no, not really, but i'm very disappointed by the software and the developer support !

i pay'd allot of money for something with a very high, 'yes i wanna support this' and 'o there's linux on it cool', factor

but what if got is a peace of great hardware with an absolute minimalistic software. and most disappointed i'm from the developer version ! this is not developer ! no editor no telnetd ftpd or something else on the mark II which has an ethernet interface ! i mean there’s nothing than the possibility to stop the player.

hey we are not all hardware,strongARMindeepth,c++,debian crack's out here, but here are people whic can program some perl or write some great cgi's or have an good idea about php ot maybe they wanna set up a zope server on the empeg.

please empeg people, give us a usable developper image ! so we can make some great stuff on you box.


cheers

andreas

With a subject title like that you'd better run.....fast!

Sounds like you want a new computer. Try Dell. The rest of us bought an MP3 player.

You are asking for what myself and others are asking for in general. We would like to see more information so we can do cool things with the empeg. However, I use my empeg to listen to music in my car and sometimes at my office. Doing anything else with it is a bonus. Give it some time. The expansion of sofware and hardware add-ons will come soon. You must remember that empeg has been working hard to put out the mark 2. Now that it is out, they can put a little more effort into helping the development process.



Alex Lear

I think that should be "empegs suck" or "empeg sucks", but not "empeg suck's".

hey we are not all hardware,strongARMindeepth,c++,debian crack's out here

I'm not meaning to be rude here, but programming embedded systems isn't for everybody. However, I'm living proof that you can do interesting and useful stuff on the empeg with the barest of knowledge about any of the topics you mention.

In my opinion, the guys at empeg are providing much more than they need to, given they are essentially selling a car audio product. One could ask that if you can't bootstrap yourself from the developer image to where you want to be (with Verement's site and this BBS for guidance) then do you really want to be mucking around and generally doing potentially nasty things to your system?

I don't.

Richard.

I found the developer image on my MK 1 to be quite useful. It was small, and allowed me, as a developer to add what I need. I don't want empeg making my .upgrade files bigger because they include worthless things like ftpd, and such. Odds are that I'd want a different daemon, so the additional files would be worthless. The developer imager was ment to allow people interested in adding to the empeg a way into the core, and enough programs to allow a developer to get what they need. Anything beyond that is fluff that is not needed. I don't mean for this to sound harsh, but if you can't add what you want into the empeg on your own, then you need to wait for someone else to write some documentation on what they did. Expecting empeg to go beyond providing an MP3 player is not realistic. It never said on their site that they have to provide users with a developer image that does everything under the sun. And they also never said your paying $1000 or more to get a player, and developer support.

Rereading the above still seems a bit harsh. I don't honestly intend for it to be that way, but I hate to see such a great product being knocked down for not meeting unreasonable demands from the creators.

Ouch, you kicked that holy cow of ours right in the b*tt


:-)

No really, you are relatively new to the board, and if you still stay longer here, you will learn that thise empeg guys do more for us than any other company i bought ( even *much* more expensive toys from ) ...

Saying that the empeg is high priced doesn't hit the jackpot ...
Before i had the empeg i had a Clarion System that was even more expensive for giving me just 10% of the empegs flexiblity & functionality ...

So, bare with us/them, and you'll learn how dedicated those people are. ( remember, they are not SONY or IBM or Microsoft, they are just a bunch of people, a real start-up )


If you really feel mistreated, then sell your empeg and leave us here, still thinking we are in customer supports paradise ...


Nils

P.S. i am saying this, with a big wishlist not yet satisfied, but *some* already are satisfied, where all of the big companies would'nt have even bothered READING my comments, not thinking of furfilling some requests.

P.S. 2 !!

Please also note that i agree 100% on your request/critics to have httpd, samba, ftp & other stuff running in the dev. version, i WANT THAT TOO :-)
I could do this by myself, but i don't have time going back to linux ( my last in depth working with linux was 5 years ago, now its mac & windoze ).
Another solution would be a FAQ that one of you others could provide kindly ...

That's funny, I thought that the Empeg's software goes way beyond any other MP3 player on the market. I don't see how it can be called minimalistic when its feature set is light years beyond anything else currently available.

And as far as the developer image being stripped-down... tell me, what other dedicated MP3 players' developer images are you comparing it to?

