It is possible to customise the main menu, i.e. to reorder or to hide some of its items (only the main menu can be customised, submenus can not). To accomplish this, load a .cfg file (as described in section 13.3) containing the following line: root menu order:items, where “items” is a comma separated list (no spaces around the commas!) of the following words: bookmarks, files, database, wps, settings, recording, radio, playlists, plugins, system_menu, shortcuts. Each of the words, if it occurs in the list, activates the appropriate item in the main menu. The order of the items is given by the order of the words in the list. The items whose words do not occur in the list will be hidden, with one exception: the menu item Settings will be shown even if its word is not in the list (it is added as the last item then).
The following configuration example will change the main menu so that it will contain only the items for the file browser, for resuming the playback, and for changing the settings (the latter will be added automatically).
To reset the menu items to the default, use root menu order:- (i.e. use a hyphen instead of “items”).
This configuration entry can only be created and edited with a text editor or the Main Menu Config Plugin (see section 12.4.12). It is not possible to change this setting via the settings menu.
Rockbox supports custom fonts. A collection of fonts is available for download in the font package at http://www.rockbox.org/daily.shtml.
Rockbox can load fonts dynamically. Simply copy the .fnt file to the player and “play” it in
the File Browser. If you want a font to be loaded automatically every time you start up, it
must be located in the /.rockbox/fonts directory and the filename must be at most 24
characters long. You can browse the fonts in /.rockbox/fonts under Settings → Theme
Settings → Font in the Main Menu.
Note: Advanced Users Only: Any BDF font should be usable with Rockbox. To convert from .bdf to .fnt, use the convbdf tool. This tool can be found in the tools directory of the Rockbox source code. See CreateFonts#ConvBdf for more details. Or just run convbdf without any parameters to see the possible options.
Rockbox can load language files at runtime. Simply copy the .lng file (do not use the .lang
file) to the player and “play” it in the Rockbox directory browser or select Settings → General
Settings → Language from the Main Menu.
Note: If you want a language to be loaded automatically every time you start up, it must be
located in the /.rockbox/langs directory and the filename must be a maximum of 24
characters long.
If your language is not yet supported and you want to write your own language file find the instructions on the Rockbox website: LangFiles
By default, the UI is drawn on the whole screen. This can be changed so that the UI is
confined to a specific area of the screen, by use of a UI viewport. This is done by adding the
following line to the .cfg file for a theme:
ui viewport: X,Y,[width],[height],[font]
Only the first two parameters have to be specified, the others can be omitted using ‘−’ as a placeholder. The syntax is very similar to WPS viewports (see section 13.2.2). Briefly:
This displays the menu starting at 15px from the left of the screen and 20px from the top of the screen. It is 100px wide and 150px high. The font is defined in the theme .cfg file or in the Theme Settings menu.
There are various different aspects of the Rockbox interface that can be themed – the WPS or While Playing Screen, the FMS or FM Screen (if the player has a tuner), and the SBS or Base Skin. The WPS is the name used to describe the information displayed on the player’s screen whilst an audio track is being played, the FMS is the screen shown while listening to the radio, and the SBS lets you specify a base skin that is shown in the menus and browsers, as well as the WPS and FMS. The SBS also allows you to control certain aspects of the appearance of the menus/browsers. There are a number of themes included in Rockbox, and you can load one of these at any time by selecting it in Settings → Theme Settings → Browse Theme Files. It is also possible to set individual items of a theme from within the Settings → Theme Settings menu.
The theme files are simple text files, and can be created (or edited) in your favourite text editor. To make sure non-English characters display correctly in your theme you must save the theme files with UTF-8 character encoding. This can be done in most editors, for example Notepad in Windows 2000 or XP (but not in 9x/ME) can do this.
