Go to the project page
Latest version 0.52 30/11/2010

About:
An audiobook player for Symbian S60 and UIQ smartphones.
Written by Panagiotis Karagiannis


Features:

• Can play any audio format the phone supports.
• It can play a folder with audio files. No need for audiobook preparation.
  
• Stops playing when a phone call is active.
• Stops when alarm or other phone function blocks the audio output.
• Remembers the last played book and opens it at program start.
• Remembers the chapter and position for all audiobooks.
• Exits automatically when for 1 hour is stopped, to free up phone resources.
  
• Displays not only chapter size but also audiobook size and position.
  
• It can stop, start, etc. even when the keyboard is locked (my favorite while jogging!). Ready for S60 but needs some work on UIQ3
  
• Supports multiple platforms (S60,UIQ3 and more).
• Performs some sanity tests in order to avoid crashes.(Not ready yet).
• Relatively small memory usage (about 150kb on S60v3).
  

Lacking features:

• Lack of a settings page. I don't know how to do it in mShell (ui.form can only display very sort words, let alone phrases). I hope the default settings are ok for most users. Ok if there are people out there interested, I will try again
  
• No sophisticated graphics, just text. I didn't spend time on this. On the other hand the necessary info is displayed, and the fonts are easily readable.
• No support for additional audio formats. The audio files must be supported by the cellphone. This is not a big problem as .amr .mp3 (UIQ3 and S60 ) and .awb (S60) do the job.
• I believe the code is a mess. I didn't try to follow any coding rule or style and the code grew bigger than I expected, mainly because I added functionality on the go. Also my inexperience in mShell played a role on the final (messy) result. I will try in the future to improve code readability.
  
• No Internationalization, english only.
• No bookmarks. I don't really believe this is a usefull feature but if some people want it, I will add it.
• At the moment the Red key kills the program before it has a chance to save the position
  

How to install:
You have several options:

• You can download the self signed SIS package suitable for your phone and install it. This is by far the simplest option, and the safest one if you don't trust the code. Note however that the program in this case has not the necessary capabilities to grab the keyboard, and the program cannot be controlled while keylock is active. I believe this is a must have feature, therefore  I suggest that you' d better try the next option. On the other hand you can start with this package and if you like the application go to the second option.
• You can download the unsigned SIS package for your platform and sign it yourself. You have 2 options: online signing or obtain a developer certificate. If this is the first time you hear about these things, try the first option and in 5 minutes you are done.
  
• If you are familiar with mShell you can just download the mAudiobook.m script, transfer it to your m scripts folder and run it.
• You can generate yourself a SIS package on the mex2sis site. Again, you need to be familiar with mShell.

How to prepare/install audiobooks:
If your audiobook is a folder with mp3 files, transfer it to your phone to X:\audiobooks\ where X is your memory card. If this method works for you, stick with it. In practice however there can be several problems. At first, the size of the audiobook can be huge, so you maybe want to reduce its size, especialy if you like to have a lot of audiobooks at the same time to your phone. I will give instructions when I have time. Another problem is that some audiobooks have mastered with very low sound volume, and you have to raise the volume a bit. Again I will give solutions when I have the time.


How to use it:
Leftkey and 1: back 10 sec
Rightkey and 3: forward 10 sec
Upkey and 2: raise volume
Downkey and 8: lower volume
4: back 1 min
6: forward 1 min
Gokey and 5: play/pause
Backspace (c on UIQ3) quit the program
from the menu you can change the audiobook played
When keyboard is locked:
if you have the selfsigned package (wich means "basic" capabilities) no button is working
if you signed the package yourself then:
if the player is playing Gokey,Upkey,Downkey,1,3 buttons are function as explained.
if the player is stopped, only Gokey works, to protect you from accidentally change the position in the audiobook.
Volume keys at the side:
On my Nokia E52 they just dont work. They need special C++ code to be accessed and I didn't find some module in mShell doing it. On UIQ3 they work but they change the global volume of the phone which is not the same as the applications volume (Up and Down keys) and this can be confusing. Probably is convenient to set the master volume at a high level, and use only Up and Down keys afterwords.


How to help:

• Send me your opinion and ideas to improve the program. Bug fixes are welcome of course !
  
• If you have a UIQ2 S60v2 S60v5 phone you can install mShell and run the script. Send me feedback so your phone's platform will be supported.

Motivation: Recently I discovered the audiobook world, and I found that whereas there are a lot of audiobooks, the available cellphone audiobook players for my phone (Nokia E52 S60v3) could not function as I wanted.  I know about 2 audiobook players for this platform. Nokia audiobook player and Scheherazade. The first one is quite polished but requires a windows program (Nokia Audiobook Manager) to master the audiobook folder. There is also a linux script doing the same, but for some reason some audiobooks crash the player. Scheherazade needs just a folder with audio files. However in my cellphone it has also some stability problems. For example if an alarm rings while the player is active, the player will certainly hang. I also found both players relatively hard to control while walking or jogging. Both are no longer maintained, so there is no chance of imporvement.
But the main reason was that my wife Irene, has a SonyEricsson G900 smartphone which is UIQ3 and I couldn't find any audiobook player for this abandoned platform. My first thought was to write a program in Python, but Python is not well supported on UIQ3. Thankfully there is mShell which supports S60v3 UIQ3 and more. So two weeks ago I started writing the m Audiobook Player. Of cource I didn't even consider Symbian C++ . I wanted to spend 2-3 weeks in my project, not 2-3 years ! 


Licence: The source code consists of a single file mAudiobookPlayer.m The code is covered by the GPLv3. The interpreter running the code however, the excellent mShell, is closed source. Hopefully mShell can freely be downloaded and used. Also the binary SIS packages generated from mex2sis site can be freely downloaded, and are included in the download section.


Thanks:

• To my wife Irene who inspired me to write the program
• To airbit people for writing m-Shell
• to sf.net people for creating this excellent project hosting service
• To my son Ilias, the constant inspiration of my life !

Project Web Hosted by