The Rockbox Manual for Archos Recorder V2 and FM rockbox.
Rockbox http://www.rockbox.org/ Open Source Jukebox Firmware Rockbox and this manual is the collaborative effort of the Rockbox team and its contributors. See the appendix for a complete list of contributors. c 2003-2011 The Rockbox Team and its contributors, c 2004 Christi Alice Scarborough, c 2003 José Maria Garcia-Valdecasas Bernal & Peter Schlenker. Version 3.10. Built using pdfLATEX.
Contents Contents 1. Introduction 1.1. Welcome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2. Getting more help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3. Naming conventions and marks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 10 10 11 2. Installation 2.1. Before Starting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2. Installing Rockbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.1. Automated Installation . . . . . . . 2.2.2. Manual Installation . . . . . . .
Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Contents 6.4. Balance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5. Channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.6. Stereo Width . . . . . . . . . . . 6.7. Loudness . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.8. Auto Volume . . . . . . . . . . . 6.9. Super Bass . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.10. MDB – Micronas Dynamic Bass 7. Playback Settings 7.1. Shuffle . . . . . . . . . . 7.2. Repeat . . . . . . . . . . 7.3. Play Selected First . . . 7.4. Fast-Forward/Rewind . 7.5. Anti-Skip Buffer . . . . 7.6. Fade on Stop/Pause . . 7.7. Party Mode . . . .
Contents 10.2. Frequency . . . . . . . . . 10.3. Source . . . . . . . . . . . 10.4. Channels . . . . . . . . . 10.5. Independent Frames . . . 10.6. File Split Options . . . . . 10.7. Prerecord Time . . . . . . 10.8. Clear Recording Directory 10.9. Clipping Light . . . . . . 10.10.Trigger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Contents 12.2. Demos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.2.1. Bounce . . . . . . . . . 12.2.2. Credits . . . . . . . . . 12.2.3. Cube . . . . . . . . . . . 12.2.4. Demystify . . . . . . . . 12.2.5. Fire . . . . . . . . . . . 12.2.6. Fractals . . . . . . . . . 12.2.7. Logo . . . . . . . . . . . 12.2.8. Mosaique . . . . . . . . 12.2.9. Oscilloscope . . . . . . . 12.2.10.PictureFlow . . . . . . . 12.2.11.Plasma . . . . . . . . . 12.2.12.Snow . . . . . . . . . . . 12.2.13.Starfield . . . . . . . . . 12.2.14.
Contents 12.4.16.Stopwatch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 12.4.17.Text Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 13.Advanced Topics 13.1. Customising the User Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.1.1. Getting Extras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.1.2. Loading Fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.1.3. Loading Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.1.4. UI Viewport . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.2.
Contents B.10.Runtime Database . . . . . . . . . B.11.Hold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B.12.Virtual LED . . . . . . . . . . . . B.13.Repeat Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . B.14.Playback Mode . . . . . . . . . . . B.15.Current Screen . . . . . . . . . . . B.16.List Title (.sbs only) . . . . . . . B.17.Changing Volume . . . . . . . . . . B.18.Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B.19.Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B.20.FM Radio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B.21.
Chapter 1. Introduction 10 1. Introduction 1.1. Welcome This is the manual for Rockbox. Rockbox is an open source firmware replacement for a growing number of digital audio players. Rockbox aims to be considerably more functional and efficient than your device’s stock firmware while remaining easy to use and customisable. Rockbox is written by users, for users.
Chapter 1. Introduction 11 main channel for Rockbox is #rockbox on irc://irc.freenode.net. Many helpful developers and users are usually around. Just join and ask your question (don’t ask to ask!) – if someone knows the answer you’ll usually get an answer pretty quickly. More information including IRC logs can be found at http://www.rockbox.org/irc/. We also have a web client so that you can join the Rockbox IRC channel without needing to install additional software onto your computer.
Chapter 2. Installation 12 2. Installation Installing Rockbox is generally a quick and easy procedure. However before beginning there are a few important things to know. 2.1. Before Starting USB connection. To transfer Rockbox to your player you need to connect it to your computer. For manual installation/uninstallation, or should autodetection fail during automatic installation, you need to know where to access the player.
Chapter 2. Installation • Automatically install all suggested components (“Complete Installation”). • Selectively install optional components. • Install additional fonts and themes. • Install voice files and generate talk clips. • Uninstall all components you installed using Rockbox Utility. Prebuilt binaries for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X are available at the ZRockboxUtility wiki page. When first starting Rockbox Utility run “Autodetect”, found in the configuration dialog (File → Configure).
Chapter 2. Installation development, you should stick with the release. Please now go to section 2.2.3 (page 14) to complete the installation procedure. 2.2.2. Manual Installation The manual installation method is still available to you, should you need or desire it by following the instructions below. If you have used Rockbox Utility to install Rockbox, then you do not need to follow the next section and can skip straight to section 2.2.3 (page 14) Installing the firmware 1.
Chapter 2. Installation 15 2.3. Running Rockbox When you turn the unit on, Rockbox should load. 2.4. Updating Rockbox Rockbox can be easily updated with Rockbox Utility. You can also update Rockbox manually – download a Rockbox build as detailed above, and unzip the build to the root directory of your player as in the manual installation stage. If your unzip program asks you whether to overwrite files, choose the “Yes to all” option. The new build will be installed over your current build.
Chapter 3. Quick Start 16 3. Quick Start 3.1. Basic Overview 3.1.1. The player’s controls Throughout this manual, the buttons on the player are labelled according to the picture above. Whenever a button name is prefixed by “Long”, a long press of approximately one second should be performed on that button. The buttons are described in detail in the following paragraph. Additional information for blind users is available on the Rockbox website at ZBlindFAQ.
Chapter 3. Quick Start placed. In the row of three rectangular buttons the following buttons can be found (from left to right): F1, F2 and F3. 3.1.2. Turning the player on and off To turn on and off your Rockbox enabled player use the following keys: Key Action Long On Long Off Start Rockbox Shutdown Rockbox On shutdown, Rockbox automatically saves its settings.
Chapter 3. Quick Start 18 select an item. When browsing the file system selecting an audio file plays it. The view switches to the “While playing screen”, usually abbreviated as “WPS” (see section 4.3 (page 26). The dynamic playlist gets replaced with the contents of the current directory. This way you can easily treat directories as playlists. The created dynamic playlist can be extended or modified while playing. This is also known as “on-the-fly playlist”.
Chapter 3. Quick Start 19 from the Internet make sure you have the needed fonts installed as otherwise the theme may not display properly. 3.3. USB Charging To charge your player over USB, hold any button while plugging it in. This will prevent it from connecting to your computer and let you continue to use it normally. Your player must already be in Rockbox for this to function.
Chapter 4. Browsing and playing 4. Browsing and playing 4.1. File Browser Figure 4.1.: The file browser Rockbox lets you browse your music in either of two ways. The File Browser lets you navigate through the files and directories on your player, entering directories and executing the default action on each file. To help differentiate files, each file format is displayed with an icon.
Chapter 4. Browsing and playing 4.1.1. File Browser Controls Key Action Up/Down Go to previous/next item in list. If you are on the first/last entry, the cursor will wrap to the last/first entry. Move one page up/down in the list. Go to the parent directory. Execute the default action on the selected file or enter a directory. If there is an audio file playing, return to the While Playing Screen (WPS) without stopping playback. Stop audio playback. Enter the Context Menu. Enter the Main Menu.
Chapter 4. Browsing and playing invoked on a directory, it will display options for directories. The Context Menu contains the following options (unless otherwise noted, each option pertains both to files and directories): Playlist. Enters the Playlist Submenu (see section 4.5.3 (page 34)). Playlist Catalogue. Enters the Playlist Catalogue Submenu (see section 4.5.2 (page 34)). Rename. This function lets the user modify the name of a file or directory. Cut.
Chapter 4. Browsing and playing Add to Shortcuts. Adds a link to the selected item in the shortcuts.link file. If the file does not already exist it will be created in the root directory. Note that if you create a shortcut to a file, Rockbox will not open it upon selecting, but simply bring you to its location in the File Browser. 4.1.3. Virtual Keyboard Figure 4.3.
Chapter 4. Browsing and playing Key Action On + Left / On + Right F3 Move the line cursor within the text line. Left / Right Up / Down F1 Play F2 Off Play Delete the character before the line cursor. Move the cursor on the virtual keyboard. If you move out of the picker area, you get the previous/next page of characters (if there is more than one). Move the cursor on the virtual keyboard. If you move out of the picker area you get to the line edit mode.