Fox, we here on the BBS are perfectly willing to help you with your player. Some of us can even help you with getting ftp running on the box. Some of us are even willing to back you up on feature suggestions, assuming they're good ones. But please don't flame Empeg just because there's no FTP daemon pre-built into the default developer kernel. It just alienates everyone who would have otherwise wanted to give you a hand.



___________
Tony Fabris

- my computer is ok

- if i only wanna have an mp3 player, there are much cheaper ones !

- i buyed and mp3 car audio player with linux on it for a, let's say: high price. so i can expect a little bit more than only an mp3 player

and.. there was promised more.

but what i see is a mp3 player with some nice graphics when playing a song. but i paid already the full price.

i can also understand that empeg people worked hard on the mark2 but i cannot understand why they give not developpemeont support for NON rocket scientists.

thanks for spell chekcing, english is not my native language

no i also do not think that programming on an embeded system isn't for everybody, but if you do not give other's a chance to write something for the product, then you should bring a finished product to the market (not only the hardware also the software).

again, for this price i can expect more than a plain mp3 player !

i can follow verements site and i am able to but the stuff to the device and i already did nasty thing on it, but...

i wanna have features (which aren't yet here) so i wanna be able to add features myself but this is not easy pssoble with the current developer image, and the described way at veremont's page is not very easy to go. and the the player software is so close that you can add nothing to it, i mean there are many examples out there how to build an open application where you can write add ons for it or change parameters or ...

my opinion is that either i can expect more for the price paid or i can expect some support to add it myself.

i mean for emptool they did it, making the sourcecode open, so other people can write for them the mac version or can add new features.

i mean for the price range and the architecture of the emplode i compare it more to winamp than to a rio

i cannot compare it to other developper images, cause there are no other players around where i can expect this, but from empeg i expected it cause there is allot of talking about other projects, third party add ons and so on.

i know that there are allot of helping hand's on this bbs and i got also allot of really great information, but i'm still disapointet that i have to figure out every little thing in hours and hours.

tell me how long it takes for an linux skilled empeg newbie to change the config so he can leave the player software via menue ?

- i'm not new to the board, i haven readen this board for months, waiting for my empeg, and that's maybe why i expected more, i was reding unused cpu power, tetris, own graphics, features ... but what i have no is a not so bad mp3 player, not more or less

- i think sill that for the features we have at the moment the price is high, the price is not high if you look at the potential the player hardware has.

- at the moment it looks to me like people from empeg liked to have some developpers to build emptool for mac but do not wan't to have people dig in the player(software).
sorry folks, i do not need a mac version, but i like to have a way to delete mp's on the player, i would like to have a volume control driven by the in car noise, no different buttons with the same function, mybe a light on reminder, a wake up reminder, a possibility to see the clock on the display, an http interface to pla or download songs in the office, an way to back up the files stored on the device ....

The features you mentioned are all good ideas, and I'm sure will all be written in at some point. However, if you're expecting the player source code to be released, or if you're expecting some magical development interface like Perl or Python or something, you might want to sell your Empeg now. Be patient, enjoy your Empeg (which is after all an MP3 player designed to play music in your car) and the hackers will keep making things happen. Look at what has already been written in with just a couple months since the Mk2 was released. It seems like you want to buy a full blown Linux machine for your car, and that's not the driving force (pun) behind the Empeg. IT'S A CAR STEREO COMPONENT FIRST! And a computer second. It just so happens that it's somewhat hackable, and anything that's not there will be there soon.

I am glad this thread started though, because I like to hear differing viewpoints. I'm just trying hard to understand what's so slow and painful about Empeg's development process...

If you raise each of your concerns on the Wish-List section of the board, we will consider them in the same way as we consider other peoples' suggestions.

That is, carefully. We pay attention to everyone's suggestions. Some of them are judged to have enough importance that they get implemented almost immediately. Others strike us as great ideas, but difficult to do within a sensible timescale, based on our other committments. These we put on our internal wish list. They get scheduled at some point in the future.

Other suggestions just don't make any sense (at the current time) to us from a commercial standpoint. These don't get implemented.

If you're concerned about the cost of the player, someone has another posting on here somewhere about how much the equivalent amount of CD changers would cost you.

