Hi there. I recently got a rio car empeg mk2 and have a few questions if someone could help me out (questions I did not see in the FAQ):

1) After emploding when it reboots, the player seems to hang with the flashing light. If I reset it with the power cord, the process resumes normally, otherwise the emplode fails with an error on reboot. My emplode version and kernel are the latest, 2.0 b11. Anyone know if this is a known bug, if there is a fix, where to report bugs, etc?

2) I'd like to easily dock my empeg at home and office. Does anyone make any desk docking stations that minimally include a quarter inch audio jack, clipless ethernet plug, usb, serial, and power? Something I can simply slide in and it's on and ready to go. I know, I could do it myself, but i'm very busy. I'm willing to pay for a couple of professionally made ones if there are any available (or if anyone wants to make some).

3) How do I reset the plays counters on all the files? I tried to delete the songs (including the files) but the counters are still there when I put the songs back. No doubt in a database that is not updated with deletions etc. How would I go about resetting the counters?

4) Larger volume knobs. I have big hands, the knobs are rather small and short. Does anyone make a taller and/or wider knob? Perhaps with some traction around the edge too.

5) Alternate forms of emploding. My MP3 archive is accompanied by some master playlists that combine multiple albums or various songs. However it won't let me add on the m3u (or other?) playlists. Is this something that will be included in the future? It seems rather silly that I would be expected to regenerate these playlists on the unit when they're already done on the server and could probably be mapped fairly easily. Basically i'd like to see something where I can drag and drop my mp3 directory every so often and it update everything, including the playlists i've already generated. It would be kind of cool to do wendy filters using playlists as well. I'm not using wendy filters right now, but that too would be useful and shouldn't be too difficult to adapt. Again, would rather keep someting like that centralized on my server in common formats and not have to do it twice.

6) When adding a file by the same name, but file size, checksum, date, etc has been changed, will it delete the old file and upload the new one? I have not tried this but noticed when I tried to upload the same file it skipped it based on "matching filename", thus the question.

7) Related question. Is it possible to do some sort of mirror operation, including deleting files from the empeg when they do not exist on the PC? I have large mp3 archive and if I correct typos, correct previously unnoticed CDDB errors, or decide to delete the mp3s altogether, i'd like to be able to automatically reflect such changes on the empeg.

It's too bad they stopped making these. I wanted one since I first heard about it back in 1998 or 1999, but until recently only had a single DIN car so it was not really feasible since I also want cd player in the dash. Now that I finally have one I look forward to using it. I'll probably install it this weekend.

Thanks for any help or information you can provide.

introvert
Charlotte, NC USA

I'll take a stab at some of the questions...

1) IIRC, known bug

2) AFAIK no one offers finished docking stations. Main trouble for anyone to produce them is lack of sleds. Do a search for the thread on spare docking connector (the connector that sits inside the docking sled - this is tha main hurdle) group buy.

4) AFAIK, no one has made a larger one. I've made one in aluminum, but that was about same shape/size as the original. Shouldn't be a problem to do a 'mushroom' shaped version where the 'head' is wider - and how to secure it. As long as the 'head' is slimmer than the hole in the fascia you can use a hidden grub screw... Is your unit a MkII or MkIIa (round or D-shaped knob shaft? With the round shaft you could probably do without grub screw and use O-ring instead. If one has access to a CNC mill and small bits, one could probably do a D-shaped hole to start with... Another problem is that you might block the IR receiver that sits next to the knob. Might possibly be solved by drilling holes along the circumference, both for allowing IR to pass and for grip.

5) Do a search for jEmplode and mp3tofid for two projects that might interest you. There's also the linux command line tool, emptool.

6) IIRC, there's checks on more than the filename only when deciding a file is a duplicate...

7) see 5

/Michael

6) The filename isn't used at all when deciding whether a file is a duplicate -- we don't store it on the player anywhere. We use a bunch of the tags. A future enhancement to emplode (if we ever get time to work on it) will involve checksumming the files, and using that for duplicate detection.

I wonder how slow MD5sum'ing MP3's on the way in would be ... Is that the algorithm you were thinking about or something that would be faster?

ms

okay i can possibly offer a docking station of sorts

if you go to the riocar.org and look in the photo albums there is a docking station my father built for me and he would like to build another. It would not be cheap round about £400 pounds

As to lack of docking sledge either you supply one or something can be cobbled together but e warned he is no electrical person.


contact him at june.allison@bun.com

In reply to:

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okay i can possibly offer a docking station of sorts

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I was looking for something with an electrical back-end to it. There are a couple I saw in the photo gallery with all the connectors done so all you have to do is slide it in. This is along the lines of what I am looking for.