Chapter 4. Browsing and playing 25 Ignoring Directories During Database Initialization You may have directories on your player whose contents should not be added to the database. Placing a file named database.ignore in a directory will exclude the files in that directory and all its subdirectories from scanning their tags and adding them to the database. This will speed up the database initialization. If a subdirectory of an ‘ignored’ directory should still be scanned, place a file named database.
Chapter 4. Browsing and playing (Settings → General Settings → System → Limits) in order to view long lists of tracks in the ID3 database browser. There is no option to turn off database completely. If you do not want to use it just do not do the initial build of the database and do not load it to RAM.
Chapter 4. Browsing and playing • Status bar: The Status bar shows Battery level, charger status, volume, play mode, repeat mode, shuffle mode and clock. In contrast to all other items, the status bar is always at the top of the screen. • (Scrolling) path and filename of the current song. • The ID3 track name. • The ID3 album name. • The ID3 artist name. • Bit rate. VBR files display average bitrate and “(avg)” • Elapsed and total time.
Chapter 4. Browsing and playing 4.3.1. WPS Key Controls Key Action Up / Down Left Volume up/down. Go to beginning of track, or if pressed while in the first seconds of a track, go to the previous track. Rewind in track. Go to the next track. Fast forward in track. Toggle play/pause. Stop playback. Return to the File Browser / Database. Enter WPS Context Menu. Enter Main Menu. Switch to the Quick Screen (see section 5.13 (page 45)). Key lock (software hold switch) on/off.
Chapter 4. Browsing and playing The clip indicator: This is a little black block that is displayed at the very right of the scale when an overflow occurs. It usually does not show up during normal playback unless you play an audio file that is distorted heavily. If you encounter clipping while recording, your recording will sound distorted. You should lower the gain. Note: Note that the clip detection is not very precise. Clipping might occur without being indicated.
Chapter 4. Browsing and playing Sound Settings This is a shortcut to the Sound Settings Menu, where you can configure volume, bass, treble, and other settings affecting the sound of your music. See section 6 (page 46) for more information. Playback Settings This is a shortcut to the Playback Settings Menu, where you can configure shuffle, repeat, party mode, skip length and other settings affecting the playback of your music. Rating The menu entry is only shown if Gather Runtime Information is enabled.
Chapter 4. Browsing and playing Delete Delete the currently playing file. The file will be deleted but the playback of the file will not stop immediately. Instead, the part of the file that has already been buffered (i.e. read into the player’s memory) will be played. This may even be the whole track. Pitch The Pitch Screen allows you to change the rate of playback (i.e. the playback speed and at the same time the pitch) of your player. The rate value can be adjusted between 50% and 200%.
Chapter 4. Browsing and playing Figure 4.6.: The F3 quick screen Rockbox handles function buttons in a different way to the Archos software. F1 is always bound to the menu function, while F2 and F3 enable two quick screens. F2 displays some browse and play settings which are likely to be changed frequently. This settings are Shuffle mode, Repeat mode and the Show files options Shuffle mode plays each track in the currently playing list in a random order rather than in the order shown in the browser.
Chapter 4. Browsing and playing 4.5. Working with Playlists 4.5.1. Playlist terminology Some common terms that are used in Rockbox when referring to playlists: Directory. A playlist! One of the keys to getting the most out of Rockbox is understanding that Rockbox always considers the song that it is playing to be part of a playlist, and in some situations, Rockbox will create a playlist automatically.
Chapter 4. Browsing and playing By using the Playlist catalogue The Playlist catalogue makes it possible to modify and create playlists that are not currently playing. To do this select Playlist catalogue in the Context Menu. There you will have two choices, Add to playlist adds the selected track or directory to an existing playlist and Add to a new playlist creates a new playlist containing the selected track or directory.
Chapter 4. Browsing and playing Insert Next. Add track(s) immediately after current playing track, no matter what else has been inserted. Insert Last. Add track(s) to end of playlist. Insert Shuffled. Add track(s) to the playlist in a random order. Insert Last Shuffled. Add tracks in a random order to the end of the playlist. Queue. Queue is the same as Insert except queued tracks are deleted immediately from the playlist after they have been played.
Chapter 4. Browsing and playing 36 Moving and removing tracks To move or remove a track from the current playlist enter the Playlist Viewer by selecting View Current Playlist in the Playlist submenu in the WPS context menu or the Main Menu. Once in the Playlist Viewer open the context menu on the track you want to move or remove. If you want to move the track, select Move in the context menu and then move the blinking cursor to the place where you want the track to be moved and confirm with Right or On.
Chapter 4. Browsing and playing 37 screen has its own assignment. If there is no assignment for a given screen, the hotkey is ignored. The default assignment for the File Browser hotkey is Off, while the default for the WPS hotkey is View Playlist. The hotkey assignments are changed in the Hotkey menu (see section 8.9 (page 64)) under General Settings. The Rockbox manual (version 3.
Chapter 5. The Main Menu 5. The Main Menu 5.1. Introducing the Main Menu Figure 5.1.: The main menu The Main Menu is the screen from which all of the Rockbox functions can be accessed. This is the first screen you will see when starting Rockbox. To return to the Main Menu, press the F1 button. All settings are stored on the unit. However, Rockbox does not access the hard disk solely for the purpose of saving settings.
Chapter 5. The Main Menu 5.3. Recent Bookmarks Figure 5.2.: The list bookmarks screen If the Save a list of recently created bookmarks option is enabled then you can view a list of several recent bookmarks here and select one to jump straight to that track. Note: Bookmarking only works when tracks are launched from the file browser, and does not currently work for tracks launched via the database. In addition, they do not currently work with dynamic playlists.
Chapter 5. The Main Menu 5.5. Database Browse by the meta-data in your audio files (see section 4.2 (page 24)). 5.6. Now Playing/Resume Playback Go to the While Playing Screen and resume if music playback is stopped or paused and there is something to resume (see section 4.3 (page 26)). 5.7. Settings The Settings menu allows you to set or adjust many parameters that affect the way your player works. There are many submenus for different parameter areas.
Chapter 5. The Main Menu 5.7.6. Manage Settings The Manage Settings option allows the saving and re-loading of user configuration settings, browsing the hard drive for alternate firmwares, and finally resetting your player back to initial configuration. The details of this menu are covered in section 13.3 (page 139). 5.8. Recording 5.8.1. While Recording Screen Figure 5.3.
Chapter 5. The Main Menu Key Action Up / Down Left / Right Play Select setting. Adjust selected setting. Start recording. While recording: pause recording (press again to continue). Exit Recording Screen. While recording: Stop recording. Open Recording Settings (see section 10 (page 67)). Quick menu for recording settings. A quick press will leave the screen up (press F2 again to exit), while holding it will close the screen when you release it. Quick menu for source setting.
Chapter 5. The Main Menu “play” it from the file browser. Rockbox will “remember” and use it in PRESET mode until another file has been selected. Some preset files are available here: ZFmPresets. Note: The radio will shorten battery life, because the MAS-chip is set to record mode for instant recordings. Key Action Left, Right Change frequency in SCAN mode or jump to next/previous station in PRESET mode. Seek to next station in SCAN mode.
Chapter 5. The Main Menu 5.10. Playlists This menu allows you to work with playlists. Playlists can be created in three ways. Playing a file in a directory causes all the files in it to be placed in a playlist. Playlists can be created manually by either using the Context Menu (see section 4.1.2 (page 21)) or using the Playlist menu. Both automatically and manually created playlists can be edited using this menu.
Chapter 5. The Main Menu 45 Debug (Keep Out!): This sub menu is intended to be used only by Rockbox developers. It shows hardware, disk, battery status and other technical information. Warning: It is not recommended that users access this menu unless instructed to do so in the course of fixing a problem with Rockbox. If you think you have messed up your settings by use of this menu please try to reset all settings before asking for help. 5.13.
Chapter 6. Sound Settings 6. Sound Settings Figure 6.1.: The sound settings screen The sound settings menu offers a selection of sound settings you may change to customise your listening experience. 6.1. Volume This setting adjusts the volume of your music. Like most professional audio gear and many consumer audio products, Rockbox uses a decibel scale where 0 dB is a reference that indicates the maximum volume that the player can produce without possible distortion (clipping).
Chapter 6. Sound Settings 6.4. Balance This setting controls the balance between the left and right channels. The default, 0, means that the left and right outputs are equal in volume. Negative numbers increase the volume of the left channel relative to the right, positive numbers increase the volume of the right channel relative to the left. 6.5. Channels A stereo audio signal consists of two channels, left and right.
