The software has been expanded recently to include some new features. Some of those features are outlined below. The software can be configured for your hardware by changing defines in main.h and some other files.

Different LCD Types

The software can support different LCD options. To set the LCD screen use make LCD=DISPLAYTYPE clean all to build where DISPLAYTYPE is ALPHA, NOKIA or NO_DISPLAY for Orignal, Nokia 3310 and no display respectivly. An alternative wiring is supported through the NOKIA_ALTPINOUT defining in pcd8544.h.

Battery Monitoring

The system now monitors the battery voltage (a wire needs to be connected from the "VoltageIn" at the top left of the butterfly to the battery connection). The system will not startup if the battery voltage is below a set value. The system will automatically save the player state and shut down if the voltage drops too low during playback. To disable this behavour comment out the definition of PWR_CHK_INTERVAL in main.h. If no MMC is inserted the current battery status is temporarily displayed on the Alphanumeric display. With the NOKIA display the battery charge is displayed as a small icon in the bottom right of the display. The exact battery levels can be set in power.h.

NOTE: The player will not startup if battery monitoring is enabled and the wire is not added between the voltage in and the battery.

Player State saving to EEPROM

When the battery voltage drops below the minimum voltage or the user forces the player into bootloader mode (press down twice while paused) then the current status of the player (play time, song, etc.) will be saved to the EEPROM. A high endurace routine was used so the eeprom should stand up to 10 times it's normal number of cycles. About 100,000 times total. When the player is woken from sleep or power down it will scan the MMC and then resume playing where it was last paused.

Visual Feedback

New visual feedback on the APLHA display including: Battery status, volume and player status. Feedback is displayed for STAT_DISPLAY_TIME seconds and then returns to the filename.

FAT16 Filenames

I have finally fixed the bugs in the filename routines and all long filenames should render correctly, with the exception of characters not possible to be displayed on the alpha numeric display.

Power down mode

The low power mode retains current player state in ram. You can switch the player into low power mode by pushing down on the joystick when paused or stopped. To wake the player up push up on the joystick. You can switch to bootloader mode by pushing down a second time once in low power mode. When entering bootloader mode the status of the player is written to eeprom.

Play all / repeat all

The player now wraps around to start or end of file list when manualy selecting songs. SCAN_JUMPTOSTART in main.h controls this behaviour.

Auto Power Down

The software will now automatically time out after 30 seconds when paused or stopped. The player will save the current state of the player resume later. After the last song the firmware will continue playing from the first song again. This can be changed in the file main.h

The auto power down now jumps to the low power mode rather than the bootloader. This saves eeprom usage and power.

ID3 info

The player now recognises and uses information from the ID3 version 2.x tags. If this information is unavailable then long filenames will be used.

Serial Control

The player can also be controlled via the serial port using single character commands to emulate the joystick. The lowercase characters i,j,k,l represent up, left, down and right respectively. The spacebar (0x20) is used to represent a center push on the joystick.