Note: if there's much interest in this device, maybe starting a new section would be a good idea :)
I recently purchased an Omnifi DMP1 MP3 player for my car. Although it has some really cool features like 802.11 synchronization, it has A LOT of problems and so far from talking to the support department it doesn't look like they're keen on fixing the problems.
I asked if they would open their sources to the FOSS community and they said no. However, they DO use some GPL tools, here's the GPL info:
There is no serial line or network login available.
The flash image build process is not GPL and will not be released.
The driver for the USB host ports is not GPL and will not be released.
The Kernel/Filesystem image that is programmed during our disk/network firmware upgrade is encrypted, and we will not release the key. This is a requirement of our licenses with Microsoft, ARM, Cirrus, etc.
There is no GPL code in any of our apps.
The Kernel is of course GPL. See list below.
The filesystem has many GPL apps in it. See list below.
http://www.kernel.org 2.4.18 release
http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/developer/ patch 2.4.18-rmk7
http://www.uclibc.org uClibc-0.9.15
http://www.stlport.org STLport-4.5.3
http://www.busybox.net busybox-0..60.3
http://www.bftpd.org
http://www.linux-wlan.org
ftp://ftp.inr.ac.ru/ip-routing/iputils-current.tar.gz arping
http://www2.one-eyed-alien.net/~mdharm/linux-usb/ usb-storage
http://bjorn.haxx.se/isd200/ isd200/300 driver
Additional Tools:
net-tools-1.60
fileutils-4.1
sysvinit-2.83
e2fsprogs-1.29
dhcpcd-1.3.22-p13
util-linux-2.11t
I know it's not a lot, but it's something..
The "user" experience is quite horrible:
1) it drained my car's battery overnight.. not completely but enough to not let the engine start >_<
Although the device is supposed to turn off after 180 minutes of synching, that didn't seem to help. Not sure if the hardware supports any other checks (voltage, anyone?) but it probably should. Anyway, the 180 number is not configurable.
2) The 802.11b card turns on much more often than it is necessary. For instance, it's seeking my network while i'm driving. That's just dumb. And if that wasn't enough, the wireless card stays on even after I turn off my car - all of this EVEN THOUGH I set the device to not synchronize at all!
3) There's no fast-forward feature on the device. That's just nasty!!! There are buttons to skip to next song, pause, etc. but no way to forward/rewind within a file. I was going to use it for some audiobooks and/or Pimsleur tapes, but NOOOO. UGH!!!
4) It doesn't support OGG format. I know it's an open format and most commercial companies don't care for it, but I do!
5) The device is slow to respond to controls. For instance, if a song is playing, it takes the device a second or two to switch to the next one if a skip button was pressed.
6) If #5 wasn't bad enough, there are times when the device simply freezes up and stops playing and responding to controls (except for the superficial Power button). The workaround is to press the power button for like 8-10 seconds to cold-start the device.
7) The software on the computer is quite bad (found several big bugs already) and hard to make heads or tails of. For instance, if you want to exclude some files from being sent to the DMP1, you have to first send them, THEN mark them for not synchronizing and they will be deleted from DMP1 at the next sync. O_O
8) Foreign languages are not supported by the device (okay, I'll give them Japanese/Chinese characters would be impossible to display with such low res, but some other common languages could be made to work)
9) After the sync process, the device "digests" all the files (calls it "building a database")... and it takes its sweet time with that. In fact, if you interrupt that process, the sync disappears (partial sync is impossible)
Anyway, the device is not too-well-made and the support sucks, but it's still a good deal (DMP1 + DMS1 + 2x 802.11b adapter bundles will be sold at www.woot.com for $200 sometime soon - tue/wed), and an interesting target for hacking.
Oh, and what makes it an I-appliance, you say? Well, it has capability to stream audio from the net. Though you have to sign up for some crappy paid service -_-
P.S. One thing I already figured out is that it uses FTP to transfer files. The login is "sync" and there's no password :D
partial /usr directory is displayed when you log in via the FTP, but it doesn't have many files.. I can post the contents if people are interested