Chapter 6. Sound Settings vocal range are unaffected, since the human ear picks these up very easily at any sound level. It is of course also possible to use this effect at higher volumes for enhanced bass and treble. 6.8. Auto Volume Auto volume is a feature that automatically lowers the volume on loud parts, and then slowly restores the volume to the previous level over a time interval. This setting allows this time interval to be configured.
Chapter 6. Sound Settings MDB Centre Frequency. The cutoff frequency of your headphones or speakers. This is usually given in the specification for the headphones/speakers. MDB shape. It is recommended that this parameter be set to 1.5 times the centre frequency. This is the frequency up to which harmonics are generated. Some of the lower fundamentals near the cut-off range will have their lower harmonics cut, since they will be below the range of the speakers.
Chapter 7. Playback Settings 7. Playback Settings The Playback Settings menu allows you to configure settings related to audio playback. 7.1. Shuffle Turning shuffle on will cause Rockbox to randomly re-order the playlist. Thus, to shuffle all of the audio files on the player, you first need to create a playlist containing all of them. For more information on creating playlists refer to section 4.5 (page 33). Options: Yes/No. 7.2.
Chapter 7. Playback Settings 51 7.3. Play Selected First This setting controls what happens when you select a file for playback while shuffle mode is on. If the Play Selected First setting is Yes, the file you selected will be played first. If this setting is No, a random file in the directory will be played first. 7.4. Fast-Forward/Rewind These settings control the speed and acceleration during fast forward and rewind.
Chapter 7. Playback Settings 52 the Random feature requires you to first generate a folder list via the Random Folder Advance Configuration plugin (see section 12.4.13 (page 128)). Note: You must have the Repeat option set to No for Auto-Change Directory to function properly. b Note: This feature only works when songs have been played from the file browser. Using it with the database may cause unexpected behaviour. b 7.9. Last.fm Log Enables logging of your played tracks for submittal to http://www.
Chapter 7. Playback Settings 53 7.13. Rewind on Pause This option rewinds the current track by a small amount whenever it is paused (not stopped). The amount to rewind can be set between 0 and 15 seconds. The Rockbox manual (version 3.
Chapter 8. General Settings 8. General Settings Figure 8.1.: The general settings screen 8.1. Playlist The Playlist sub menu allows you to configure settings related to playlists. Recursively Insert Directories. If set to On, then when a directory is inserted or queued into a dynamic playlist, all subdirectories will also be inserted. If set to Ask, Rockbox will prompt the user about whether to include sub-directories. Warn When Erasing Dynamic Playlist.
Chapter 8. General Settings Interpret numbers when sorting. As whole numbers enables a sorting algorithm which is similar to the default sorting of, for example, Windows Explorer, Mac OS X’s Finder or Nautilus, with regards to numbers at the beginning or within filenames. It combines consecutive digits to a number used for sorting, taking leading zeros into account. As digits disables this algorithm, and causes every digit to be compared separately.
Chapter 8. General Settings If Follow Playlist is set to No, when you enter the File Browser from the WPS, you will find yourself in the directory you were in when you last left the File Browser. Show Path. If this setting is set to Full Path the full path to the current directory will be displayed on the first line in the File Browser. If set to Current Directory Only only the name of the current directory will be displayed. This has a similar effect on the Database browser.
Chapter 8. General Settings this menu option again! LCD Mode. This setting lets you invert the colours of the display. Upside Down. Displays the screen so that the top of the display is nearest the buttons. This is sometimes useful when carrying the player in a pocket for easy access to the headphone socket. Scrolling. This feature controls how text will scroll in Rockbox. You can configure the following parameters: Scroll Speed.
Chapter 8. General Settings 58 Peak Release. This determines how fast the bar shrinks when the music becomes softer. Lower values make the peak meter look smoother. Expressed in scale units per 10 ms. Peak Hold Time. Specifies the time after which the peak indicator will reset. For example, if you set this value to 5 s, the peak indicator displays the loudest volume value that occurred within the last 5 seconds.
Chapter 8. General Settings 8.5. System 8.5.1. Start Screen Set the screen that Rockbox will start in. The default is the main menu but the following options are available: Previous Screen. Start Rockbox in the same screen as when it was shut off. Main Menu. Show the main menu. Files. Display the file browser, starting in the root directory of your player. Database. Show the default database view. Resume Playback.
Chapter 8. General Settings 8.5.4. Idle Poweroff Rockbox can be configured to turn off power after the unit has been idle for a defined number of minutes. The player is idle when playback is stopped or paused. It is not idle while the USB or charger is connected , or while recording. Settings are either Off or 1 to 10 minutes in 1 minute steps. Then 15, 30, 45 or 60 minutes are available. 8.5.5. Limits This sub menu relates to limits in the Rockbox operating system. Max Entries in File Browser.
Chapter 8. General Settings there’s already a bookmark for a directory or playlist, new bookmarks are added before existing ones. Bookmarks are stored next to the directory or playlist they reference, in a file with the same name as the directory or playlist and a “.bmark” extension. To load a bookmark, select the bookmark file and then select the bookmark to load. There are other ways to load a bookmarks mentioned below.
Chapter 8. General Settings Maintain a list of Recent Bookmarks. If this option is enabled, a list of the most recently created bookmarks may be accessed through the Recent Bookmarks option in the Main Menu. This list contains up to ten entries. No Do not keep a list of recently used bookmarks. This also removes the Recent Bookmarks from the Main Menu. Yes Keep a list of recently used bookmarks. Each new bookmark is added to the list of recent bookmarks.
Chapter 8. General Settings name would be english.voice. This option is on by default, but will do nothing unless the appropriate voice file is installed in the correct place on the player. The Voice Menus have several limitations: • Setting the Sound Option Channels to Karaoke may disable voice menus. • Plugins and the wake up alarm do not support voice features. Voice Directories. This option controls voicing of directory names. A voice file must be present for this to work.
Chapter 8. General Settings Say File Type. This option turns on voicing of file types when Voice Filenames is set to Spell or Numbers. When Voice Directories is set to Spell, “Directory” will be voiced after each spelled out directory. Announce Battery Level. When this option is enabled the battery level is announced when it falls under 50%, 30% and 15%. See ZVoiceHowto for more details on configuring speech support in Rockbox. 8.9. Hotkey WPS Hotkey. File Browser Hotkey.
Chapter 9. Theme Settings 9. Theme Settings The Theme Settings menu offers options that you can change to customize the visual appearance of Rockbox. Browse Theme Files. This option will display all the currently installed themes on the player, press Right to load the chosen theme and apply it. A theme is a configuration file, stored in a specific directory, that typically changes the WPS , font used and on some platforms additional information such as background image and text colours.
Chapter 9. Theme Settings Volume Display. Controls whether the volume is displayed as a graphic or a numeric value on the Status Bar. If you select a numeric display, volume is displayed in decibels. See section 6.1 (page 46) for more on the volume setting. Battery Display. Controls whether the battery charge status is displayed as a graphic or numerical percentage value on the Status Bar. Line Selector Type. This option allows you to select which type of line selector to use. Pointer.
Chapter 10. Recording Settings 10. Recording Settings Figure 10.1.: The recording settings screen Note: To change the location where recordings are stored open the Context Menu (see section 4.1.2 (page 21)) on the directory where you want to store them in the File Browser and select Set As Recording Directory. 10.1. Quality Choose the quality here (0 to 7). Default is 5, best quality is 7, smallest file size is 0. This setting affects how much your sound sample will be compressed.
Chapter 10. Recording Settings give better sound quality. The frequency setting also determines which version of the MPEG standard the sound is recorded using: MPEG 1 for 48 kHz, 44.1 kHz and 32 kHz. MPEG 2 for 24 kHz, 22.05 kHz and 16 kHz. Note: You cannot change the sample rate for digital recordings. 10.3. Source Choose the source of the recording. The options are: Digital (SPDIF), Microphone and Line In. 10.4. Channels This allows you to select mono or stereo recording.
Chapter 10. Recording Settings 10.7. Prerecord Time This setting buffers a small amount of audio so that when the record button is pressed, the recording will begin from that number of seconds earlier. This is useful for ensuring that a recording begins before a cue that is being waited for. 10.8. Clear Recording Directory Resets the location where the recorded files are saved to the root of your player’s drive. 10.9. Clipping Light Causes the backlight to flash on when clipping has been detected.
Chapter 10. Recording Settings Start Above. The start threshold defines the minimal volume a sound must have to start the recording. It is displayed numerically in the line “Start Above”. Note that the unit of the threshold depends on the settings of the peak meter. (i.e. When the peak meter displays dB you can adjust the level in dB and when the peak meter is set to linear the threshold is displayed as percentage.
