Interest in building a creative firmware commun

Question

I bought myself a muvo Micro n200 a little while ago. Great little player - I'm really enjoying it. However, I've found a number of small things (mostly with the interface, but some H/W) that irk me. Looking at the forums - it looks like lot's of other people have found them too. I'm talking about things like:
- Shuffle mode repeatedly plays the same folders & track, while completely ignoring others.
- The backlight generates a hum whenever it's on
- Display only shows the title from ID3 - not the artist/album/anything else
- Lack of configurability of options
- Clumsy operating experiences (ie no concept of back/up-a-level)
- Limited mp3 encoding functionality
- etc
- etc
I use my player on average an hour a day - and everytime I do, I encounter something like the above, and think "I could fix that, if i had the source". The hardware is great, (except for the odd annoyance - ever tried opening the belt clip wide enough to clip it onto a belt, without hitting the play/pause/on/off button?). I think it's a brilliant little package, (and the keyword really is little)! You'll notice that my list above are all firmware issues. I find myself constantly disappointed that the software lets down to the degree that it does what could be such a great little unit.
I was wondering, how much of a community is there around the muvo n200 - If there was an opensource firmware project available, would there be much participation? I'm obviously interested in the n200 - but it could encompass other players also...
I see a number of options - if there is enough interest out there, I'll approach creative with a proposal. My ideas are, in order of preference (and probably reverse order of likelihood):
- Get a current snapshot of the code from creative, and some technical documentation. Start an OSS project on sourceforge with it.
- Get a snapshot of the current code from creative. Not be allowed to give/show anyone else the code, but be able to make changes and distribute my own firmware file (no warranty of course), and take feature requests etc.
- Get some technical documentation from Creative on the player. Start my own project from scratch, distribute via sourceforge.
- Get documentation from creative, be allowed to distribute a binary file.
Failing all that:
- Have creative fix all the problems in the firmware, and distribute a kickass update. :-)
If that last one happens - I will certainly sign up for alpha testing, field research, and the like!
This would benefit Creative no end - It would rapidly become a high quality alternati've firmware, but would be one they don't have to support: they can offer a (potentially - with post purchase flashing) even better product, with absolutly no loss or expence to them. It would also develop a large community and following - numerous previous similar cases have shown that people around the globe gel together on projects like this, and can have dramatic effects on the number of units shifted. There is an enourmous amout of userbase out there that would be looking for an mp3 player, and would buy this particular one for the one reason that they can play with the source, and compile their own firmware. Many more will be prompted to buy one, where they hadn't even been previously in the market! Just coz it sounds like so much darn fun! And further to that - people out there like to support companies that support user communities through projects like this - even if they don't buy an n200, they will make the association that creative is a good brand name, and seek out their products in other lines. I know i would. :-)
There's probably a downside to this for creative too - though i haven't figured it out yet. If you have any ideas as to why they shouldn't/couldn't - please post here. The most significant issue I can see involves trade secrets and such - but nothing an NDA couldn't deal with quite satisfactorily.
What does the community think?
Message Edited by erozen on 05-2-2005 02:23 AM

Answer 1

I bought myself a muvo Micro n200 a little while ago. Great little player - I'm really enjoying it. However, I've found a number of small things (mostly with the interface, but some H/W) that irk me. Looking at the forums - it looks like lot's of other people have found them too. I'm talking about things like:
- Shuffle mode repeatedly plays the same folders & track, while completely ignoring others.
- The backlight generates a hum whenever it's on
- Display only shows the title from ID3 - not the artist/album/anything else
- Lack of configurability of options
- Clumsy operating experiences (ie no concept of back/up-a-level)
- Limited mp3 encoding functionality
- etc
- etc
I use my player on average an hour a day - and everytime I do, I encounter something like the above, and think "I could fix that, if i had the source". The hardware is great, (except for the odd annoyance - ever tried opening the belt clip wide enough to clip it onto a belt, without hitting the play/pause/on/off button?). I think it's a brilliant little package, (and the keyword really is little)! You'll notice that my list above are all firmware issues. I find myself constantly disappointed that the software lets down to the degree that it does what could be such a great little unit.
I was wondering, how much of a community is there around the muvo n200 - If there was an opensource firmware project available, would there be much participation? I'm obviously interested in the n200 - but it could encompass other players also...
I see a number of options - if there is enough interest out there, I'll approach creative with a proposal. My ideas are, in order of preference (and probably reverse order of likelihood):
- Get a current snapshot of the code from creative, and some technical documentation. Start an OSS project on sourceforge with it.
- Get a snapshot of the current code from creative. Not be allowed to give/show anyone else the code, but be able to make changes and distribute my own firmware file (no warranty of course), and take feature requests etc.
- Get some technical documentation from Creative on the player. Start my own project from scratch, distribute via sourceforge.
- Get documentation from creative, be allowed to distribute a binary file.
Failing all that:
- Have creative fix all the problems in the firmware, and distribute a kickass update. :-)
If that last one happens - I will certainly sign up for alpha testing, field research, and the like!
This would benefit Creative no end - It would rapidly become a high quality alternati've firmware, but would be one they don't have to support: they can offer a (potentially - with post purchase flashing) even better product, with absolutly no loss or expence to them. It would also develop a large community and following - numerous previous similar cases have shown that people around the globe gel together on projects like this, and can have dramatic effects on the number of units shifted. There is an enourmous amout of userbase out there that would be looking for an mp3 player, and would buy this particular one for the one reason that they can play with the source, and compile their own firmware. Many more will be prompted to buy one, where they hadn't even been previously in the market! Just coz it sounds like so much darn fun! And further to that - people out there like to support companies that support user communities through projects like this - even if they don't buy an n200, they will make the association that creative is a good brand name, and seek out their products in other lines. I know i would. :-)
There's probably a downside to this for creative too - though i haven't figured it out yet. If you have any ideas as to why they shouldn't/couldn't - please post here. The most significant issue I can see involves trade secrets and such - but nothing an NDA couldn't deal with quite satisfactorily.
What does the community think?
Message Edited by erozen on 05-2-2005 02:23 AM