So, this is not a new release, these are just new packages build for the Diable 4.1 distribution. I still did not manage to find the time to enhance mmpc further. There are just too many other things like work and university I have to care about. Either download the packages from Maemo Garage, or just get it through the extras repository as usual.

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Well, mmpc-0.2.1 is available for immediate consumption. Changes, which were major concerns until now, are:

• New buttons and images, finally. And a new logo you can see above.
• Add tap-and-hold functionality to more places. For example, it’s now possible to update the database from within the client.
• Add scroll windows to all preference tabs to display the full content.
• Bold the currently played track.
• Increase connection timeout to 3 seconds. This will hopefully solve the strange disconnect issues I wasn’t able to reproduce.
• Fixed tree browsing in playlist browser.

Fresh screenshots can be found here. Packages are available from the extras repository. So most people will get the update automatically (if anything goes wrong, try to enable red pill mode). Otherwise, grab them from garage.

Next things will include the support for some plugins. Please report any problems. Happy listening!

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Huh? What’s that? It doesn’t power on after shutting it down the first time. Putting in the charger doesn’t help. Removing the battery and putting it back doesn’t help. “Charging” it several hours (without any sign that it does so) doesn’t help. Removing the battery for several minutes doesn’t help. Checking with a original Nokia battery and charger from a colleague doesn’t help. What to do? (Already really frightened of having received a broken device…)

In the evening, I decided to remove the battery and put it on the balcony. On the balcony? Why that? It only was a very vague suspicion…it’s currently winter in Europe, you know ;-). Waiting…(and maybe praying) about another 30 minutes. Device was cold now. Inserting the battery, pushing the power button, and voila! The N810 turns on and powers up properly. Happy about thinking that this was only a temporary failure, I tried again some minutes later and the device kept silent again. What a mess! Next day, another colleague came to me telling me that he has exactly the same problem. And I already had a temporary solution for him…(Skip the next paragraph if you want to read it immediately)

Yahoo‘ing around, I found out that this is a well known problem, at least for the customers, I don’t know how it behaves to the Nokia company/manufacturers. There are plenty of reports for this issue. On Internettablettalk and even in the Maemo bugzilla known as “N800 Power up Drama”. Interestingly, the problem seems to also be present on N800 devices. But only the new and recent ones. So it seems that some electronic parts like capacitors installed in recent devices (N800 and N810) are causing this issue. I tried everything people are suggesting, waiting a specific period of time before switching it on again, making sure that everything fits properly, enabling r&d mode, and so on. Please don’t tell me “Just don’t power off the device”, because that’s what I’m generally doing, but that’s no choice when you’re on the road running out of battery. And you sometimes need to power down the device for development, too.

The only thing that seems to help:

1. Switch the device off
2. Remove the battery
3. Put the device to a fridge (without the battery) for about 30 minutes. If you are impatient like I am, put it into a deep-freezer for about 10 minutes to get it cold. Hint: Use a plastic bag to protect it from moisture, and more importantly, don’t forget about it while doing something else
4. Take it out and insert the battery
5. Turn it back on, you’ll see that it works

This procedure was already verified on two devices.

Strange, I currently know of five people having a N810, with two of them showing this issue. This is really bad percentage. I already fear that this is like the issue I encountered with my N800 and the display issue where the right side of the touchscreen became more and more unresponsive. Also widely known. To that time, I returned the N800 back to Nokia, and it lasted solid 6 weeks until I got a repaired device. I do not want to repeat that! I do not want to develop inside a scratchbox without the possibility to see the outcome on a live device. But the most frustrating thing I encounter these days is that there is no official statement from Nokia about this issue. There’s still not even one for the display issue with the N800. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

The only thing which keeps me alive ( ) and which prevents me from returning the device immediately is the hope that it can be fixed via software. I just hope that there will be a statement by the Nokia or Maemo people telling me: “Be patient, we’re working on the issue with high pressure and we think it can be fixed with a firmware update”. If it really is a hardware issue, I at least hope that the issue is handled as “we’ve sold broken devices, process returned ones with high priority!”.

Getting away from the bad news, if there wouldn’t be those, I would really be amazed by this gadget! As long as it’s on, I just have fun with it. I’m just very frustrated.

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Packages are here (including libmpd). Please report any issues you might encounter.

Now I’m eagerly awaiting the availability of the N810 in Germany to finally get rid of my discount code. Thanks Nokia!

On a related note: I’m still looking for designers creating some nice, “Play”, “Stop”, “Pause”, “Backward” and “Forward” buttons. These are just too ugly in the current state. Nobody willing to help out?

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As briefly mentioned last time, I got a developer code for a Nokia n800. Thanks. I already had a n770, so without further ado, I decided to purchase one. And that really kept me on the go the last couple of weeks. At home, my computer is connected to my stereo system to play my mp3s with passable good sound. So having a n800 with wlan, I thought there has to be a possibility to use it as remote control. Looking for something at the web, I shortly found the Music Player Daemon (mpd) to be used as a service running on my home computer managing and playing my mp3 collection. And very easy to install. Well, first duty was to find a good client that works on the n800. Trying two web based clients and noticing that they are ugly was not really satisfying. It was not hard to build
the Gnome Music Player Client with some small modifications inside my scratchbox environment for the Maemo platform. Too bad for me, the GUI is optimised for higher screen resolutions and for multi windowed systems.

The default multimedia player which comes along with the n800 is quite nice IMO, so an interface similar to this would be best. Well, noticing that Nokia didn’t open source its code although there’s a request from within the community is quite disappointing. I thought they wouldn’t do things by halves, but, well, other story… Hopefully there’s at least no patent or the like for the GUI, otherwise I just hope they won’t sue me for reverse engineering it

Writing my first own gtk application was quite exhausting. The documentation is so horrible bad I just wonder why there aren’t more tutorials out there. For instance, about IMHO common problems like setting bold font of a row in a GtkTreeView. Well, after getting into it, it was, hm, well, O.k.

So here it is:

Maemo Music Player Client (mmpc)

It is based on the Gnome Music Player Client, but has undergone quite much modification like hildonization, Maemo menus, the new player interface, etc… The GUI got especially designed to be used as a remote control, meaning that it should be good to use without the stylus. All in all, it is more a fork than a port. The first couple of days really show the huge interest in an application like this. At the time of writing this, there are already 281 downloads as you can see on the Maemo garage project page. It’s a great toy

Actually I had another cool feature in mind. The device being used as a remote control, and only as a remote control, you do not want other people using or seeing any other things on the device while managing music. So I actually wanted to force fullscreen mode until a correct password gets entered. The code is already finished, but there’s one problem. The actual user can just turn off the device and reboot So anyone having any idea how to prevent the user to reboot the device? There’s no possibility to lock the device in a way that one has to enter a password everytime the device boots. Something like a PIN in cell phones would be good. I can catch the hardware button event, of course, but the system is turned off in any case. Different story…

What I’m currently looking for is a graphic designer. I’m usually not very good at that. So someone out there either doing web design or is willing and able to design some nice play, stop, forward, backward, etc. buttons? Any help would be appreciated. In any case, visit the homepage for more information.

Greetings,
Holger

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