From: George Styles <ripnetuk_at_gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 14:48:08 +0000

Hi,
I want a rockbox-capable, video capable, small, 60gig+ player. It seems the
iPod video is perfect, except for one thing, it doesnt have a LCD remote
(which is the killer feature of my H140).

Looking at
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/IriverHardwareComponents#Remote_Control
and
http://ipodlinux.org/Dock_Connector

it seems that the iPod doesnt have any digital IO lines on its dock
connector, but does have a serial interface.

I was thinking we could have a PIC chip connected to power and serial on the
iPod, with a simple program to drive the LCD remote. I imagine it would
accept a serial input from the iPod and bit-bang the data into the LCD
remote, and monitor the buttons for presses and return them to the iPod via
serial.

Of course, it would require software support on the iPod, but now we have a
(almost working) Rockbox port, that should be simple.

The main problem I see is that this would not be 'mainstream' so I would be
left porting my changes to each new release of Rockbox. And getting a
connector to mate with the odd iRiver remote.

Of course, the Rockbox project could 'adopt' a LCD remote of some kind

Any comments? anyone know of a LCD remote that already works via serial
only? (how do the Sony minidisc ones work?) ideally one that is still in
production.

g
Received on 2006-02-07