EchoPod 0.5.0

EchoPod 0.5.0, replacement firmware for the Snowsky (FiiO) Echo Mini 8 GB.

Use it at your own risk. EchoPod is early, has been tested on one player, and comes with no warranty. Read the known issues and make sure you could recover the player through maskrom before you install.

New

• Bluetooth headphones. Settings → Bluetooth (third in the list) turns Bluetooth on, pairs headphones with Pair new device and remembers up to six, most recent first.
  • With Bluetooth on, the player connects to your last headphones by itself at start-up and when they come back in range, and resets and retries a connection that stalls.
  • Press Play on the connected headphones to disconnect them, on other remembered headphones to switch, and hold Play to forget them.
  • Music goes to the headphones whenever nothing is in either jack. Their pause, play, next and previous work, and taking them out of your ears pauses if they have in-ear detection. A dropped connection pauses playback.
  • A small Bluetooth mark next to the play icon shows Bluetooth on (dim) or connected (bright). With nothing connected for 5 minutes, Bluetooth switches itself off until you open its screen or restart.
  • Tested on the player with OnePlus Buds 3.
• Charge screen. Switching off with a cable plugged in, or plugging a charger into a switched-off player, shows the battery level and "Charging" or "Charged". The screen goes dark after 5 seconds; any button lights it. Hold Power to turn the player on, or unplug to switch it off.

Fixed

• Battery percent (#4). The level dropped a few points whenever playback or the screen briefly loaded the battery, and could show 98 % on the charger while the battery held less, which then looked like drain while switched off. It now averages about a minute of readings, never shows more than 99 % while charging, and settles to the true level within a minute of unplugging.
• Switching off on a cable. Holding Power with a charger or computer plugged in left the screen black and the player unresponsive until the reset button. It now shows the charge screen.
• Start-up. The screen stays dark until EchoPod's first frame, so the panel's noise no longer flashes in the corner.
• Dark screen during USB. A message shown with the screen off (such as "Computer found") could stay almost black for the whole USB session; it now lights fully.

Known limits

• To switch from Bluetooth to wired headphones, pause, plug them in and press Play: while music goes to Bluetooth the player can't read the jack.
• Bluetooth has been tried with one pair of headphones so far. Reports with other headphones and speakers are welcome.

When you update

• Nothing to do: your library, settings and covers stay as they are. Bluetooth starts off; turn it on in Settings → Bluetooth.

Full notes: docs/release-notes.md.

Install

Follow the user guide. Already on EchoPod: copy HIFIEC90.IMG to the top level of the player's internal storage (ECHO MINI), eject both drives and unplug; the player installs it. From FiiO firmware 3.7.0, 3.9.0 or 4.0.0: copy HIFIEC90.IMG to the top level of the player's internal storage, eject, unplug, take the microSD card out and restart. Installing from Windows is the tested route. One tester whose FiiO firmware kept refusing the file got it to install after first updating to FiiO's 3.8 firmware.

Check the download first: the SHA-256 of HIFIEC90.IMG must match SHA256SUMS.txt.

Your music goes on the microSD card; EchoPod doesn't read music from internal storage.

The 512 MB Echo Mini is not supported.

Notes

• echo-sync hasn't changed since 0.3.0: use the downloads from the 0.3.0 release.
• This build uses pid.codes' shared test USB IDs (1209:0001 for storage, 1209:0002 for DAC mode) until an assigned product ID is available.
• HIFIEC90.IMG is built from commit e3c00f3.