Chapter 11. Time and Date 71 11. Time and Date Time related menu options. Pressing Long Play will voice the current time if voice support is enabled. Set Time/Date: Set current time and date. Wake-Up Alarm: This option will make the player start up at the specified time. Use Up and Down to adjust the minutes setting, Left and Right to adjust the hours. Play confirms the alarm, and Off cancels setting an alarm. If the player is turned on again before the alarm occurs, the alarm will be cancelled.
Chapter 12. Plugins 12. Plugins Plugins are programs that Rockbox can load and run. Only one plugin can be loaded at a time. Plugins have exclusive control over the user interface. This means you cannot switch back and forth between a plugin and Rockbox. When a plugin is loaded, you need to exit it to return to the Rockbox interface. Most plugins will not interfere with music playback but some of them will stop playback while running. Plugins have the file extension .rock.
Chapter 12. Plugins Key Action Left / Right / Up / Down Play F1 F2 Off Enter betting amount Hit (Draw new card) / Select Stay (End hand) Double down Pause game and go to menu / Cancel 12.1.2. BrickMania Figure 12.2.: BrickMania BrickMania is a clone of the classic game Breakout. The aim of the game is to destroy all the bricks by hitting them with the ball once or more. Sometimes a special item falls down when you destroy a brick.
Chapter 12. Plugins Key Action Left / Right Play / Up Off Moves the paddle Release the ball / Fire Open menu / Quit 12.1.3. Bubbles Figure 12.3.: Bubbles The goal of the game is to beat each level as quickly as possible by clearing the board of all bubbles. Bubbles are removed from the board when a cluster of three of more of the same type is formed. The game is over when any bubbles on the board extend below the bottom line.
Chapter 12. Plugins Chessbox is a one-person chess game with computer artificial intelligence. The chess engine is a port of GNU Chess 2 by John Stanback. It also works as a PGN file viewer. Instead of executing the game from the plugin menu, look for any file with .pgn extension in the file browser and execute it. Chessbox will show the list of matches included in the file and allow you to select the one you want to watch. After that, you can scroll back and forth through the moves of the game.
Chapter 12. Plugins Key Action Play Off Make chopper fly Enter menu 12.1.6. Dice Dice is a simple dice rolling simulator. Select number and type of dice to roll in a menu and start by choosing “Roll Dice”. The result is shown as individual numbers as well as the total of the rolled dice. Key Action Play On Roll dice again Quit 12.1.7. Flipit Figure 12.6.: Flipit Flipping the colour of the token under the cursor also flips the tokens above, below, left and right of the cursor.
Chapter 12. Plugins 12.1.8. Goban Figure 12.7.: Goban Goban is a a plugin for playing, viewing and recording games of Go (also known as Weiqi, Baduk, Igo and Goe). It uses standard Smart Game Format (SGF) files for saving and loading games. You can find a short introduction to Go at http://senseis.xmp. net/?WhatIsGo and more information about SGF files can be read at http://senseis.xmp. net/?SmartGameFormat or the SGF specification at http://www.red-bean.com/sgf/.
Chapter 12. Plugins Mark Meaning + * There are nodes after the current node in the SGF tree. There are sibling variations which can be navigated to using the Next Variation menu option of the Context Menu or the On button. There is a comment at the current node. It can be viewed/edited using the Add/Edit Comment menu option of the Context Menu.
Chapter 12. Plugins Quit. Leave the plugin. Any unsaved changes are saved to /sgf/gbn_def.sgf. Game Info. The menu for modifying game info (metadata) of the current game. This information will be saved to the SGF file and can be viewed in almost all SGF readers. Basic Info. Shows a quick view of the basic game metadata, if any has been set (otherwise does nothing). This option does not allow editing. Time Limit. The time limit of the current game. Overtime. The overtime settings of the current game.
Chapter 12. Plugins Idle Autosave Time. Set the amount of idle time to wait before automatically saving any unsaved changes. These autosaves go to the file /sgf/gbn_def.sgf regardless of if you have loaded a game or used Save As to save the game before or not. Set to Off to disable this functionality completely. Automatically Show Comments? If this is enabled and you navigate to a node containing game comments, they will automatically be displayed. Context Menu.
Chapter 12. Plugins 12.1.9. Jackpot Figure 12.8.: Jackpot This is a jackpot slot machine game. At the beginning of the game you have 20$. Payouts are given when three matching symbols come up. Key Action Play On Play Exit the game 12.1.10. Jewels Figure 12.9.: Jewels Jewels is a simple yet addicting game which involves swapping pairs of jewels in order to form connected segments of three or more of the same type.
Chapter 12. Plugins Key Action Left/Right/ Up/Down Play Off Move the cursor around the jewels Select a jewel Menu 12.1.11. MazezaM Figure 12.10.: MazezaM The goal of this puzzle game is to escape a dungeon consisting of ten “mazezams”. These are rooms containing rows of blocks which can be shifted left or right. You can move the rows only by pushing them and if you move the rows carelessly, you will get stuck.
Chapter 12. Plugins The classic game of minesweeper. The aim of the game is to uncover all of the squares on the board. If a mine is uncovered then the game is over. If a mine is not uncovered, then the number of mines adjacent to the current square is revealed. The aim is to use the information you are given to work out where the mines are and avoid them. When the player is certain that they know the location of a mine, it can be tagged to avoid accidentally “stepping” on it.
Chapter 12. Plugins 12.1.14. Pong Figure 12.13.: Pong Pong is a simple one or two player “tennis game”. Whenever a player misses the ball the other scores. The game starts in demo mode, with the CPU controlling both sides. As soon as a button to control one of the paddles is pressed, control of that paddle passes to the player, so for a single player game, just press the appropriate buttons to control the side you want to play.
Chapter 12. Plugins 12.1.16. Robotfindskitten Figure 12.14.: Robotfindskitten In this game, you are robot (#). Your job is to find kitten. This task is complicated by the existence of various things which are not kitten. Robot must touch items to determine if they are kitten or not. The game ends when robotfindskitten. Key Action Up, Down, Left, Right On Move robot Quit 12.1.17. Rockblox Figure 12.15.: Rockblox Rockblox is a Rockbox version of the classic falling blocks game from Russia.
Chapter 12. Plugins Key Action F1 Left Right Down Play Up On Off Restart game Move left Move right Move down Rotate anticlockwise Rotate clockwise Drop Quit 12.1.18. Rockblox1d Rockblox1d is a game for people who find rockblox too hard. In this version the second dimension is missing so the user only has to move the bricks down. No horizontal moving anymore and no need to rotate the brick! Key Action Play Off Move down faster Quit 12.1.19. Rocklife This an implementation of J. H.
Chapter 12. Plugins 12.1.20. Sliding Puzzle Figure 12.16.: Sliding puzzle The classic sliding puzzle game. Rearrange the pieces so that you can see the whole picture, or switch to number tiles if you like it a little easier Includes one picture puzzle. You can also use the sliding puzzle plugin as a viewer for supported image types, to turn your own pictures into a puzzle.
Chapter 12. Plugins Key Action Up/Down Play Change levels (1 is slowest, 9 is fastest) Toggle Play/Pause 12.1.22. Snake 2 Figure 12.18.: Snake 2 – The Snake Strikes Back Another version of the Snake game. Move the snake around, and eat the apples that pop up on the screen. Each time an apple is eaten, the snake gets longer. The game ends when the snake hits a wall, or runs into itself.
Chapter 12. Plugins 12.1.23. Sokoban Figure 12.19.: Sokoban The object of the game is to push boxes into their correct position in a crowded warehouse with a minimal number of pushes and moves. The boxes can only be pushed, never pulled, and only one can be pushed at a time. Sokoban may be used as a viewer for viewing saved solutions and playing external level sets with the .sok extension. Level sets should be in the standard Sokoban text format or RLE (Run Length Encoded).
Chapter 12. Plugins 12.1.24. Solitaire Figure 12.20.: Klondike solitaire This is the classic Klondike solitaire game for Rockbox. This is probably the best-known solitaire in the world. Many people do not even realize that other games exist. Though the name may not be familiar, the game itself certainly is. This is due in no small part to Microsoft’s inclusion of the the game in every version of Windows. Though popular, the odds of winning are rather low, perhaps one in thirty hands.
Chapter 12. Plugins 12.1.25. Spacerocks Figure 12.21.: Spacerocks Spacerocks is a clone of the old arcade game Asteroids. The goal of the game is to blow up the asteroids and avoid being hit by them. Once in a while, a UFO will appear – shoot this for extra points. Key Action Play Up Left/ Right Down On Off Shoot Thrust Turn left/right Teleport Pause game Quit 12.1.26. Star Figure 12.22.: Star game This is a puzzle game.
