I just received mine a few days ago!
I am excited to have it and start using it but I would also caution people interested in it. It is currently a little rough around the edges software wise but I’m optimistic it will continue to improve with time.
I am personally glad I opted to support this project and while I don’t think I’ll be able to contribute to code I do hope to at least provide beneficial feedback and end user diagnostics.
I also got mine recently! Definitely agree with the rough around the edges part. This is definitely an artisanal, hand-rolled, music player. It… doesn’t seem very durable. Mine rattles when I move it…
I bought it to support open source and because I’m hoping it’ll last a long time. (As long as I don’t move it too much.)
Haha I think it’s plenty durable so long as you aren’t dropping it all the time.
The rattle is probably just the side buttons which do have a little wiggle due to the tolerances of the case.
The touch wheel on my was a little loose too which was a know issue. I just put a little piece of double sides tape on the top between it and the case and now it’s all good.
I’m optimistic it will continue to improve with time.
In my experience there are few crowdsourced products that continue to be significantly developed after the initial sales have finished unless they are astoundingly well-reviewed to continue selling.
Pebble was one of the few exceptions for one that I funded. Even then, once the Apple Watch came out they got gobbled up by (garmin) and all development on the originals died.
I don’t necessarily expect it to be supported indefinitely but they only just got the hardware into backers hands and are now taking in a lot of feedback so I don’t think it unreasonable to expect some reasonable improvements in the shorter term.
Time will tell though. Personally I’d be quite happy with it after some bug fixes and a few small features. And if worse comes to worse it will become a personal coding project for myself.
Does anyone here remember Rockbox? I still have my old Sansa player running it.
I have my iPod 5th gen running on RockBox. IMO it’s even better than the stock firmware because it can play flacs.
And ogg and m4a and opus and so many more. I have an ipod 6th gen runnung rockbox. Its great. If the harddrive dies I’ll replace it with sd-cards and still keep uaing it.
Rockbox is cool, I just wish it was able to replace the base system without touching the UI. Something about it just feels off on an iPod. Even supposedly iPod-accurate themes just feel uncanny.
It’s a shame rockbox doesn’t support video playback though.
How is stability for you? My 7th gen with about 750gb is pretty unstable, mostly I have a lot of difficulty transferring since the iPod crashes 15gb in all the time.
Darmok and Jalad, at Tangara?
$271,285 raised of $10,000 goal. That’s some pretty good odds of success
For the more adventurous, Tangara’s ESP32 firmware is written in C++ using the ESP-IDF framework. … Tangara’s battery is a standard LiPo pouch cell with a 3-pin JST connector. … Active battery life depends on use case (typically >20 hours)
Sorry, thanks but not thanks. Make it use a swappable 18650 and run Rockbox. Also it costs $250 which might have been ok in the early 2000s but is outlandish today. Finally it’s Crowdsupply, which is not a scam but is a pain to deal with. And the battery drain is a lot too. Sandisk players were getting 10+ hours on an AAA cell in 2005 or so. This is just not an interesting product and the makers should have spent a few evenings on the Rockbox forums before starting the project.
