An open-sourced portable media player in 2024? How would it be?

The Water Cooler
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The other day I found this piece of jewelry on Youtube about a guy that took an old iPod for a spin and that took him into a rabbithole about digital declutter and cutting oneself away from algoritmic platforms and that life as a subscription plan scheme we’re trapped in. It was quite fascinating, indeed. Here are the links:

Part 1.- https://youtu.be/Ou2dW4qebbw?si=TuCORou_aBXTN8NX

Part 2.- https://youtu.be/t9TZh0oNAHQ?si=1lXJstd-keb8-Ry3

Part 3.- https://youtu.be/_L-WUrZ7tJM?si=XMpNy7Sbf-knlgdG

Part 4.- https://youtu.be/VzKr-tMr8qQ?si=SSHe7FuT8b20vb6c

Unfortunately, we’re talking about a discontinued device, a piece of consumer electronic’s past, something rare. In Part 4, he modded hs iPod to more recent tech (like SD Cards, new OS and battery) but it kept me thinking about what kind of device could we build from the ground-up to fulfill the duty of the old iPod? How can we design it to be easily repairable and upgradable, maybe even open-sourced?

It can be an interesting mental experiment. In the same size I think there can be a better battery, Bluetooth, a good DAC/Amp combo (nothing too big), USB-C charging-Data port, NVMe slot and MicroSD suport. What about a RISC-V processor for the whole thing?

I read you, guys.

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Sounds like an interesting raspberry project… Although Risk-V sounds even more interesting.

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Pi Zero, maybe? The other ones are too big and power hungry. I think you could run it off of an ESP32. (Which does come in RISC-V flavors…)

Runs CircuitPython, too.

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Although, without PSRAM, 400k might be a little tight.

So… a little bigger…

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Sounds risky :wink:

But really, ARM is way more power efficient and abundant than RISC-V currently.

A Rasperry Pi Zero/Nano or similar competitor SOC, a small NVME or eMMC, a battery, USB-C and headphone jack, a small display, a few buttons.

Could run a custom minimal version of Linux, or RedoxOS or something else

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I posted the same posr in the Framework community forum, some mentioned this kit.

Is stil in the “kickstart” phase, buit it looks promising.