Chapter 12. Plugins Key Action Left Right Up Down On F1 F2 F3 Off Move Left Move Right Move Up Move Down Switch between circle and square Previous level Reset level Next level Exit the game 12.1.27. Sudoku Figure 12.23.: Sudoku Sudoku in Rockbox can act as both a plugin and a viewer. When starting Sudoku from the Browse Plugins menu, a random game will be generated automatically, and an estimate of its difficulty (very easy, easy, medium, hard or fiendish) will be displayed on the screen.
Chapter 12. Plugins Note: The scratchpad is not saved when saving the game. Key Action Up / Down / Left / Right Play Long Play Move the cursor F1 F2 Off Change number under the cursor Constantly changing the number under the cursor Open Menu Add/Remove number to scratchpad Quit Some places where can you can find .ss files: • Simple Sudoku (Advanced Puzzle Packs 1 and 2 located near the bottom of that page): http://www.angusj.com/sudoku/ • Kjell’s Sudoku generator/solver: http://kjell.haxx.
Chapter 12. Plugins Players 0 Modes Player 1 Out of control With no player taking part in the game all worms are out of control and steered by artificial stupidity.
Chapter 12. Plugins Worms. Thou shall not eat worms. Neither other worms nor thyself. Eating worms is blasphemous cannibalism, not healthy and causes instant death. And it doesn’t help anyway: the other worm isn’t hurt by the bite. It will go on creeping happily and eat all the food you left on the table. Walls. Don’t crash into the walls. Walls are not edible. Crashing a worm against a wall causes it a headache it doesn’t survive. Game over. The game is over when all worms are dead.
Chapter 12. Plugins Hints • Initially you will be busy with controlling your worm. Try to avoid other worms and crawl far away from them. Wait until they curl up themselves and collect the food afterwards. Don’t worry if the other worms grow longer than yours - you can catch up after they’ve died. • When you are more experienced watch the tactics of other worms. Those worms controlled by artificial stupidity head straight for the nearest piece of food.
Chapter 12. Plugins 12.2. Demos 12.2.1. Bounce Figure 12.26.: Bounce This demo is of the word “Rockbox” bouncing across the screen. There is also an analogue clock in the background. In Scroll mode the bouncing text is replaced by a different one scrolling from right to left. Key Action Up / Down Right / Left On Off Moves to next/previous option Increases/decreases option value Toggles Scroll mode Exits bounce demo Available options are: Xdist/Ydist.
Chapter 12. Plugins 12.2.3. Cube Figure 12.27.: Cube This is a rotating cube screen saver in 3D. Key Action On Play F3 Right / Left Up / Down Display at maximum frame rate Pause Cycle draw mode Select axis to adjust Change speed/angle (speed can not be changed while paused) Quit Off 12.2.4. Demystify Figure 12.28.: Demystify Demystify is a screen saver like demo. Key Action Left / Right Up / Down On Increase / decrease speed Add / remove polygon Quit The Rockbox manual (version 3.
Chapter 12. Plugins 12.2.5. Fire Figure 12.29.: Fire Fire is a demo displaying a fire effect. Key Action Up / Down Left Right On Increase / decrease number of flames Toggle flame type Toggle moving flames Quit 12.2.6. Fractals Figure 12.30.: Fractals: Mandelbrot set This demonstration draws fractal images from the Mandelbrot set using the greyscale engine.
Chapter 12. Plugins 12.2.7. Logo Demo showing the Rockbox logo bouncing around the screen. Key Action Right / Left Up / Down Off Increase / decrease speed on the x-axis Increase / decrease speed on the y-axis Quit 12.2.8. Mosaique Figure 12.31.: Mosaique This simple graphics demo draws a mosaic picture on the screen of the player. Press Off to quit. 12.2.9. Oscilloscope Figure 12.32.: Oscilloscope This demo shows the shape of the sound samples that make up the music being played.
Chapter 12. Plugins Keys Key Action F1 F2 F3 Play Up / Down Right / Left Off Toggle filled / curve / plot Toggle whether to scroll or not Toggle drawing orientation Pause the demo Increase / decrease volume Increase / decrease speed Exit demo 12.2.10. PictureFlow Figure 12.33.: PictureFlow PictureFlow provides a visualisation of your albums with their associated cover art. Note: PictureFlow is a visualisation only. It cannot be used to select and play music.
Chapter 12. Plugins Keys Key Action Left / Right Up / Down On Scroll through albums Scroll through track list Enter track list / Play album from selected track Exit track list Enter menu Exit PictureFlow Left F1 Off Main Menu Go to WPS. Leave PictureFlow and enter the while playing screen. Settings. Enter the settings menu. Return. Exit menu. Quit. Exit PictureFlow plugin. Settings Menu Show FPS. Displays frames per second on screen. Spacing.
Chapter 12. Plugins 12.2.11. Plasma Figure 12.34.: Plasma Plasma is a demo displaying a 80’s style retro plasma effect. Key Action Up / Down On / Off Increase / decrease Frequency Exit 12.2.12. Snow Figure 12.35.: Have you ever seen snow falling? This demo replicates snow falling on your screen. If you love winter, you will love this demo. Or maybe not. Press Off to quit. 12.2.13. Starfield Figure 12.36.: Starfield The Rockbox manual (version 3.
Chapter 12. Plugins Starfield simulation (like the classic screensaver). Key Action Right / Left Up / Down Off Increase / decrease number of stars Increase / decrease speed Quit 12.2.14. VU meter Figure 12.37.: VU-Meter This is a VU meter, which displays the volume of the left and right audio channels. There are 3 types of meter selectable. The analogue meter is a classic needle style.
Chapter 12. Plugins Note: Some viewer plugins can only be used by selecting the Open With... option from the Context Menu (see section 4.1.2 (page 21)). Viewer Plugin Associated filetype(s) Context Menu only Shortcuts Chip-8 Emulator Frotz Image Viewer Lua scripting language Movie Player Rockboy Search Sort Text Viewer VBRfix Wavplay ZXBox Shopping list .link .ch8 .z1 - .z8 .bmp, .jpg, .jpeg, .png .lua .rvf .gb, .gbc .m3u, .m3u8 .* .txt,.nfo, .* .mp3 .wav .tap, .tax, .sna, .z80 .
Chapter 12. Plugins If the .link file contains only one entry no list will be shown, you will directly jump to that location. The file shortcuts.link in the root directory is an exception. After “playing” it, the list will be shown even if the file contains just one entry. If the list you are seeing is from shortcuts.link in the root directory, you can delete the selected entry by pressing F1. Deleting entries from other .link files is not possible.
3 4 5 6 7 8 Play Right F2 Down 9 A B C D E F On 2 Left 1 F3 Off 0 Up Off F1 Chip8 Key Chapter 12. Plugins Some places where can you can find .ch8 files: • The PluginChip8 page on www.rockbox.org has several attached: ZPluginChip8 • Check out the HP48 chip games section: http://www.hpcalc.org/hp48/games/chip/ • PC emulator by the guy who wrote the HP48 emulator: http://www.pdc.kth.se/ ~lfo/chip8/CHIP8.htm • Links to other chip8 emulators: http://www.zophar.net/chip8.
Chapter 12. Plugins Key Action Up Play On Display keyboard to enter text Press enter Open Frotz menu (not available at MORE prompts) Quit Off 12.3.4. Image Viewer This plugin opens image files from the File Browser to display them using Rockbox’s greyscale library. Supported formats are as follows. Format File-extension(s) BMP JPEG PNG .bmp .jpg, .jpe, .jpeg .png b Note: This plugin will cause playback to stop.
Chapter 12. Plugins Note: Progressive scan and other unusual JPEG files are not supported, and will result in various “unsupported xx” messages. Processing could also fail if the image is too big to decode which will be explained by a respective message. 12.3.5. Rockboy Figure 12.38.: Rockboy Rockboy is a Nintendo Game Boy and Game Boy Color emulator for Rockbox based on the gnuboy emulator. To start a game, open a ROM file saved as .gb or .gbc in the file browser.
Chapter 12. Plugins Set Keys (BUGGY) Select this option to set a new keymapping. Reset. Resets the Emulator. Quit RockBoy. Quits the Rockboy plugin. 12.3.6. Search This plugin can be used on playlists. It searches through the playlist that it opened on looking for any occurrences of the string entered by the user. The results of this search are saved to a new playlist, search_results.m3u, within the same directory as the original playlist. 12.3.7.
