DAB+ App: (real)zoulou's DAB-Z app (official support thread)

[voxmagna]

This is the best UK DAB out there and I tried a few, thanks for this. I have a Chinese Android 10 car head unit without root and it's pretty much locked down. I've been around the houses as a Beta Tester and finally concluded my problem is with DAB-Z or the USB interface. I was abe to get a factory build image, flush everything and re-install without any additional apps or usb devices. There were no crash reports from Sleep mode.

Most car head units are set to fast boot from sleep mode. You want to get in your car start it and have the radio up and running just like an analogue radio. When DAB-Z player starts from sleep mode crash files are generated each time in the local mnt sdcard and the folder just keeps filling up. If I set the head unit to normal slow boot or push the reset button (same thing) there are no crash errors. This has bugged me for while until I confirmed it's related to DAB-Z latest and previous versions. I'm not a programmer but I do understand Sleep modes can be difficult and the problem could be due to the USB receiver or even Android10? I've attached a typical crash file, but admit I don't understand what it's saying.

A less important issue is saving favorite stations and manually installing station logos. Station presets are saved and recovered ok and logos download and install o.k over wifi, but I don't want the car unit connected to the internet to re-install DAB-Z or logos each time. The benefit of the offline download is you get all the UK png logos, so if you drive out of area and rescan you have them.

I downloaded logos on a pc in correct png format and added them to the DAB-Z logos folder but 'Sync' does nothing. I suspect this may be because the radio is locked down and doesn't give permission to write into the system area?

Any help or advice would be appreciated.

UPDATE: I eventually managed to root the beast so I could copy all the logo files into the system area folder and they are now found and listed by the app. It would be nice if logo files insider a folder could be found on a external USB or the internal mnt/sdcard without moving them into a system folder?

The crashes when dab-z is run from Sleep are still there. For now the head unit option is set for normal slow reset boot, but it's not how a car radio should normally start up.

 

[realzoulou]

I looked at 'crash-2022-10-01-11-44-20-com_android_launcher17.txt'. From the name of the file I suspect that the log is from your launcher app, not from DAB-Z.
The content of the file does not contain much. But I can say that it is for sure not coming from DAB-Z.

 

[realzoulou]

UPDATE: [...] could copy all the logo files into the system area folder and they are now found and listed by the app.[...]

The folder where the logo png/jpeg files need to be present is not a system area, but the "usual" user's area:
<internal memory>/Documents/DAB/logos/
This "internal memory" has no standard name in Android and so all file manager apps call it differently, "Local", "Internal", "Flash", ...
The actual path name inside your Android device is printed on the Logo Import screen.

 

[voxmagna]

Thanks. Yes I wondered about the Launcher? It's the one thing in these head units that is very customised. Although you can get into developer mode, unlike Android phones and tablets, the launcher restricts what you can do. I couldn't even get in with adb. Now I have Root and the original firmware to restore to I can play some more. There's no restore partion I can find in the usual place and TWRP would have to be a customised version. For now I've managed to get the Boot.img file modified for Magisk.

I'll have another look at where the logo pngs are. What does the logo 'sync' command in DAB-Z do? My next challenge is to remove a lot of the bloat, most of which requires a mobile neteork data connection. I just want a reliable car radio with resident satnav and Bluetooth phone connections, not a complex Google Android platform with GAPPS I don't need. As shipped, my App storage is running at 16Gb from available memory of 32Gb which I hope to reduce since my satnav map data is only 1.5Gb.

 

[realzoulou]

What does the logo 'sync' command in DAB-Z do?

It traverses the <internal memory>/Documents/DAB/logos/ folder (incl. sub-folders) and builds/refreshes a SQLite database, where it stores the relation from DAB station to logo file. Only the logo file name is used to guess from file name to which DAB station this may belong.
Because I did not want to scan this folder at every app launch (to see what the user may have changed there), I left it up to the user to press the "Sync" button.

 

[TJF2]

I sometimes(!) have a problem starting the car when DAB-Z was active before. It is a current 64 bit top model from XTRONS with Android 11. The radio is basically in standby mode and is shut down after removing the car key.

After starting the car, the attached error message ("Fehler_1.jpg") is displayed ("Storage Location-> Please select 'Documents/DAB' in the next dialog..."). If you click on "OK", the next window appears ("Fehler_2.jpg": This folder cannot be used. Select another folder to protect your data) ...

If I switch the radio off and on at this point, everything works normally...

 

[realzoulou]

In "Fehler_2.jpg" you should select the folder "Documents" -> "DAB" and then press ok. Did you try that?
If you did that but the error comes again and again, try to change the status of DAB-Z Settings -> General -> "Re-enable startup dialog when storage access is needed". If it is checked, then un-check (or vice versa) then restart DAB-Z.

 

[TJF2]

No. I have not done that yet. I will do it as soon as this occurs again. I will report... Thanks!

 

[okij]

@realzoulou Today I checked the memory usage of the internal storage and saw that DAB-Z is collecting enormous amounts of cache files over time.

