MP5 Battery issues, clock-calendar function

[stepher]

I've mentioned in another forum (here at MyMpx) that I recently got an MP5 player while in China. It's actually pretty nice and works fairly well. A couple of things I thought I'd throw out here:

Battery:

My player lasts only ~2 hours on a single charge. The battery claims (this is China, remember) to be 520ma hrs. which means this puppy would be drawing ~225ma when it's playing. That's a lot given the circuitry and devices used in the design. When I've checked the specs for how long MP players last on a single charge, I've typically seen 10-15 hours. Is this consistent with what most people find?

Unfortunately, when I plug it into a USB port (I run the audio thru some computer speakers while I'm working), it either comes up ready to transfer files or it goes into charge mode, so I have to wait for the player to charge before I can use it again. Again, is this typical? I may look into modifying the power supply/battery connections assembly one day to change this.

Clock/Calendar:

This is prob'ly one of the downsides of this player. It has a "calendar function", but there seems to be no way to set a clock...which means the calendar always reverts back to 1/1/2001 (apparently old firmware and serves as nothing ore than a reference function for days of the week The upside is that it does have a stop watch function (that will allow me to time how long it really takes for the battery to die....

Here are the basics of my unit.



CPU: Rockchips RK2705/6 (I think now it's most likely an '06...just lousy printing)
Flash Memory: Samsung K9GAG08U0M 16Gbx1 (2GBx8) NAND flash memory device
"Working memory": 8x16SDRAM (That's all it says
FM Stereo: SP3767 (I think this is similar to the STMicro 5767(?)

Anybody have any experience with this design that they might be willing to share.

Thanks and cheers...Steph

[lolita]

- The backlight for the large screen and probably the SDRAM would draw the most power.
- The battery may not be 520mAh. You can try splicing an ammeter in series with it to see the actual current drawn, and maybe replacing the battery if its capacity is not as stated.
- At least on Actions-based players, while charging you can press MENU to exit U disk mode and use the player. It might be similar for your situation.
- Most of these devices do not have a separate RTC, so the main RK2706 must be constantly powered on to keep the time. This is bad for battery life, so they choose not to.

[Binh@MyMPx]

Hi Steph,

My player is a Rockchip and with all players, if you play video more than music, it will drain the battery more. How long can your battery last if you just play music on it? What you can also try doing it setting the option to turn off the screen display after 30 seconds to conserve power. That may help with conserving power, which in the end may give your player longer play time.

re: The Calendar option
I haven't tested this function in my player, not sure if player actually has it. I'll do some playing around and see. I hava Rockchip player, but it's the 2.8" touch screen player instead so it may have different options than your player.

[stepher]

Binh and Lolita,

Thanks for your inputs. As to the battery issue, all I can say is "D'oh!!" I realized I hadn't considered my unit having an LED backlight which can draw upwards of 100+ma. Combine that with the MP5 ICs (CPU, Flash, SRAM, FM tuner, LCD) and the SD Flash in the socket, and I now see where all the battery current is draining to. I'll have to adjust the on time of my display to minimize the power draw.

WRT charging and using...I played with the buttons until I found the one that would take me out of the charging screen and into the main menu. I can now use the player while it's charging. Of course, I still need to set the on time of the display otherwise most, if not all, of the charging current will be used to run the device

Re: Clock....no further insight on that . I hope someone can come up with something.

Binh...I have tried to use SF1WX to extract my firmware, but it doesn't seem to work. Someone suggested using the "other" tools available on this site. Any suggestions as to what those might be?


Again, thanks and cheers......Steph

[knob]

I got a player like this.
I've found it works a lot better when I do a "soft" shutdown i.e. don't use the on/off switch to switch the player off, but the button on top ALL the time.

This way the settings get saved and this player is not prone to crashing.

Like the difference between unplugging your PC to shut it down if you see what I mean.

b.t.w I get about 7 1/2 hours play with mine playing mp3's and backlight full on.

see here:-
Did anyboby buy this PMP from Tinydeal?

[stepher]

knob,

Thanks for the info. I typically do a soft shut down. Then, if I plan to not use the player for a while, I'll use the switch to shut it off. Good point about saving the settings.

7-1/2 hours w/backlight on? I'm impressed. What are your other settings? I think I mentioned my best is ~2 hours. I had the display set @ LightTime=AlwaysOn, Brightness=3 and LightMode="Penumbra", so the backlight was on all the time. I've now set it to 30secs, 3, All Dark, respectively. Let's see how that works with battery life. Maybe I will have to get a new battery.

Curious...when you go to system info, does the display give you any info re: manufacturer? All I get is Hardware ID (looks like a date code), Software ID = 2.2 (apparently s/w rev level) and then internal and any external flash plugged in used and total nos. .

Re: Clock...Based on my understanding of code and hardware, implementing a clock would be pretty straightforward. And current draw is tons less than the LED display. The hardware pretty much exists. All it would take would be to set up a timer on the CPU (I assume it has a few, but I haven't read the datasheet) that interrupts once/sec which wakes up the processor, updates a register/location, and goes back to sleep. The processor is CMOS which means it draws almost no power in powerdown mode. Intel's single chip 80C51 CPU series has tiemrs and teh ability to wakeup on interrupt and it prob'ly isn't anywhere near as powerful as this 2706.

I wonder if this function exists in the firmware, but hasn't been enabled for some reason. The unit has a stop watch which is essentially a clock display (give or take Maybe there's some daring soul out there who is capable and wants to take on this challenge (hint, hint

Just some thoughts....Cheers Steph

Originally Posted by knob

I got a player like this.
I've found it works a lot better when I do a "soft" shutdown i.e. don't use the on/off switch to switch the player off, but the button on top ALL the time.

This way the settings get saved and this player is not prone to crashing.

Like the difference between unplugging your PC to shut it down if you see what I mean.

b.t.w I get about 7 1/2 hours play with mine playing mp3's and backlight full on.

see here:-
Did anyboby buy this PMP from Tinydeal?

[admin]

Originally Posted by stepher

Binh...I have tried to use SF1WX to extract my firmware, but it doesn't seem to work. Someone suggested using the "other" tools available on this site. Any suggestions as to what those might be?

s1fwx won't work on your player as that tool is only designed for the s1mp3 players AKA Action chipset based players. As yours is a Rockchip player, this tool won't detect your player.

Re: Clock
In the older Action chipset based players, setting the clock was easy, the trick was, to *not* use the [on/off] switch to shutdown your player, instead, hold down on the [Play] button which did a 'soft shutdown' instead. This would keep the clock settings. However, looking at your post, you're saying you can't actually find where to change the clock settings, is that right?

[stepher]

I did figure out about accessing the firmware for my unit (knob was kind enough to provide some pointers). Not sure what I'll do with that knowledge. Trying to do any recoding of firmware without datasheet or instruction set (or knowledge of how the other chips are connected, i.e. bus address, etc.) is very dangerous. If I get more info, I may try it (Yes, I have backups of my firmware).

Right on about the clock function. I have a main menu option of "Other" and underneath that I have calendar and stopwatch. The calendar function is useless without time to tick off the hours. It always comes back to Jan 2000.

Cheers...Steph

Originally Posted by admin

s1fwx won't work on your player as that tool is only designed for the s1mp3 players AKA Action chipset based players. As yours is a Rockchip player, this tool won't detect your player.

Re: Clock
In the older Action chipset based players, setting the clock was easy, the trick was, to *not* use the [on/off] switch to shutdown your player, instead, hold down on the [Play] button which did a 'soft shutdown' instead. This would keep the clock settings. However, looking at your post, you're saying you can't actually find where to change the clock settings, is that right?