How hard would it be to have a community made MP3 Player?

[WinterMadness]

Shouldnt be too difficult... I mean, we can have an OS thats got the ability to play mp3s and has a nice interface to accommodate that (I would 110% be willing to help)

its really just a matter of hardware, and how hard would it be to acquire that?

Im just sick and tired of the nonsensical games Apple and Microsoft play, im sick of not having control over something that belongs to me.

We could possibly even have it be tutorial based, for example, take apart your zune or ipod, flash the hard drive etc.

I dont know much about hardware and stuff so unfortunately I couldnt help much in that department

[LMP900]

http://www.buglabs.net/products

:)

[tgm4883]

Get an android based device?

Seriously doubt you will be able to bring hardware costs down enough to get a community made player. That, or it will be large and ugly, or super niche

[jrothwell97]

Seriously doubt you will be able to bring hardware costs down enough to get a community made player. That, or it will be large and ugly, or super niche

This.

Design by community, sadly, usually disintegrates into design by committee.

[LMP900]

Get an android based device?

Seriously doubt you will be able to bring hardware costs down enough to get a community made player. That, or it will be large and ugly, or super niche

Exactly. I have a feeling most people will volunteer as "industrial designers" with very little programming and accounting involvement.

[WinterMadness]

I was not necessarily talking about having an MP3 player sold, as in forming a business.

We could design the software as it needs to be from a community perspective and provide resources so people can buy their own hardware and use it the way they want to.

Using the Zunes hardware would be fine for me, for example. I just want to flash the hard drive and have a Linux mp3 player so like... I can actually add music again...

Or we could potentially come up with a system that uses a USB drive as its hard drive, put a FM tuner in there, get a screen/headphone jack/usb drive and bam. You got a custom MP3 player.

[speedwell68]

Why not just buy an Archos? IIRC, the software on an Archos player is licensed under the GPL and LGPL.

[Yes]

Crack open an MP3 player, you'll see it's a lot more complicated than you think it is. If you want to develop your own, you'll probably want to start by picking up one of these (http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=305), something like this (http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=9261), and then a nice LCD screen.

You can get what you're talking about with many non Apple or MS media players, such as a Sansa Fuze or an Archos. If you're worried about the firmware it runs, just put http://www.rockbox.org/ on it.

[Ric_NYC]

How-To: Make your own MP3 player (http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/19/how-to-make-your-own-mp3-player/)

http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/9084/partslayoutdiasyhowto.jpg

http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/4746/finishedmp3diasyhowto.jpg




The good:

Open source -- you can modify the firmware (especially with in-circuit programming).
Lots of room to grow with that monstrous new PIC controller.
The decoder chip sounds great.
Serial controllable.
Flexible from the get go -- you can choose the right mode and integrate it with other projects.

The bad:

You need a PC and a card reader to format your card to FAT32
No USB interface for loading data.
Should include jumpers for the price -- they're cheap, but can be a pain to hunt down.
No display interface.