The Cube - Assimilating Technology

The Cube

SatMan S-Series portable movie player

For Humans only


SatMan S-Series portable movie player Print E-mail
Saturday, 05 July 2008 08:54

Once I arrived in Australia, I needed to get about. The best way was via a satnav, which I bought  a few weeks after arriving. It was great, I could go driving and not get lost.

Now a few months on, I can get about without it (mostly), so I decided to make use of it in other ways.

The main objective is to get Linux loaded on the unit, but I have not had much luck as yet (got as far as getting a kernel to load, but it crashes fairly quickly after the kernel boot)

For now I have decided to leave the unit on Windows CE, and see what use I can get from it on that.

To note: Once the unit is unlocked you can still use it as a satnav, by just starting the required satnav software, so you don't loose your satnav capabilities.

This is not a new concept, and after a bit of googling, I found the navmanunlocked.wikispaces.com website. Great, all the grunt work has already been done.

The first step is to install the unlock patch. This will allow you to get to the windows CE desktop.

Follow the steps described here: http://navmanunlocked.wikispaces.com/Unlock

Once you have done that, you will have access to the desktop.

You need access to the  FilemanCE program, which gets installed with the above patch for the next step, so place an icon for it on the desktop. You do this by adding a link file in the  'My Flash Disk\Program Files\Unlock\Desktop' folder.  (To note: when you connect the S50 via the USb cable to your pc, and you have an SD card in the navman SD slot, your system will mount two removable hard drives. The folder is on the first mounted drive) Simply create a new text file called 'FilemanCe.lnk' and place the following line in it:

51#"\My Flash Disk\Program Files\Unlock\FileManCE.exe"

The number in the front = the number of characters in the path, including the two "

Safely unmount the two mounted drives (you will only have one if you have no SD card installed), remove the USB cable from the satman end (the satman will go blank), press the power button, and you should have two icons on the desktop: SmartST, and FilemanCE. If you don't, just power down, and power back up the satman.

Double click the FilemanCE icon, and see if the file manager starts. If it does, great. If not check the forum on the satman unlocked website for help. As they have all the help you need to get it to work, I see no point in doing all the bug tracking here.

Ok, so now you have a patched satman, and you can easily start the filemanager. The next step is to install the movie player.

A bit of searching on the forums, and I identified the 'Core Media Player' as the most popular one.

The file you want is here on this website: http://picard.exceed.hu/tcpmp/test/ and the file I used is this one: tcpmp.pocketpc.0.72RC1.cab

Download the file to your local machine, reconnect the satman (which will mount the two removeable drives again) and copy the cab file to the root of the first drive (this is the internal drive on the satman, not the SD card drive) I chose to install the player on the internal drive, as it will allow me to swap SD cards later with movie files on them.

Safely remove the mounted drives, and unplug the satman from the cable. Again it will go blank, just re-power it up.

Now start the FilemanCE file manager. Browse to the previously copied .cab file, and run it. Note you must disconnect the cable as the satman's internal drives are not available if the cable is plugged in, even if they are unmounted.

the cab file will be in the 'My Flash Disk' folder. An install dialog will appear. Install it onto the 'My Flash Folder' root, into a folder called 'player'

Once installed, use the file manager to browse to the installed folder, and run the 'player.exe' file. The player should start.

Exit the player, and create a link on the desktop to the file for easy access. This again goes into the 'My Flash Disk\Program Files\Unlock\Desktop' folder, same as the filemanCE link file you created above. I do this by reconnecting the navman to the pc again. Create a blank file named 'player.lnk' and place the following in it:

34#"\My Flash Disk\player\player.exe"

Disconnect the navman again, reboot it, and if all went well you will have a new desktop icon called player.

That's it. You can now copy a movie to an SD card, slot it in, start the player, browse to the movie, and play it. Sound is not to bad, but it works better if you use headphones.

Just don't drive and watch a movie at the same time !

 

 

 

 

Last Updated on Tuesday, 15 September 2009 07:07
 
Share on facebook