAT16 Filenames

I have finally fixed the bugs in the filename routines and all long filenames should render correctly, with the exception of characters not possible to be displayed on the alpha numeric display.

Power down mode

The low power mode retains current player state in ram. You can switch the player into low power mode by pushing down on the joystick when paused or stopped. To wake the player up push up on the joystick. You can switch to bootloader mode by pushing down a second time once in low power mode. When entering bootloader mode the status of the player is written to eeprom.

Play all / repeat all

The player now wraps around to start or end of file list when manualy selecting songs. SCAN_JUMPTOSTART in main.h controls this behaviour.

Auto Power Down

The software will now automatically time out after 30 seconds when paused or stopped. The player will save the current state of the player resume later. After the last song the firmware will continue playing from the first song again. This can be changed in the file main.h

The auto power down now jumps to the low power mode rather than the bootloader. This saves eeprom usage and power.

ID3 info

The player now recognises and uses information from the ID3 version 2.x tags. If this information is unavailable then long filenames will be used.

Serial Control
The player can also be controlled via the serial port using single character commands to emulate the joystick. The lowercase characters i,j,k,l represent up, left, down and right respectively. The spacebar (0x20) is used to represent a center push on the joystick.

Known Issues

  • FAT implementation only looks at primary partition 1 (some MMCs use partition 2 in MBR!)
  • ID3 info is occasionally ignored

CVS Organisation

The CVS is currently split into 3 branchs. The main trunk contains development for the MMC based player with a graphical LCD. The VANILLA branch contains development of the MMC Based player with a standard alphanumeric LCD. The ATA branch is used for the development of the HDD based player.

You can browse the current code through the CVS system here. It has some nice syntax highlighting and everything.

The Vanilla branch has been merged back into the main trunk with release 0.2

Each release will be tagged in the CVS as well as STABLE for the latest stable release. All hardware dependancies in the firmware will be dealt with using conditional compilation. All general defines discribing the hardware will be in main.h with a summary of other hardware options included in various other modules (vs1001.h, mmc.h, pcd8544.h).

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