iRiver H10 Hacks

I think most of the people who purchase an iRiver Hard drive audio jukebox portable player know that the "Music" function works only on WMP10 (Windows Media Player 10) and if you happen to be an Open Source Software/Linux fan, then you're in trouble.

Well, not anymore! Help is here with a great and easy to use software called EasyH10. I am the proud owner of an (unfortunately discontinued) iRiver H10 portable audio player, and I've always wanted to use the "Music" function it has, but instead, I was forced to use the "Browse" function to play files on my device. Now, with the EasyH10 software I can enjoy the "Music" function of my iRiver H10; function that supports to order the files on Albums, Artists, Genres, Titles and you can also access Playlist files. I am gonna present some little hacks on how to manage your iRiver H10 under Linux for you.

NOTE: The following guide was tested successfully on iRiver H10 6GB MTP device, with 2.51 European firmware!

EasyH10 installation:

EasyH10 software requires the libid3tag and libiconv libraries to be installed in your system prior to the EasyH10 installation. You can install the libid3tag and the devel package with the following command:

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sudo apt-get install libid3tag0 libid3tag0-dev

As for the libiconv library, please download and install it manually from here. Follow the instructions below:

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tar zxvf libiconv-1.11.tar.gz
cd libiconv-1.11
./configure
make
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig

I use Ubuntu and I found the EasyH10 software in the repositories, but it's version 1.4 and it seams to not work with my device, so you must download and install the latest version yourself from here. After you have downloaded the corresponding file for your machine, install it with the following command:

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sudo dpkg -i easyh10_1.5-1_i386.deb

Note: This is an example for my x86 machine, for an amd64 architecture please download and install the corresponding file (e.g. sudo dpkg -i easyh10_1.5-1_amd64.deb)

Use EasyH10 to manage your iRiver H10:

Start the player in UMS mode

Both UMS and MTP iRiver H10 models can be mounted under Linux in USB Mass Storage mode, only that if you own an MTP device, like me, you must do a little trick in order for the device to be mounted in USB Mass Storage mode. Follow the instructions below:

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1. Power off the H10 player.
2. Remove the battery and put it back.
3. Connect the player to the PC with the USB cable.
4. Click and hold the Select key of the H10 player ("o" button on the right) and then the Power button until the "Emergency Connect..." message appears and then disappears on the H10's LCD screen and USB Connect appears.
5. The player will work in UMS mode and the device will me mounted in /media/H10.

WARNING: DO NOT DELETE ANY OF THE FILES FROM THE DEVICE OR YOUR PLAYER WILL NOT WORK ANYMORE! Only copy your music files/folders into the "Music" directory and your .m3u playlists into the "Playlists" directory.

Copy the H10 model file to the H10 HDD

Before using the EasyH10 software, you must install on your player's HDD a model template file corresponding with your player's characteristics, from the EasyH10 directory. Please follow the next instructions:

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sudo cp /usr/share/easyh10/model/H10MTP_6GB_FW2.51.model /media/H10/easyh10.model

Note: The example above is for my iRiver H10 MTP 6GB 2.51 Firmware player. For another H10 player, take a look into the /usr/share/easyh10/model/ directory before doing the above operation, and replace H10MTP_6GB_FW2.51.model with your player's file.

Now you're ready to use the software to rebuild/update your music database. First you must build the music database using the following command:

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easyh10 -C -on -Prf /media/H10/

The result will be:

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marius@marius-desktop:~$ easyh10 -C -on -Prf /media/H10/
EasyH10 [CUI] 1.5 Copyright (c) 2005-2006 by Nyaochi

H10 model template: /media/H10/easyh10.model
Path to database: /media/H10/SystemDATA/
Path to music: /media/H10/Music/
Path to playlist: /media/H10/Playlists/
Playlist extension: .pla

Enumerating music files:
706 files found.

Reading H10 model template:
H10 (MTP2) 6GB firmware 2.51 - 2.51

Obtaining media information from 706 files:
706 files obtained.

Updating database

Writing H10 media database:
100%: (H10DB.hdr)

Enumerating playlists:
1 playlists found.

Enumerating music files:
706 files found.

Converting 1 playlists:
1 playlists successfully converted.

As you can see in the above result, I have 706 music files in the "Music" directory in my iRiver H10 HDD and one playlist file (.m3u) that I copied by hand on the "Playlists" directory.

Later, if you need to update your music database, use the following command:

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easyh10 -U -on -Pf /media/H10/

Other tools:

You can also use another hack, along with the Amarok player, that is called iriverh10.amarokscript. This script it's like an interface for the EasyH10 software, but you can only use it with the Amarok player, and not as a standalone GUI.

With the iriverh10 Amarok script, you can access your files from the iRiver H10 device, create/delete playlists, transfer music files from your PC to the device, update the iRiver H10 music database and other cool stuff.

Have fun and enjoy your music!

iRiver H10 Hacks

Manage the iRiver H-series!