The theme .cfg file should be placed in the /.rockbox/themes directory, while the .wps, .fms and .sbs files should be placed in the /.rockbox/wps directory. Any images used by the theme should be placed in a subdirectory of /.rockbox/wps with the same name as the theme, e.g. if the theme files are named mytheme.wps, mytheme.sbs etc., then the images should be placed in /.rockbox/wps/mytheme.
All full list of the available tags are given in appendix section C; some of the more powerful concepts in theme design are discussed below.
Note: Keep in mind that your player’s resolution is 112×64×1 (with the last number giving the colour depth in bits) when designing your own WPS, or if you use a WPS designed for another target.
By default, a viewport filling the whole screen contains all the elements defined in each theme file. The text is rendered in the same font as in the main menu. To change this behaviour a custom viewport can be defined. A viewport is a rectangular window on the screen. This window also has variable dimensions. To define a viewport a line starting %V(… has to be present in the theme file. The full syntax will be explained later in this section. All elements placed before the line defining a viewport are displayed in the default viewport. Elements defined after a viewport declaration are drawn within that viewport. Loading images (see Appendix section C.20) should be done within the default viewport. A viewport ends either with the end of the file, or with the next viewport declaration line. Viewports sharing the same coordinates and dimensions cannot be displayed at the same time. Viewports cannot be layered transparently over one another. Subsequent viewports will be drawn over any other viewports already drawn onto that area of the screen.
%V(x,y,[width],[height],[font]
Note: The correct number of commas with hyphens in blank fields are still needed.
| Viewport definition | Default value |
| width/height | remaining part of screen |
| font | user defined |
|
|
Any viewport can be displayed either permanently or conditionally. Defining a viewport as %V(… will display it permanently.
Viewports can share identifiers so that you can display multiple viewports with one %Vd line.
This example checks for hold. Viewport ‘a’ will be displayed if it is on, otherwise viewport ‘b’
will display a flashing warning.
Note: The tag to display conditional viewports must come before the tag to preload the viewport in the .wps file.
As mentioned above, it is possible to set a UI viewport via the theme .cfg file. It is also possible to set the UI viewport through the SBS file, and to conditionally select different UI viewports.
Additional fonts can be loaded within each screen file to be used in that screen. In this way
not only can you have different fonts between e.g. the menu and the WPS, but you can use
multiple fonts in each of the individual screens.
%Fl(’id’,filename,glyphs)
An example would be: %Fl(2,12-Nimbus.fnt,100)
If the tag specified by “xx” has a value, the text between the “<” and the “|” is displayed (the true part), else the text between the “|” and the “>” is displayed (the false part). The else part is optional, so the “|” does not have to be specified if no else part is desired. The conditionals nest, so the text in the if and else part can contain all % commands, including conditionals.
For tags with multiple values, like Play status, the conditional can hold a list of alternatives, one for each value the tag can have. Example enumeration:
The last else part is optional, and will be displayed if the tag has no value. The WPS parser will always display the last part if the tag has no value, or if the list of alternatives is too short.
You can display information about the next song – the song that is about to play after the one currently playing (unless you change the plan).
If you use the upper-case versions of the three tags: F, I and D, they will instead refer to the
next song instead of the current one. Example: %Ig is the genre name used in the next song
and %Ff is the mp3 frequency.
Note: The next song information will not be available at all times, but will most likely be available at the end of a song. We suggest you use the conditional display tag a lot when displaying information about the next song!
It is possible to group items on each line into 2 or more groups or “sublines”. Each subline will be displayed in succession on the line for a specified time, alternating continuously through each defined subline.
Items on a line are broken into sublines with the semicolon ‘;’ character. The display time for each subline defaults to 2 seconds unless modified by using the ‘%t’ tag to specify an alternate time (in seconds and optional tenths of a second) for the subline to be displayed.
