Philips HDD100/120 on Linux

This page is about my Philips HDD120, a piece of equipment I both hate and love. I also love Linux, but unfortunately these two don't play nice together.

Being a mass-storage device, the HDD120 works fine for storage, but it's impossible to put music on it for playing, because the PC needs to update the internal database of the HDD120. Of course, with a lot of help from others, and a little coding by myself, I've managed to create a python-script that creates this database easily.

0. Contents

1. Linux software for HDD100/120
2. Firmware
3. Battery replacement

Pylips2 - Python script to update devices' database

1.1 Introduction

• support for long filenames: filenames are shortened, but still kept readable;
• support for special characters: full UTF-8 is supported both in the filenames and ID3-tags;
• ID3v2 support (by using the mutagen library);
• case-insensitive sorting of artists, albums and genres.

1.2 How to install

1. download pylips2 and extract it to the root of your Philips HDD100/120, like this:

   /mnt/
     |_ philipshdd/
          |_ music/
          |_ pylips2/
               |_ pylips2.py
               |_ mutagen/
                    |_ ...

   you can rename the pylips2-folder, as long as you make sure the pylips2.py-script is in a subfolder of the device's root;
   
   
2. it's smart to make a backup of your current /System/Data/ folder, just in case pylips2 screws something up;
   
   
3. in case of trouble: make sure you've got python 2 installed along with the following python-modules: sys, os, math, shutil, struct, hashlib, zlib, re

1.3 How to use

1. mount your HDD100/120;
2. place your music in the music subdir;
3. run pylips2.py and wait until it is done;
4. unmount your HDD and check if it worked.

1.4 What it will do

1. listing all the MP3-files in the music subdir;
2. moving them to /music/artist/year-album/track-title.mp3, with a maximum path-length of 28 characters and a maximum filename of 15 characters;
3. cleaning up all empty directories in the music subdir;
4. saving the database in the System/Data subdir.

1.5 Download

• 23 nov 2010 - version 2.2
  added 64-bit support
  
  
• 3 dec 2009 - version 2.1
  fixed handling of files with empty tags
  added UTF-8 support
  
  
• 30 nov 2009 - version 2.0
  initial version