and if you don't want to wait, you can get an open hardware music player hre as well: https://cooltech.zone/tangara/
they're different -- tangara is an ipod homage with custom firmware and a touchwheel. echo r1 is meant to run rockbox with buttons.
they differ in i/o ports as well: tangara has a regular old headphone jack. echo r1 has a TRRS jack and a line-out jack.
I think a classic iPod touch wheel feels more polished, but the Tangara wheel is like 90% of the way there. In previous firmware versions the middle button was too sensitive but that was fixed. You can adjust the sensitivity but I find the default setting to be perfect for me.
I love my Tangara! I even made some custom themes for it. The regular ol’ headphone jack is perfect and it sounds great too. I wouldn’t wait for the Echo R1 unless you really need Rockbox or the different I/O.
Since it has ESP32 wifi, how is the battery life on tangara?
The device has WiFi capability but there is no functionality built into the default firmware yet, so the antenna is powered down.
Never had an issue with mine. It lasts for days with moderate usage. This is using wired headphones; not sure how much of an impact bluetooth has.
Thanks for that link! I went down the rabbit hole and found this article which I found to be a great read:
https://cooltech.zone/tangara/blog/2024-02-07-touchwheel/
Kudos to the team, looks pretty damn solid. How does the touch wheel work in practice compared to the iPod? Is there any tactile feedback?