{"id":155,"date":"2005-12-05T12:53:01","date_gmt":"2005-12-05T02:53:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/?p=155"},"modified":"2005-12-06T16:27:56","modified_gmt":"2005-12-06T06:27:56","slug":"hack-me-an-iriver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/?p=155","title":{"rendered":"Hack me an iRiver"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"iRiverI really enjoy Radio National<\/a>– well, most of it. Some of it drives me ’round the bend. To take advantage of RN’s podcast services, I decided to pick up an MP3 player. Since RN MP3 files are huuuuge- often 25-30 megs- I chose the iRiver H10 with a 20Gb hard drive so I can have several weeks worth of programs on hand. I can now pick & choose the best of RN and listen when I want to. <\/p>\n

Suki<\/a> also loves RN- particularly Phillip Adams<\/a>. She’s got an iRiver T30 with 1Gb flash memory. Flash memory isn’t as battery hungry as a hard drive; the T30 runs a week on a single AAA rechargeable battery. My near vision is pretty poor, so I need the H10’s larger colour LCD. I also like the H10’s BIG built-in battery which recharges when connected to the USB port. This hefty battery accounts for the rather large and clunky form factor of the H10, but it will go about a week on a single charge as well. Better yet, anyone with a Torx driver can replace the battery, unlike most iPods. <\/p>\n

Unfortunately, I have some gripes about the H10. For starters, it won’t work with Windows 98SE, which I use on three of the four computers on my LAN. The H10 requires Windows Media Player 10, which only runs on XP. I hate XP with a purple passion, but I’ve bitten the bullet and built a temporary XP volume on a spare HDD to try it out. The T30 works fine with 98SE. Connect it to the USB and the T30 \"iRiverdutifully pops up as a removable hard drive in Explorer, making file management a snap, even without the iRiver provided file management application. My H10 won’t appear as a hard drive in XP unless started in "Emergency Connection" mode. <\/p>\n

I’m a bit of a technerd, with about 30 years experience as an electronics techo. I’m looking for techie details about the H10. It looks like it could be hackable. I’d like to change some of its basic operations. <\/p>\n

The H10 desperately needs a progressive ‘fast forward’ function (so does the T30). As provided, if you hold down the FF button, it only jumps about 5 seconds at a time. For Radio National programs, which are 30-60 minutes long, this is not useful if you’re looking to get to the middle of a program. I would like the FF to jump in 5 sec increments when the button is held for 5 sec, then jump in progressively larger increments the longer the button is held down. This would make it much easier to quickly search through longer programs.<\/p>\n

The maximum volume output level in the H10 is far, far too low. I’m sure that the low output limit is set as a result of legal concerns for the makers of audio players about hearing damage from long term exposure to high outputs, but the top limit is so low that the player can’t be heard if there’s much background noise around the listener (i.e. common city street noise). I’d like to raise the max output level to suit.<\/a> <\/p>\n

Would also like to see if I could add the capacity for the H10 to play videos, perhaps MPG and WMV.  It already can display JPG and GIF files. The file lists are clear and readable, but the wallpaper images are cheezy plus. I would like to make my own background images for the thing.\"H10<\/a> <\/p>\n

What I know so far about the techie guts of the H10 is that it is based around a PP5020<\/a> processor, which also happens to be used in the ‘4th generation’ iPods, including Mini and Photo. There’s firmware and software developer’s kits available for the PP5020. I’ll download those and have a play with the H10’s firmware and software. <\/p>\n

Any hints & kinks about hacking the H10 are very welcome. <\/p>\n

-weez <\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/font><\/strong> Considering I could not get the iRiver H10 to work as advertised with Win XP, it’s gone back to meet its maker… permanently.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ABC Radio National podcasting & iRiver MP3 players<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}