We'd like other people to help with downloaders for the Mac because we don't have a great deal of experience with the Mac. Other factors millitate against us writing one in house. To this end, we've released the source code (under the GPL) for emptool, in the hope that someone else will take it upon themselves to write other front ends. There's some people currently organising to undertake a KDE (and other) front end. Whether this will extend to a Mac front end remains to be seen, however.

The player software is our major asset from an intellectual property point of view. We won't be releasing the source to it at any point in the near future. Sorry.

As regards your other suggestions, I can only reiterate our committment to listening to all of our customers' suggestions. Some of them get implemented, some don't. Some take a while. Them's the breaks.

Regards,
Roger.



Roger - not necessarily speaking for empeg

i do not expect the source code of the player sofwtware, but i espect a developper image where we can play around a bit i mean with an httpd and some shell script one can do allot of great things, a init script which gives the possibility to let run some other software, a menue structure which gives the possibility to start other applications, such things i expect.

You raise a few good issues here.
- i'm not new to the board, i haven readen this board for months, waiting for my empeg

some of us for years

- i think sill that for the features we have at the moment the price is high, the price is not high if you look at the potential the player hardware has.

and that is the whole point. This MP3 player has huge potential. To rant and rave about what it is missing is such a big slap in the face to many of us on this BBS, particularly those of us who have bought the Mk1 and then the Mk2 and lived through the beta sessions and the failed syncs and the rest of it. Talk to bigjohn about the heartache this thing can give when the software doesn't behave as expected (it was bigjohn with the clone tool probs wasn't it)

most of us have been through so much and there is still so much to come. If you want features, start polls, start campaigns on this BBS. Empeg have said that while they do have a feature agenda, they would implement features if there was enough public support for them (and it fitted in with their ideals)

this box has potential. it has more expansion power than any other player on the market being offered in bulk form, and is actually supported by a bunch of extremely hard working fellas.
As has been said, if you have issues what have you done to get answers before slamming the product?


.......but i like to have a way to delete mp's on the player.........

All these things are best on the wish list. have a traul through and see how many of your ideas are unoriginal or could be implemented by what others are offering.

add this thread to 'how to start a flame war FAQ'

Murray 06000047
____________________

tell me how long it takes for an linux skilled empeg newbie to change the config so he can leave the player software via menue ?

About 2 minutes.

1) Plug in the serial cable to the empeg and your PC.
2) Start up a communications proggy to access said serial cable
3) Press "q" to drop to shell.
4) type rwm, then rw to mount the partitions read-write.
5) cd /empeg/var
6) echo "[Menu]" >> config.ini
7) echo "Quit=1" >> config.ini
8) type rom, then ro, to mount the partitions read-only.
9) exit the shell and now you have a "quit" option on the main menu which will exit the player for you.

Not too difficult and with about 5 minutes worth of research you would have realized these directions were already posted on the forum elsewhere.

(O|||||O)

but i wanna be a little hacker to, do i get no chance ?

but why they are not here, when can i expect them

or better, how can i help, without spending night's in going through veremonts and many others descriptions to get an environment where you can start learning how to realy help

tahts not true like this !

2) 30mins trying, looking in the handbook and then 30mins on the bbs until you find out that you have to switch off flow control

3) 10min trying around until you mention taht you have to press q[enter]

4) 1hour until you have the information together how the commands work, shure there is everithing on the bbs in it was interesting to read through the threads

20mins to fix broken df

5) again another 1hour on the bbs to find out about config.ini

20mins to find out that there is no editor animore like it seems it was on the mark1

8) ok, luckily i read to some threads and did ro and rom

9) 20mins to find out that neither halt nor reboot nor shutdown will work to get your device in inital state

Please take no offense to this, but you really sound like you want all the perks of being a hacker without the actual hacking. If you want to learn things about the Empeg, you've got to at the very least be able to search a BBS or a web site. Whining about how hard it is to find information is not going to make you part of the solution. Sites like the Empeg developer's site are helpful, this BBS is helpful, and if you need it spelled out any more than it already is, you're just not much of a hacker, and you bought the wrong MP3 player, sorry...

What empeg sells and supports is the player and emplode; we do not (and make it plain that we do not) support developers - we're simply not in that business. There's no way we could give developer support to even 10's of customers and get any work done ourselves.