Chapter 12. Plugins Default keys Key Action Up Down Left Scroll-up Scroll-down Top of file (Narrow mode) / One screen left (Wide mode) Bottom of file (Narrow mode) / One screen right (Wide mode) One line up One line down One column left One column right Toggle autoscroll Set/Reset bookmarks Enter menu Exit text viewer Right On+Up On+Down On+Left On+Right Play F2 F1 Off Menu Return Return to the file being viewed. Viewer Options Change settings for the current file.
Chapter 12. Plugins Screens Per Page Set the number of screens per page. Available options are 1 to 5 screens per page. Alignment Set the text alignment. Right Set the text alignment to the right. (Useful for displaying right-to-left languages, such as Arabic or Hebrew) Left Set the text alignment to the left. Show Header Select whether to show the header. The header displays the file path. No Do not display the header. Yes Display the header. Show Footer Select whether to show the footer.
Chapter 12. Plugins Scroll by Page Scroll up or down one full screen. Scroll by Line Scroll up or down one line. Overlap Pages Set whether the last line from the previous screen is retained when scrolling pages. No Do not retain previous line. Yes Retain previous line. Auto-scroll Speed Control the speed of auto-scrolling in number of lines per second. Available options are 1 to 10 lines per second. As an example, 4 will scroll the text at four lines per second.
Chapter 12. Plugins Figure 12.41.: A bookmark 12.3.10. Theme Remove This plugin offers a way to remove a theme. Open the Context Menu (see section 4.1.2 (page 21)) upon a theme.cfg file and select Open With... → theme_remove. Some files are not removed regardless of the Remove Options such as rockbox_default.wps and the font file currently in use. Theme Remove menu Remove Theme. Selecting this will delete the files specified in the Remove Options.
Chapter 12. Plugins Viewers Iconset. Specifies how the viewers iconset .bmp file belonging to a theme .cfg file is handled. Create Log File. Setting this to No prevents the log file from being created. Quit. Exits this plugin. 12.3.11. VBRfix This function scans a VBR (Variable Bitrate) MP3 file and updates/creates the Xing VBR header. The Xing header contains information about the VBR stream used to calculate average bit rate, time information and to more accurately fwd/rew in the stream.
Chapter 12. Plugins Key Action Up/Down/ Left/Right Play F1 Directional movement Jump/Fire Open ZXBox menu ZXBox menu Vkeyboard. This is a virtual keyboard representing the Spectrum keyboard. Controls are the same as in standard Rockbox, but you just press one key instead of entering a phrase. Play/Pause Tape. Toggles playing of the tape (if it is loaded). Save Quick Snapshot. Saves snapshot into /.rockbox/zxboxq.z80. Load Quick Snapshot. Loads snapshot from /.rockbox/zxboxq.z80. Save Snapshot.
Chapter 12. Plugins Hacking graphics Due to ZXBox’s simple (but fast) scaling to the screen by dropping lines and columns some games can become unplayable. It is possible to hack graphics to make them better visible with the help of an utility such as the “Spectrum Graphics Editor”. Useful tools can be found at the “World of Spectrum” site (http://www.worldofspectrum.org/utilities. html). 12.4. Applications 12.4.1.
Chapter 12. Plugins disk accesses. The file is written to the root directory of your player and is called battery_bench.txt. The plugin will continue to log info until: • Another plugin is loaded. • The player is shut down. • The battery is empty. Benchmarks can be resumed if you accidentally load a plugin, or turn off your player, so long as the log file battery_bench.txt is not deleted. Information explained At the top of the battery_bench.
Chapter 12. Plugins Limitations As Battery Benchmark needs to write the data held in memory to disk in order to save them, it is possible that should Rockbox shut down due to low battery then there will not be enough power remaining to write the data to disk. Therefore all measurements since the previous save will be lost. 12.4.3. Calculator Figure 12.43.: Calculator This is a simple scientific calculator for use on the player. It works like a standard calculator.
Chapter 12. Plugins This is a small and simple calendar application with memo saving function. Dots indicate dates with memos. The available memo types are: one off, yearly, monthly, and weekly memos. You can select what day is first day of week by the setting First Day of Week in the menu. Key Action Left / Right / Up / Down Play On + Up / Down Off Move the selector Show memos for the selected day Previous / Next month Quit 12.4.5. Chess Clock Figure 12.45.
Chapter 12. Plugins • Then the maximum round time is entered. For example, this could be used to play Scrabble for a maximum of 15 minutes each, with each round taking no longer than one minute. • Done. Player 1 starts in paused mode. While playing The number of the current player is displayed on the top line. The time below is the time remaining for that round (and possibly also the total time left if different).
Chapter 12. Plugins Key configuration Key Action Left / Right Up / Down On Play Long Play Cycle through modes Cycle through skins Main Menu Start / Stop Counter Reset Counter Clock Menu View Clock Exits the menu and returns to the current clock mode display. Mode Selector Opens a menu from which you can select a clock mode to view. Counter Settings Opens a menu from which you can adjust settings pertaining to the counter.
Chapter 12. Plugins Digital mode An imitation of an LCD, this mode shows a Clock comprised of digital “segments”. The Date readout, if enabled, is displayed at the bottom, center. The Second readout, if in “Text” mode, is displayed at the top, center; if in “Bar” mode, is displayed as a progress bar at the top of the LCD; if in “Invert” mode, will invert the LCD left-to-right as the seconds pass (a fully-inverted LCD means the entire minute has passed).
Chapter 12. Plugins Warning: Be careful when you use custom entries as you could accidentally delete important files. ! Available Options All selects all Linux, OS X, and Windows files. None deselects all file options. Linux selects Linux files. Default files are .dolphinview, .d3lphinview, and .Trash-*/. Windows selects Windows files. Default files are Thumbs.db, $RECYCLE.BIN/, Desktop.ini, Recycled/ and System Volume Information/. Mac selects OS X files. .Trashes/. Default files are ._*, .
Chapter 12. Plugins 12.4.9. Lamp Lamp is a simple plugin to use your player as a lamp (flashlight, torch). You get an empty screen with maximum brightness. Key Action Any key Quit 12.4.10. Lrcplayer This plugin displays lyrics in .lrc files (and some other formats) synchronized with the song being played. Supported file types 1. .lrc 2. .lrc8 3. .snc 4. .txt 5. id3v2 SYLT or USLT tags in mp3 files .lrc8 files are the same as .lrc files except that they are UTF8 encoded.
Chapter 12. Plugins Location of lyrics files The plugin checks the following directories for lyrics files. 1. The directory containing the audio file and its parent directories. 2. For each of the above directories, the plugin searches for a subdirectory named “Lyrics”. 3. Finally, the plugin will search as above, but within a directory called “/Lyrics”. The name of this directory can be customized, see below. If the audio file currently playing is /Music/Artist/Album/Title.
Chapter 12. Plugins Lrcplayer Menu Theme settings. Change theme related settings. Show Statusbar. Show / hide the statusbar. Display Title. Show / hide the track title. Display Time. Show / hide the current time. Backlight Force On. Do not turn off the backlight while displaying the lyrics. Display Settings. Change how the lyrics are displayed. Wrap. Breaks lines at white space. Wipe. Wipes the text. Alignment. Align text to the left, centre, or right. Activate Only Current Line.
Chapter 12. Plugins 12.4.12. Metronome This plugin can be used as a metronome to keep time during music practice. Adjust the tempo through the interface or by tapping it out on the appropriate button. Key Action Off On Long Play Play Left / Right Up / Down Exit plugin Stop Start Tap tempo Adjust tempo Adjust volume 12.4.13. Random Folder Advance Configuration This plugin is used to configure the folders which will be considered when the AutoChange Directory feature is set to Random.
Chapter 12. Plugins Folder List Editor Keys Key Action Right or On Long Play Delete selected folder Bring up the context menu which allows you to remove the selected folder or its entire folder tree Exit Left or Off 12.4.14. Resistor Calculator Figure 12.47.: Resistor calculator The resistor calculator is a plugin that works in 3 modes: Colour to Resistance In Colour to Resistance mode, use the menus to select the colours of the bands of a resistor which you would like to know the resistance of.
Chapter 12. Plugins 12.4.15. Stats Figure 12.48.: The stats-plugin The stats plugin counts the directories and files (the total number as well as the number of audio, playlist, image and video files) on your player. Press Off to abort counting and exit the plugin. Press it again to quit after counting has finished. 12.4.16. Stopwatch Figure 12.49.: Stopwatch A simple stopwatch program with support for saving times.
Chapter 12. Plugins Usage If you start the Text Editor from the plugin browser you will be greeted with a blank screen. When started from the Open with menu item your file should be shown on the screen. You can now edit the file. The Text Editor is line based. This means you can edit one line at a time using the Virtual Keyboard (see section 4.1.3 (page 23)). • Move the selection bar to the line you want to edit. • Edit the highlighted text line or insert a new one using the Item Menu.