Thanks anyway.

I recently got a rio car empeg mk2

Congratulations on your new toy! Welcome to the BBS.

And it's a Mk2a by the way, if it says Rio on the top.

After emploding when it reboots, the player seems to hang with the flashing light.

Known bug in software version 2.0 beta 11. Already fixed in their next internal software build (not publically released yet). Interesting that you already discovered the work-around of rebooting the player to get the process to continue, bravo.

I'd like to easily dock my empeg at home and office. Does anyone make any desk docking stations that minimally include a quarter inch audio jack, clipless ethernet plug, usb, serial, and power?

I haven't seen anyone do a third-party sale of a docking station yet (if I recall correctly), although some have offered. Most everyone takes it on as a personal project of their own. Having done two myself, I see why. Building things is hard.

Two things to note about a docking station:

1) To do it properly requires owning a spare car-dock-sled as one of its main components. These were once sold as an accessory, but are now sold out, and are therefore hard to come by.

2) Docked USB is something that I've never seen anyone try. Most people don't bother with it and instead they do ethernet only. If you've got docked ethernet and serial working, there's no reason to have USB at all.

How do I reset the plays counters on all the files? I tried to delete the songs (including the files) but the counters are still there when I put the songs back.

Yeah, at the current time, there's no way to reset the plays counter on a by-song basis, and the act of deleting and re-adding a file doesn't reset it. In fact, I think this is a pretty serious bug, because you can: 1) Delete a song. 2) Add a different song in its place. 3) The new different song has the old song's plays-count number.

This is because the plays counter goes by "FID" (file ID), and it's stored (I believe) on the scratch partition. So when you add and delete songs, it's not touching the data on the scratch partition. When you delete a song and add another song, the new song uses the same FID as the old one. I'm hoping to see this get addressed soon.

The only way to reset the plays counter on ALL the files would be to run the builder image, I think. Ouch.

Larger volume knobs. I have big hands, the knobs are rather small and short.

Knobs, plural? Yours has more than one?

I don't know anyone who makes knobs that are nonstandard size. Brian's making translucent backlit buttons but he does them standard size.

I don't have a problem with it, and I have big hands too. You don't have to grip the sides of the knob, you can use it by laying your fingers flat on the front of it, too.

Basically i'd like to see something where I can drag and drop my mp3 directory every so often and it update everything, including the playlists i've already generated.

I agree and I would like to see this, too. Perhaps Jemplode will do this in the future. I don't have a solution to this at the moment, except to say that my PC is now no longer my main source of MP3 organization. All of my playlist organization now happens in Emplode and I don't have any playlists on the PC any more.

When adding a file by the same name, but file size, checksum, date, etc has been changed, will it delete the old file and upload the new one?

FAQ entries here and here.

Related question. Is it possible to do some sort of mirror operation, including deleting files from the empeg when they do not exist on the PC?

Currently, you can only do this if you're writing your own scripts for emptool (as far as I know).

I'd like to see a feature like this someday.

wanted one since I first heard about it back in 1998 or 1999, but until recently only had a single DIN car so it was not really feasible since I also want cd player in the dash. Now that I finally have one I look forward to using it.

And now that you finally have one, you'll realize that the CD player just gathers dust, and looks gaudy and out of place compared to the empeg. And that you should have just run the empeg by itself with an amp, way back in '99.

I just did some tests as I'm in the process or redoing a lot of the internals of jEmplode ... I can modify play counts, so I may include an editor for them in the version after next. If someone's feeling crazy, you can try deleting the play count tag using the Advanced Tag Editor in jEmplode, sync, and see if it removes the play count -- I think it will (since at runtime, the dynamic data is proxied into the tags and then copied back out when you sync, so you should be able to edit them just like regular tags....... I think ...... ). I am using beta7 on my Wife's Empeg, though, so there may be slightly different behavior in b11 and b12. In fact, I seem to remember that there was a bug at least in b11 and maybe in b12 too that you couldn't change the marked setting under certain circumstances.... It seems to be working fine in b7 though, so it may have just been some other bug.

I've also modified FIDDeleted so that prior to syncing the delete of the FID, it first synchs a new set of tags that removes all dynamic data so the next tune that comes along and gets that FID will have a clean slate.

Mike