That said, we provide an image with enough tools to get you started, and we generally will answer techie questions on the unit - this is much more than many companies provide - and anyone already experienced with linux can work out the rest.

If we were selling an evaluation board or development kit then yes, it would be our business to support developers. We don't - we sell a music player. It happens to be capable of a lot more, but don't mistake the empeg for a Redhat linux box with a full toolset: the empeg is an embedded system and as such is cut-down and customised in many ways.

Hugo

If we put a httpd on the player, it would take disk space and memory. The player is designed to work with the HDD spun down (ie, no disk access at all except under its own control) - no httpd is designed this way. All spare memory in the empeg is used to cache tracks to give the shock protection - running other apps will make this buffer smaller.

Also, many unix programs simply can't deal with running on a small-memory system without swap - they fall over horribly if (eg) a malloc fails. Expecting us to put httpd on the system when it would adversely affect the main purpose of the box (play music) is unreasonable - it can be done, but you loose other things.

As has been noted, you can replace the init script if you want. The reason we have a small binary init is to give the fastest boot time and lowest memory footprint (ie, no bash being loaded, etc). It also deals with remounting disks read only & restoring safe-states.

The wishlist includes allowing other apps to link into the player, to give seamless integration of 3rd party stuff (whilst not interrupting the player or causing disk/memory problems) - but this is still wishlist and not scheduled for any particular player version yet. It will happen in some form, though.

Hugo

Another point that no one seems to have raised about ftp/http support: It would seem to me that if empeg put either of those tools on the developer image, than they would be providing a method for retrieving mp3's from the unit.

From what I gather, RIAA would not like that much.

Also, as was pointed out above, not everyone wants the same version of ftpd/telnetd/httpd, etc. i.e. the Washington University FTP daemon is the most popular one availble for Linux, yet some versions have security holes. The last thing I want is my empeg to get rooted by a script kiddie, because it was running an ftpd with a buffer overflow security hole in it (you guys getting tired of me mentioning this yet? )

I personally detest vi as an editor, and just never bothered to learn emacs, even though I should. I have been happy with pico and joe as editors. Out of those four choices, we couldn't ask empeg to put them all on there. I wouldn't want two of them, and would just end up deleting them.

I agree that if you want to be a hacker, you should have to work for it. It may make it easier to compile a program, but there's not much learning going on.

-Trevor

-----
Mk 2, Green 12GB 080000349

20mins to fix broken df

If you fixed it with the symlink, don't. It breaks fsck.




Roger - not necessarily speaking for empeg

- Sites like the Empeg developer's site are helpful, this BBS is helpful -

you're absolutle right, i never said something against the work here is done.

the rest of your posting i do not comment, sorry

hei but then stop suggesting things:

does you car stereo does run linux
built in microphone
free cpu power

all this stuff is useless to me for the moment. i was really thinking that i can play some tetris when staying in the traffic jam.

- ok lets start the httpd only in the office

- theres already a swap partition on the mark2

- i know what the init is for, i understand why you keep it small and fast, but a hook to get something startet, without lossing disk handling restoring safe state, would be nice

- ok i'll wait ........... or try myself harder to get stuff running myself

does your car stereo run linux?
It runs Linux (the kernel) it doesn't run a distribution like redhat etc...
built in microphone
It's not built in, there is a plug to take a microphone for later VR stuff...
free cpu power
It does have free cpu cycles, so more advanced audio codecs can be supported in the future...

You can do whatever you like with it, it just takes a bit of effort on your part...

Jazz
(List 112, Mk2 12 gig #40. Mk1 4 gig #30. Mk3 1.6 16v)

Hackers have to make an effort to look for the information they need. Make an effort and you will have the chance.

Sean

Suggesting things? We suggest the unit is upgradeable in software - we *don't* suggest that the average user tries to write stuff for the unit - but there are hacker-type who do.

Suggesting that the unit is a development box puts off standard consumers, who fear it'll be very hard to use, will require knowledge of linux (etc). Free CPU power and linux means that we can offer lots of things with software upgrades - and this is true for consumers, not just hackers. For example, the microphone will be used by the voice recognition - this is due in v2.0. It's not there just for people to play with with their own software.

Hugo