Subline related special characters and tags:
Each alternating subline can still be optionally scrolled while it is being displayed, and scrollable formats can be displayed on the same line with non-scrollable formats (such as track elapsed time) as long as they are separated into different sublines. Example subline definition:
Conditionals can be used with sublines to display a different set and/or number of sublines on the line depending on the evaluation of the conditional. Example subline with conditionals:
The format above will do two different things depending if ID3 tags are present. If the ID3 artist and title are present:
If the ID3 artist and title are not present:
Note that by using a subline display time of 0 in one branch of a conditional, a subline can be skipped (not displayed) when that condition is met.
You can have as many as 52 images in your WPS. There are various ways of displaying images:
Example on bitmap preloading and use:
Four images at the same x and y position are preloaded in the example. Which image to display is determined by the %mm tag (the repeat mode).
That is, “tracknum – title [artist, album]”, where most fields are only displayed if available. Could also be rendered as “filename” or “tracknum – title [artist]”.
Rockbox allows users to store and load multiple settings through the use of configuration files. A configuration file is simply a text file with the extension .cfg.
A configuration file may reside anywhere on the disk. Multiple configuration files are permitted. So, for example, you could have a car.cfg file for the settings that you use while playing your jukebox in your car, and a headphones.cfg file to store the settings that you use while listening to your player through headphones.
See section 13.3.2 below for an explanation of the format for configuration files. See section 13.3.3 for an explanation of how to create, edit and load configuration files.
The Rockbox configuration file is a plain text file, so once you use the Save .cfg file option to create the file, you can edit the file on your computer using any text editor program. See Appendix section D for available settings. Configuration files use the following formatting rules:
Example of a configuration file:
Note: As you can see from the example, configuration files do not need to contain all of the
Rockbox options. You can create configuration files that change only certain settings. So, for
example, suppose you typically use the player at one volume in the car, and another when
using headphones. Further, suppose you like to use an inverse LCD when you are in the
car, and a regular LCD setting when you are using headphones. You could create
configuration files that control only the volume and LCD settings. Create a few
different files with different settings, give each file a different name (such as car.cfg,
headphones.cfg, etc.), and you can then use the Browse .cfg files option to quickly change
settings.
A special case configuration file can be used to force a particular setting or settings every time Rockbox starts up (e.g. to set the volume to a safe level). Format a new configuration file as above with the required setting(s) and save it into the /.rockbox directory with the filename fixed.cfg.
The Manage Settings menu can be found in the Main Menu. The Manage Settings menu allows you to save and load .cfg files.
Hint: Use the Save .cfg File feature (Main Menu → Manage Settings) to save the current settings, then use a text editor to customize the settings file. See Appendix section D for the full reference of available options.
When your player powers on, it loads the Archos firmware in ROM, which automatically checks your player’s root directory for a file named ajbrec.ajz. Note that Archos firmware can only read the first ten characters of each filename in this process, so do not rename your old firmware files with names like ajbrec.ajz.old and so on, because it is possible that the player will load a file other than the one you intended.
Rockbox is able to load and start another firmware file without rebooting. You just “play” a file with the extension .ajz. This can be used to test new firmware versions without deleting your current version.
When you bought your Recorder V2/FM, it came with the Archos firmware in flash ROM. When you power on your player, this Archos firmware starts, and then loads an updated firmware from disk if present (ajbrec.ajz). An ordinary Rockbox installation only replaces the on-disk firmware, leaving the flash ROM contents intact. That means the Archos firmware still controls the boot process.
The main reason to change this is to improve the startup time of your player. The Archos bootloader is rather slow. With Rockbox in flash, your player will boot much faster, typically in three to five seconds. Furthermore you might prefer a clean Rockbox environment, with as little remnants of the Archos software as possible.
Warning: Flashing your player is somewhat dangerous, like programming a mainboard BIOS, CD/DVD drive firmware, mobile phone, etc. If the power fails, the chip breaks while programming or most of all the programming software malfunctions, you’ll have a dead box. We take no responsibility of any kind, you do that at your own risk. However, we tried as carefully as possible to bulletproof this code. There are a lot of sanity checks. If any of them fails, it will not program.
