m:robe loader

The Introduction

There are many different and also many similar mp3 players available today and the fruits of Olympus' short tackle of the market (after releasing two players Olympus has withdrawn from making mp3 players) are only a tiny part of it. Still, I bought myself a m:robe 100 because it offers all essential features and mostly because I like its design.
The m:robe 100 has some disadvantages, though. It had only faint volume output in the beginning (has been corrected with a firmware update - though you have to get the right one), there's only a non-standard port to charge and connect the m:robe (bad if you loose it or don't have the cable at hand) and finally there's Olympus feeble attempt to copy iTunes (m:trip) that you have to use to copy music to your player.
However, the mp3s are stored unprotected on the player and the necessary database to play the files is stored in human-readable XML-format. This makes it relatively easy to create a replacement for m:trip and that's what m:robe loader is.

The Usage

The principle behind m:robe loader's design is to create the exact opposite of m:trip: give you all the freedom you want. This is why it relies on what is already there (mp3 files) and lets the user organize them the way he wants. m:robe loader only kicks in at the last step, when you need to get the mp3s on the m:robe to be playable.

Usage scenario:

• Download m:robe loader and copy it to your m:robe so that you have it at hand when you need it.
• Remove all the existing mp3s from your m:robe (you can find them in the /SYSTEM/Music folder, which is hidden, but you should be able to use m:trip, too) since they have been renamed by m:trip.
• Copy all your music to a folder of your choice on the m:robe (e.h. /Music).
• Open up m:robe loader and select the m:robe root folder (drive letter in Windows) and the folder where you have copied your music to.
• Hit go and wait until m:robe loader has finished creating the database.
• Disconnect the m:robe and enjoy your music!

Options:

• Display message on missing ID3 Info: Whenever m:robe loader manages to parse an mp3 file but doesn't find a title, artist or album tag, it will put a notice to the log when this option is set.
• Prepend track number to title: Normally m:robe laoder only uses the title from the ID3 tag or the filename as a track's title. With this option it additionally appends the track number (if specified) to the track title (eg. "5: Fifth Track").
• Rename files: Your m:robe might have problems with some special characters in filenames. The last time I checked with my m:robe 100 it accepted all kinds of filenames but if you get a "File not Found" message you might want to set this.

Requirements:

• Java Runtime: Currently, m:robe loader only runs with JRE 1.5. Support for JRE 1.4 is planned but there are bugs that need to be solved first.
  Download JRE 1.5: Windows, Linux and OSX.
• That's it! m:robe loader relies on some external libraries but those are included with the download.

The Download

The Java application is packed within a JAR file. With never Java runtimes you should be able to open it with a double click. Otherwise you need to open it with the console by typing "java -jar MrobeLoader.jar" in the m:robe loader's directory.

• Version 0.6a -- NEW (17. April 2006) --
• Version 0.6
• Version 0.5

You can still download the old PHP script if you want to:

• Windows package v0.3 with everything you need.
• Script files only v0.3 (view Source).
• Script files only v0.2

The Links

• mrobe.org - Community of m:robe owners. Best place for news, updates, tipps, hacks and help.
• robesync / syncdrop - Another more feature-rich m:robe database creator written in Perl.

The New

• 0.6a
  
  • Fixed touching of index.mum (needed by the player to recognize database changes).
• 0.6
  
  • Fixed a bug related to the $-sign inside ID3 tags (Illegal group reference)
  • Improved support for MR-500i (more than 1000 songs in database, file renaming, index.mum is only touched) - I'm not able to test these changes, therefore they are experimental!
• 0.5
  
  • Complete rewrite in Java!
• 0.3
  
  • Fixed a bug where mp3s in the music folder root (not in a subdirectory) wouldn't play (-> "Search failed").
  • All reserved xml characters are now converted correctly to their respective entities.
    Thanks to David for helping me finding these bugs.
  • The script now saves your changes to the root, music and index directories so you don't have to change them each time.
• 0.2
  
  • Windows package with bat file for easy launching of the script.
  • Errors are displayed using php-gtk for better troubleshooting.
  • Some changes I don't remember.
• 0.1
  
  • Initial release

The Credits

This application is distributed under the LGPL license. See the included license.txt for more details.

m:robe loader was written by Adrian Stutz.
It uses following external libraries:

• mp3spi to read ID3 tags
• L2fProd Directory Selector to easily select directories
• BrowserLauncher2 to open URLs and emails

The Contact

For questions or feedback, contact me using adrian.stutz@gmail.com