These days, the personal MP3 player has been largely replaced by the the smartphone. However, [Justinas Petkauskas] still appreciates the iPod for its tactility and portability, and wanted to bring that vibe back. Enter JPL.mp3
The build is based around the ESP32-S3 microcontroller. It’s hooked up with a PCM5102 DAC hooked up over I2S to provide quality audio, along with a micro SD card interface for music storage, and a small IPS LCD. The best feature, though? The mechanical click-wheel which provides a very tactile way to scroll and interact with the user interface. Everything is assembled into a neat 3D printed case, with a custom four-layer PCB lacing all the electronics together.
On the software side, [Justinas] cooked up some custom software for organizing music on the device using a SQLite database. As he primarily listens to classical music, the software features fields for composer/piece and conductor, orchestra, or performer.
[Justinas] calls the final build “chunky, but nevertheless functional” and notes it is “vaguely reminiscent of classic iPods.” We can definitely see the fun in building your own personalized version of a much-enjoyed commercial product, for sure. Meanwhile, if you’re cooking up your own similar hardware, we’d certainly love to hear about it.
Looks like a great project. I miss the iPod sometimes. Phone interfaces can be a chore for playing music. I’m sure many younger people think that’s ridiculous, maybe some people my age too.
I didn’t realize sqlite ran on embedded.
Reminds me more of a ZUNE player.
i’m no Apple loyalist, but if one was going to emulate the iPod, the first thing to copy is its interface. the straight List to dive in and out of categories was perfection, without any graphics or animation. it just worked. looks like this one has some kind of faux dial / vinyl record halfway through it? how will that manage longer song titles? it reminds me of something I’d see on a laggy SanDisk player or a car UI.
The Tangara looks more polished, but is still fully open source and rebuild-friendly:
https://www.crowdsupply.com/cool-tech-zone/tangara
https://sr.ht/~jacqueline/tangara/
So that would be the go-to project for me if I wanted to rebuild something like this.
There soo many people that still rock independent audio devices.. nowadays they are commonly referred to as daps digital audio players. I have a few. The good high quality hi res ones have bit perfect functionality 32bit /768khz dsd512 mqa full unfolding, as well as having a full suite of equalization compression frequency response and plug ins and tidal qobuz interoperability etc….
I’ve been seeing alot of posts like this after people started to see those ipod classics thay got rebuilt and think that that’s the only way to have music in its device,, and it gets me mad because theres a whole culture around the audiophile dap world. There’s many many many top tier brands that make really good daps thay no ones heard of.. fiio hiby shanling astell and Kern , hell sony still pumps em out too …
As far as making your own like this, im all for it. This looks dope actually, and I dig the click wheel idea as most daps are just built into mini touchscreen phones essentially, and i wouldn’t mind a wheel i can use whole its in my pocket and not have to pull it out every time I need to lower the volume etc… so im not saying anything against that.. I just domt like the framing of these like its thee ONLY way to have music thats not stuck on a phone w limited space due to no SD card, and the need for a dac dongle because theres no 3.5mm aux jack… which means I gotta have stuff plugged in and hanging out of my usb c port in my phone, which slowly damages it and could ruin a perfectly good phone..
All that said, i like this thing it loks dope, n if ur selling em best of luck I might even grab one,
Hi iPod is coming back to life
With a voice recorder,
With type to text for note pad
That’s a big seller right there