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iriver SPINN firmware and development

Back in the day I had a 4gb iriver clix 2 and loved it. But then I went to Australia and broke it. Just to be clear, its breaking was entirely my fault.

So there I am in Australia but without an MP3 player.

I had to keep it on the dl because basically those Australians kick you out if they find out.

No big deal, I thought, I’ll just buy a new one — maybe an 8gb when they come out! But, man, where are you going to find iriver products in North America or Australia?

To be honest, I just don’t know the answer to that.

And I was running out of time. The Australians were closing in.

Finally, I caved. I decided to buy a cheap mp3 player, until I was again in Canada and could buy a new and larger though similarly sized Clix. You know, just to get them off my back.

I bought a Thomson LYRA because it was v. cheap, stored 2gb, and most importantly for me, functioned as a UMS. It worked way better than I expected it to.

I never did get that 8gb Clix. Similarly, but unrelated, I never did figure out where to find it in North America. Oh, well. That dream was dead, it was time to move on to new things.

I got an 8gb iriver SPINN, and set about updating its firmware. Which is where I encountered some problems.

Updating the firmware

I installed both iriver plus 3 and the firmware updater, and tried using both to update the spinn. I claimed that at least one of them should update its firmware, and both disagreed.

iriver plus 3 rebutted with the statement:

Network error Please check network connection and try again.

And the firmware updater was pretty insistent that it doesn’t support “id=iriver_SPINN”.

Guys, these are the sorts of issues the internet should help me with. It let me down, but at least it sometimes puts food on the table.

Solution: I ended up reinstalling iriver plus 3 and the firmware updater, and then plugging in the spinn, and then it worked fine.

Cause? I think I must have USBed up the spinn after installing the programs but before restarting my computer. I suspect that it didn’t like that at all.

Development

The iriver SPINN runs flash lite.

Here is some information that might be helpful if you want to develop for the SPINN, but realize there’s no information on the internet about it:

key mapping:

  • 39 is spin right
  • 37 is spin left
  • 13 is spin click (down)
  • 38 is volume up
  • 40 is volume down
  • soft1 is that weird loopy back-like key

So spin right, spin left, volume up, and volume down map directly to the direction (arrow) keys, and pressing down the spinner maps to the enter key. The touch screen works like using a mouse.

Good to know, and easy to find out – it pretty much works exactly as we expect it would. But now how do we tell our games to quit back to the SPINN’s interface? Guys, it took me forever to figure that out.

exiting :

FSCommand2("Quit");

The FSCommand2 commands look interesting, with things like startVibrate, and stopVibrate, but so far I haven’t tried anything but quit.

I am a little sad that flash lite doesn’t support actionscript 3.

 

Comments

  1. Shaun says:

    You will frequently find USB devices that INSIST you install the drivers BEFORE plugging them in. Why this should matter is lost on me, and frankly I think they should fix that shit.

  2. Brad says:

    truth. I did install them before plugging it in, I just didn’t actually restart I guess.

  3. Jeff says:

    @Brad
    just testing the reply

  4. pal-1 says:

    Everytime I try to update the iriver plus 3 software, I get the message:

    Network Error
    Please check network connection and try again

    I also can´t upgrade the Firmware for my E100…

    Every other program that connects to the Interwebs is working fine. Just this plus 3 program can´t get a connection.

    But you Solution does not work.

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