Chapter 13. Advanced Topics 132 13. Advanced Topics 13.1. Customising the User Interface 13.1.1. Getting Extras Rockbox supports custom fonts. A collection of fonts is available for download in the font package at http://www.rockbox.org/daily.shtml. 13.1.2. Loading Fonts Rockbox can load fonts dynamically. Simply copy the .fnt file to the player and “play” it in the File Browser. If you want a font to be loaded automatically every time you start up, it must be located in the /.
Chapter 13. Advanced Topics the following line to the .cfg file for a theme: ui viewport: X,Y,[width],[height],[font] Only the first two parameters have to be specified, the others can be omitted using ‘-’ as a placeholder. The syntax is very similar to WPS viewports (see section 13.2.2 (page 134)). Briefly: • ‘font’ is a number: 0 is the built-in system font, 1 is the user-selected font.
Chapter 13. Advanced Topics images used by the theme should be placed in a subdirectory of /.rockbox/wps with the same name as the theme, e.g. if the theme files are named mytheme.wps, mytheme.sbs etc., then the images should be placed in /.rockbox/wps/mytheme. All full list of the available tags are given in appendix section B (page 147); some of the more powerful concepts in theme design are discussed below. • All characters not preceded by % are displayed as typed.
Chapter 13. Advanced Topics Example %V(12,20,-,-,1) %sThis viewport is displayed permanently. It starts 12px from the left and %s20px from the top of the screen, and fills the rest of the screen from %sthat point. The lines will scroll if this text does not fit in the viewport. %sThe user font is used. Viewport definition Default value width/height font remaining part of screen user defined Conditional Viewports Any viewport can be displayed either permanently or conditionally.
Chapter 13. Advanced Topics • %Vi(’label’,...) This viewport is used as Custom UI Viewport in the case that the theme doesn’t have a ui viewport set in the theme .cfg file. Having this is strongly recommended since it makes you able to use the SBS with other themes. If label is set this viewport can be selectivly used as the Info Viewport using the %VI tag. The ‘. . . ’ parameters use the same logic as the %V tag explained above.
Chapter 13. Advanced Topics Next Song Info You can display information about the next song – the song that is about to play after the one currently playing (unless you change the plan). If you use the upper-case versions of the three tags: F, I and D, they will instead refer to the next song instead of the current one. Example: %Ig is the genre name used in the next song and %Ff is the mp3 frequency.
Chapter 13. Advanced Topics The format above will do two different things depending if ID3 tags are present. If the ID3 artist and title are present: • Display id3 title for 8 seconds, • Display id3 artist for 3 seconds, • repeat. . . If the ID3 artist and title are not present: • Display the filename continuously. Note that by using a subline display time of 0 in one branch of a conditional, a subline can be skipped (not displayed) when that condition is met.
Chapter 13. Advanced Topics 13.3. Managing Rockbox Settings 13.3.1. Introduction to .cfg Files Rockbox allows users to store and load multiple settings through the use of configuration files. A configuration file is simply a text file with the extension .cfg. A configuration file may reside anywhere on the disk. Multiple configuration files are permitted. So, for example, you could have a car.cfg file for the settings that you use while playing your jukebox in your car, and a headphones.
Chapter 13. Advanced Topics 140 could create configuration files that control only the volume and LCD settings. Create a few different files with different settings, give each file a different name (such as car.cfg, headphones.cfg, etc.), and you can then use the Browse .cfg files option to quickly change settings. A special case configuration file can be used to force a particular setting or settings every time Rockbox starts up (e.g. to set the volume to a safe level).
Chapter 13. Advanced Topics 141 13.4.1. Using ROLO (Rockbox Loader) Rockbox is able to load and start another firmware file without rebooting. You just “play” a file with the extension .ajz. This can be used to test new firmware versions without deleting your current version. 13.5. Rockbox in Flash 13.5.1. Introduction When you bought your Recorder V2/FM, it came with the Archos firmware in flash ROM.
Chapter 13. Advanced Topics 142 The bootloader allows to select which image to run. Pressing F1 at boot selects the first image. F2 selects the second image, which will also be booted if you don’t press any button. The button mapping is only there for completeness. F3 selects the built-in serial monitor called Minimon. You should know this in case you invoke it by accident. Minimon won’t display anything on the screen. To get out of it, perform a hardware shutdown of your player. 13.5.3.
Chapter 13. Advanced Topics 5. In the unlikely event that the programming or verify steps should give you any error, do not switch off the box! Otherwise you’ll have seen it working for the last time. While Rockbox is still in RAM and operational, we could upgrade the plugin via USB and try again. If you switch it off, it’s gone. Note: After successful flashing you may delete the .bin files from the root of your player.
Chapter 13. Advanced Topics 144 13.6. Optimising battery runtime Rockbox offers a lot of settings that have high impact on the battery runtime of your player. The largest power savings can be achieved through disabling unneeded hardware components – for some of those there are settings available. The following provides a short overview of the most relevant settings and rules of thumb. 13.6.1. Display backlight The active backlight consumes a lot of power.
Appendix A. File formats The Rockbox manual (version 3.
Appendix A. File formats A. File formats A.1. Supported file formats Icon File Type Extension Action when selected Directory Rockbox firmware Bookmark none .ajz .bmark Game of Life .cells Configuration File .cfg Enter the directory Load the new firmware with ROLO Display all bookmarks for an audio file Show the configuration with the “Rocklife” plugin Load the settings file Chip8 game Cuesheet FM Presets .ch8 .cue .fmr Font .fnt Image Link .jpg .link Language File Playlist .lng .
Appendix B. Theme Tags B. Theme Tags Themeing is discussed in detail in section section 13.2 (page 133), what follows is a list of the available tags. Note: The “bar-type tags” (such as %pb, %pv, %bl etc.) can be further themed – see section B.26 (page 158). B.1. Status Bar Tag Description %we %wd %wi Display Status Bar Hide Status Bar Display the inbuilt Status Bar in the current viewport These tags override the player setting for the display of the status bar.
Appendix B. Theme Tags 148 B.3. Information from the track tags Tag Description %ia %ic %iA %id %iG %ig %in %it %iC %iv %iy %ik Artist Composer Album Artist Album Name Grouping Genre Name Track Number Track Title Comment ID3 version (1.0, 1.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, or empty if not an ID3 tag) Year Disc Number Remember that this information is not always available, so use the conditionals to show alternate information in preference to assuming. These tags, when written with a capital “I” (e.g.
Appendix B. Theme Tags 149 B.6. Power Related Information Tag Description %bl Numeric battery level in percents. Can also be used in a conditional: %?bl<-1|0|1|2|...|N>, where the value −1 is used when the battery level isn’t known (it usually is). The value N is only used when the battery level is exactly 100 percent. An image can also be used, the proportion of the image shown corresponds to the battery level: %bl(x,y,[width],[height],image.
Appendix B. Theme Tags 150 These tags, when written with the first letter capitalized (e.g. %Fn or %D(2)), produce the information for the next file to be played. B.8. Playlist/Song Info Tag Description %pb Progress Bar. This will replace the entire line with a progress bar. You can set the position, width and height of the progressbar (in pixels) and load a custom image for it: %pb(x,y,[width],[height],image.
Appendix B. Theme Tags B.9. Playlist Viewer Tag Description %Vp(start,code to render) Display the playlist viewer in the current viewport. • ‘start’ is the offset relative to the currently playing track for the playlist to display from (0 the current track, 1 is the next track, etc.). • ‘code to render’ is a line of skin code which will be displayed for each line in the viewer.
Appendix B. Theme Tags B.13. Repeat Mode Tag Description %mm Repeat mode, 0-4, in the order: Off, All, One, Shuffle, A-B Example: %?mm B.14. Playback Mode Tag Description %mp Play status, 0-4, in the order: Stop, Play, Pause, Fast Forward, Rewind, Recording, Recording paused, FM Radio playing, FM Radio muted Example: %?mp B.15.
Appendix B. Theme Tags The tag can also be used as the switch in a conditional tag. For players without certain capabilities (e.g. no FM radio) some values will never be returned. Examples: You are in the %?cs %?if(%cs, =, 2) B.16. List Title (.sbs only) Tag Description %Lt Title text. Should be used in a conditional so that non-list screens don’t show a title when they shouldn’t Title icon.