If you look at the attached screenshots, you can see that betweet 3rd May 2021 and today it has generated 1472 file directories named "ts_*", each containing "dabtmp_*.dab" files and "textuals" and "visuals" subdirectories.

According to my apps listing in Play Store, DAB-Z is occupying a whopping 23 GB by now, whereas according to the DAB-Z app page in system settings its "just" 12 GB of cache. I don't know if 23 GB or 12 GB is correct, but it's far too much of cache files anyway.

What is the reason for DAB-Z saving all these cache files and - more importantly - not deleting them again? Is it a bug?

I haven't found a setting in DAB-Z to influence this behaviour, but for sure it should be user controllable. If those cache files are needed, they at least should be purged every day / week / month.

Thanks in advance for some feedback on this.

 

[surfer63]

UPDATE: I eventually managed to root the beast so I could copy all the logo files into the system area folder and they are now found and listed by the app. It would be nice if logo files insider a folder could be found on a external USB or the internal mnt/sdcard without moving them into a system folder?

You make a big mistake here in confusing the necessity for root and the ability to write to "external memory" for which you need the DocumentsUI which is by default not in the FYT firmwares.
And even with root you can't copy/write inside the system area. It is read-only on your uis7862 or any Android 10. Root can't change that and has absolutely nothing to do with it..
Please read through the proper documentation about the documentsui and about dynamic partitions. You do things without knowing what you do and without understanding your system.

 

[rigattoni]

@realzoulou Today I checked the memory usage of the internal storage and saw that DAB-Z is collecting enormous amounts of cache files over time.

If you look at the attached screenshots, you can see that betweet 3rd May 2021 and today it has generated 1472 file directories named "ts_*", each containing "dabtmp_*.dab" files and "textuals" and "visuals" subdirectories.

According to my apps listing in Play Store, DAB-Z is occupying a whopping 23 GB by now, whereas according to the DAB-Z app page in system settings its "just" 12 GB of cache. I don't know if 23 GB or 12 GB is correct, but it's far too much of cache files anyway.

What is the reason for DAB-Z saving all these cache files and - more importantly - not deleting them again? Is it a bug?

I haven't found a setting in DAB-Z to influence this behaviour, but for sure it should be user controllable. If those cache files are needed, they at least should be purged every day / week / month.

Thanks in advance for some feedback on this.

Hi @okij ,
I just checked that on my setup... That look quite different in my PX6.

 

[okij]

Hi @okij ,
I just checked that on my setup... That look quite different in my PX6.

That looks fine on your device.

I'm using a PX6 too, it's an MTCE device running on Hal9k v4.2.1.

@realzoulou So is this a bug of DAB-Z on my device or is there some (hidden) setting that controls the purging of DAB-Z's cache? Can I help you with some logs for debugging this issue?

 

[surfer63]

@realzoulou So is this a bug of DAB-Z on my device or is there some (hidden) setting that controls the purging of DAB-Z's cache? Can I help you with some logs for debugging this issue?

Are you using the "timeshift" function? That writes ~32MB per hour constantly, when using DAB-Z, to your memory/cache.
Maybe it should be removed on a restart of DAB-Z. Or is DAB-Z already doing that?

 

[okij]

@surfer63 Thanks for the hint.

I had the timeshift function enabled and indeed it is writing the cache files. After disabling it, no cache files were written.

The best thing is that after re-enabling the timeshift function, DAB-Z now only keeps the latest cache files, i.e. when closing and opening DAB-Z, the old "ts_*" directory is deleted and a new "ts_*" directory is created, which should be the way it's supposed to work.

Since still about 12 GB of older files were in DAB-Zs cache directory, I purged its cache via the system settings. This took about ten minutes to complete because of the vast number of files.

So now everything's fine again on my setup.

@realzoulou: Maybe you should still have a look into this issue, because for some reason DAB-Z didn't clear the timeshift cache until I toggled the timeshift function off and on again. There might be other users who fill their internal storage without noticing it.

 

[realzoulou]

@okij Yes, one portion of dir/files is from the Timeshift functionality. By design the App should delete all timeshift folders it created at runtime when the App is closed. Seems it does not always do so properly.

The other portion is from RadioDNS logos. I noticed this myself also.
I will fix both in 2.0.x, not in 1.9.x anymore.

Btw. Cleaning the cache of any app can be done in the Android settings of the app. I see no benefit to add an option in DAB.Z itself.

 

[okij]

I will fix both in 2.0.x, not in 1.9.x anymore.

Thanks, that's great!

Btw. Cleaning the cache of any app can be done in the Android settings of the app. I see no benefit to add an option in DAB.Z itself.

Yes, of course. I only had to do it once because DAB-Z didn't delete the cached files by itself, which - as you wrote - will be fixed.

 

[realzoulou]

DAB-Z release 1.9.127

Change log: compared to 1.9.126
* Fix: Station scan stuck with Italian ensembles

 

[moiloon]

hi wonder if anyone can tell me if this item would be adequate for dab-z

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003294256877.html?spm=a2g0o.cart.0.0.50f638daQD3uVW&mp=1

 

[realzoulou]

Yes it will work

 

[moiloon]

awesome, thankyou