There’s an ultimate safety net to bring back boxes with even completely garbled flash content: the UART boot mod, which in turn requires the serial mod. With that it’s possible to reflash independently from the outside, even if the flash ROM is completely erased. This won’t work if you have one of the rare “ROMless” boxes. These have no boot ROM and boot directly from flash. If the first ≈2 KB of the flash ROM are flashed OK, Minimon can be used for the same purpose.
The replacement firmware contains a bootloader and two images. The first image is the permanent rescue software, to be used in case something is wrong with the second (main) image. In current firmware files this first image contains Bootbox (see wiki for details). The second image is what is booted by default. The current firmware files contain a copy of Rockbox 3.2 in the main image. It can easily be updated/replaced later.
The bootloader allows to select which image to run. Pressing F1 at boot selects the first image. F2 selects the second image, which will also be booted if you don’t press any button. The button mapping is only there for completeness. F3 selects the built-in serial monitor called Minimon. You should know this in case you invoke it by accident. Minimon won’t display anything on the screen. To get out of it, perform a hardware shutdown of your player.
You only need to perform this procedure the first time you flash your Recorder V2/FM. You may also want to perform it in case the update procedure for the second image recommends it. In the latter case do not perform the steps listed under “Preparation”.
First, check whether your Recorder V2/FM is flashable at all. Select System → Debug (Keep Out!) → View HW Info. Check the values in the line starting with “Flash:”. If it shows question marks after “M=” and “D=”, you’re out of luck, your player is not flashable without modifying the hardware. You can stop here. Sorry.
If your player is flashable, you should perform a backup of the current flash ROM contents, in case you want to restore it later. Select System → Debug (Keep Out!) → Dump ROM contents. You’ll notice a few seconds of disk activity. When you connect your player to the PC afterwards, you’ll find two files in the root of your player. Copy the 256 KB-sized file named internal_rom_2000000-203FFFF.bin to a safe place.
Note: After successful flashing you may delete the .bin files from the root of your player.
Note: There are no separate flash packages for players modified to have 8 MB of RAM. You need to use the corresponding package for non-modified Recorder V2/FM. You should then install a Rockbox image that makes use of all available RAM as described in the following section.
When Rockbox is booted from flash, it does not check for an updated firmware on disk. This is one of the reasons why it boots faster than the Archos firmware. It means that whenever you update Rockbox, you also need to update the image in the flash. This is a simple and safe procedure:
In case you ever want to restore the original flash contents, you will need the backup file. The procedure is very similar to initial flashing, with the following differences:
Now follow the instructions given for initial flashing, starting with step 3.
Rockbox offers a lot of settings that have high impact on the battery runtime of your player. The largest power savings can be achieved through disabling unneeded hardware components – for some of those there are settings available.
The following provides a short overview of the most relevant settings and rules of thumb.
The active backlight consumes a lot of power. Therefore choose a setting that disables the backlight after timeout (for setting Backlight see section 8.4). Avoid having the backlight enabled all the time (Activating selectivebacklight section 8.4 can further reduce power consumption).
Having a large anti-skip buffer tends to use more power, and may reduce your battery life. It is recommended to always use the lowest possible setting that allows correct and continuous playback (see section 7.5).
The peak meter is a feature of the While Playing Screen and will be updated with a high framerate. Depending on your player this might result in a high CPU load. To save battery runtime you should switch this feature off (see section 4.3.2).
Your target uses a hard disk which consumes a large amount of power while spinning – up to several hundred mA. The less often the hard disk needs to spin up for buffering and the shorter the buffering duration is, the lower is the power consumption. Therefore the bitrate of the audio files does have an impact on the battery runtime as well. Lower bitrate audio files will result in longer battery runtime.
Please do not re-encode any existing audio files from one lossy format to another based upon the above mentioned. This will reduce the audio quality. If you have the choice, select the best suiting codec when encoding the original source material.