Appendix B. Theme Tags Examples: 1. As a simple tag: %St(skip length) 2. As a conditional: %?St(eq enabled) B.19. Images Tag Description %x(n,filename,x,y) Load and display an image n: image ID (a-z and A-Z) for later referencing in %xd filename: file name relative to /.rockbox/ and including “.bmp” x: x coordinate y: y coordinate. %xl(n,filename,x,y, Preload an image for later display (useful for when your im[nimages]) ages are displayed conditionally).
Appendix B. Theme Tags %xl(M,volume.bmp,134,153,5) %?pv<%xd(Ma)|%xd(Mb)|%xd(Mc)|%xd(Md)|%xd(Me)> b Note: • The images must be in BMP format • The image tag must be on its own line • The ID is case sensitive, giving 52 different ID’s • The size of the LCD screen for each player varies. See table below for appropriate sizes of each device. The x and y coordinates must respect each of the player’s limits. B.20.
Appendix B. Theme Tags 156 B.21. Alignment and language direction Tag Description %al %aL %ac %ar %aR %ax Align the text left Align the text left, or to the right if RTL language is in use Centre the text Align the text right Align the text right, or to the left if RTL language is in use The next tag should follow the set language direction. When prepended to a viewport declaration, the viewport will be horizontally mirrored if the user language is set to a RTL language.
Appendix B. Theme Tags work, and the comparison is not case sensitive. B.23. Subline Tags Tag Description %t(time) ; Set the subline display cycle time (%t(5) or %t(3.4) formats) Split items on a line into separate sublines Allows grouping of several items (sublines) onto one line, with the display cycling round the defined sublines. See section 13.2.4 (page 137) for details. B.24.
Appendix B. Theme Tags • It should match the Source: line in the language file. Note: checkwps cannot verify that the string is correct, so please check on either the simulator or on target. B.26. Bar Tags Some tags can be used to display a bar which draws according to the value of the tag. To use these tags like a bar you need to use the following parameters (%XX should be replaced with the actual tag).
Appendix B. Theme Tags 159 Note: If the slider option is used, the bar will be shrunk so that the slider fits inside the specified width and height. B.27. Other Tags Tag Description %( %) %, %% %< %| %> %; %# %s The character ‘(’ The character ‘)’ The character ‘,’ The character ‘%’ The character ‘<’ The character ‘|’ The character ‘>’ The character ‘;’ The character ‘#’ Indicate that the line should scroll. Can occur anywhere in a line (given that the text is displayed; see conditionals above).
Appendix C. Config file options C.
Appendix C. Config file options Setting Allowed Values Unit bidir limit scroll paginated hold_lr_for_scroll_in_list show path in browser contrast backlight timeout 0 to 200 on, off on, off off, current directory, full path 0 to 63 off, on, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120 off, on, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120 on, off % screen N/A N/A N/A N/A s normal, off, on on, off devise a way to get ranges from config-*.
Appendix C.
Appendix C. Config file options Setting Allowed Values Unit peak meter min peak meter max statusbar scrollbar scrollbar width 0 to 89 (dB) or 0 to 100 (%) 0 to 89 /(dB) or 0 to 100 (%) off, top, bottom off, left, right 3 to LCD width / 10 (devise a way to get ranges from config-*.h) graphic, numeric graphic, numeric /path/filename.fnt /path/filename.kbd on, off on, off pointer, bar (inverse) on, off /path/filename.bmp /path/filename.
Appendix D. Menu Overview 164 D. Menu Overview include an overview of the menu structure here The Rockbox manual (version 3.
Appendix E. User feedback E. User feedback E.1. Bug reports If you experience inappropriate performance from any supported feature, please file a bug report on our web page. Do not report missing features as bugs, instead file them as feature ideas (see below). For open bug reports refer to http://www.rockbox.org/tracker/index.php?type=2 E.1.1. Rules for submitting new bug reports 1. Check that the bug has not already been reported 2.
Appendix E. User feedback E.2.2. Features we will not implement This is a list of Feature Requests we get repeatedly that we simply cannot do. View it as the opposite of a TODO! • Record to WAV (uncompressed) or MP3pro format. The recording hardware (the MAS) does not allow us to do this • Crossfade between tracks. Crossfading would require two mp3 decoders, and we only have one. This is not possible. • Support MP3pro, WMA or other sound format playback. The mp3-decoding hardware can only play MP3.
Appendix E. User feedback 167 • Interfacing with other USB devices (like cameras) or 2 player games over USB. The USB system demands that there is a master that talks to a slave. The player can only serve as a slave, as most other USB devices such as cameras can. Thus, without a master no communication between the slaves can take place.
Appendix F. Credits F. Credits People that have contributed to the project, one way or another.
Appendix F. Credits Hand · Nick Lanham · Sebastian Henriksen · Martin Scarratt · Karl Kurbjun · Tomasz Malesinski · Andrew Pilley · Matt v.d. Westhuizen · Tim Crist · Jvo Studer · Dan Everton · Imre Herceg · Seven Le Mesle · Craig Bachelor · Nikolaj Christensen · Mikael Magnusson · Dominik Wenger · Henrico Witvliet · Andrew Scott · Miguel A. Arévalo · Aaron F.
Appendix F. Credits · Stepan Moskovchenko · John S. Gwynne · Brian J. Morey · Stijn Hisken · Bertrik Sikken · Karim Boucher · James Espinoza · Franz Rühmland · Jordan Anderson · Maurus Cuelenaere · Chris Allegretta · Alastair S · Martin Crkovský · Ariya Hidayat · Jonas Hurrelmann · Lee Kang Hyuk · Clemens Werther · Robert Menes · Henri Valta · Melba Sitjar · Mehmet Ş.
Appendix F.
Appendix G. Licenses G. Licenses G.1. GNU Free Documentation License Version 1.2, November 2002 Copyright c 2000,2001,2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
Appendix G. Licenses A “Modified Version” of the Document means any work containing the Document or a portion of it, either copied verbatim, or with modifications and/or translated into another language.
Appendix G. Licenses ther is precisely XYZ or contains XYZ in parentheses following text that translates XYZ in another language. (Here XYZ stands for a specific section name mentioned below, such as “Acknowledgements”, “Dedications”, “Endorsements”, or “History”.) To “Preserve the Title” of such a section when you modify the Document means that it remains a section “Entitled XYZ” according to this definition.
Appendix G. Licenses distribution of Opaque copies in quantity, to ensure that this Transparent copy will remain thus accessible at the stated location until at least one year after the last time you distribute an Opaque copy (directly or through your agents or retailers) of that edition to the public.
Appendix G. Licenses on its Title Page, then add an item describing the Modified Version as stated in the previous sentence. J. Preserve the network location, if any, given in the Document for public access to a Transparent copy of the Document, and likewise the network locations given in the Document for previous versions it was based on. These may be placed in the “History” section.
Appendix G. Licenses 5. COMBINING DOCUMENTS You may combine the Document with other documents released under this License, under the terms defined in section 4 above for modified versions, provided that you include in the combination all of the Invariant Sections of all of the original documents, unmodified, and list them all as Invariant Sections of your combined work in its license notice, and that you preserve all their Warranty Disclaimers.
Appendix G. Licenses 8. TRANSLATION Translation is considered a kind of modification, so you may distribute translations of the Document under the terms of section 4. Replacing Invariant Sections with translations requires special permission from their copyright holders, but you may include translations of some or all Invariant Sections in addition to the original versions of these Invariant Sections.
Appendix G. Licenses Copyright c YEAR YOUR NAME. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no BackCover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled “GNU Free Documentation License”. If you have Invariant Sections, Front-Cover Texts and Back-Cover Texts, replace the “with.
Appendix G. Licenses G.2. The GNU General Public License Version 2, June 1991 Copyright c 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed. Preamble The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it.
Appendix G. Licenses Terms and Conditions For Copying, Distribution and Modification 0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License.
Appendix G. Licenses such an announcement, your work based on the Program is not required to print an announcement.) These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works.
Appendix G. Licenses If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source code from the same place counts as distribution of the source code, even though third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code. 4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License.
Appendix G. Licenses reliance on consistent application of that system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that choice. This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to be a consequence of the rest of this License. 8.
Appendix G. Licenses and/or redistribute the program as permitted above, be liable to you for damages, including any general, special, incidental or consequential damages arising out of the use or inability to use the program (including but not limited to loss of data or data being rendered inaccurate or losses sustained by you or third parties or a failure of the program to operate with any other programs), even if such holder or other party has been advised of the possibility of such damages.
Appendix G. Licenses ‘show w’. This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; type ‘show c’ for details. The hypothetical commands show w and show c should show the appropriate parts of the General Public License. Of course, the commands you use may be called something other than show w and show c; they could even be mouse-clicks or menu items— whatever suits your program.
