Small question about using a USB stick to play music...

I use a full-length USB plus a rotator like this one: USB Rotator - Abstract Ocean

I didn't want to choose a subset of our music library for the USB stick, so I use an external 2.5 inch 500 meg laptop drive in a USB-powered enclosure. Right now, it's a spindle drive, which occasionally has some startup lag if I've been away from the car for days. Replacing the spindle drive with an SSD is on the horizon.

I got a USB hub with an extension cord, so I can plug in multiple USB sticks.

LonghornDub said:

Thanks for the responses. I'm not interested in anything other than a single USB stick at this time (although the USB rotator posted above may be worth getting). Just trying to figure out whether a full-length USB stick will be in the way at all, versus a low-profile one.

Click to expand...

Just buy the cheapest USB stick with wanted capasity and a USB angled adapter for ~$1.
Physical size of the USB stick doesn't matter when it's not sticking out. And you don't need a very fast USB stick (USB 2.0 is also fine), unless you copy a lot of files often. Usually you do a big transfer the first time, then smaller transfers (a few albums) every now and then. So write speed is not important. Neither is physical durability.

Torpedo Ted said:

Just buy the cheapest USB stick with wanted capasity and a USB angled adapter for ~$1.
Physical size of the USB stick doesn't matter when it's not sticking out. And you don't need a very fast USB stick (USB 2.0 is also fine), unless you copy a lot of files often. Usually you do a big transfer the first time, then smaller transfers (a few albums) every now and then. So write speed is not important. Neither is physical durability.

Click to expand...

Hm, not sure I like the look of that. I have the low profile one and I like the fact that nobody would ever notice there's something there at all, just looks like a bump on the console.

I use a 64GB Cruzer Fit (same one in your link) for essentially all the reason's you're worried about. I didn't want to damage the USB port if I bumped it, and wanted it out of the way. It's been perfect. I would absolutely do the exact same thing again.

Typically the small drives have two main downsides: speed, which is a non-issue for this use case, and cost. $25 for 64GB seems very reasonable, and the size provides huge advantages here, so I'd recommend it highly.

Same as per Gizmotoy...I have the 64 GB Cruzer fit and like that it is essentially invisible. Install it and forget it. Not worried about theft.

I got that super mini ScanDisk Cruzer Fit too. 64 gig. Works great and almost not even visible. Highly recommended.

Knobby said:

I got that super mini ScanDisk Cruzer Fit too. 64 gig. Works great and almost not even visible. Highly recommended.

Click to expand...

I use this one too. Low profile so it won't get snapped off. But without shuffle the USB music player is dead to me. I can't see any use for it at all in its current form and Tesla seems to have no plans on fixing it.

So, my S hasn't been delivered yet, but I'm planning on using USB music, and I am almost only interested in shuffle play. I hacked together a small python script that can either populate my USB stick with music (with shuffled filenames) or can reshuffle the files that are already there. Since I don't have a Tesla yet to try this on, I'm not positive it works, but from what I've heard, I'm guessing it will be a satisfactory solution to my shuffle needs.

My script prepends a number to every filename (or replaces the number if it is reshuffling), and the filenames are randomly mixed by the script before it assigns the numbers. For my 64GB stick (and 45GB of music, fetched from my server machine over the network), it took about 10 hours to copy my music over (probably limited by USB speed)--but, once it has was copied, reshuffling again only took a few minutes (it renames every file on the USB twice, once to move the files out of the way, then again to put the files in the new shuffled order).

If (as I suspect) Tesla can play music in sorted filename order, from USB, then my script should work fine. Because I used python (and no non-standard python modules), I believe my script will work on any computer that has a somewhat current python install (I tested on both Linux & Windows 7, I can test--but haven't yet--on my work MacBook). If it actually accomplishes something useful, I'll be happy to share it (python is quite easy to install, and the script is less than 90 lines of python).

My Tesla delivery is less than 2 weeks away (hopefully), I'll know for sure if the script works usefully by then.

-se

Yes it plays fine in filename order, if you select to play from the Folders and Files menu selection. Andy Keller (IIRC) has an excellent little Mac App that does the file renames for you.

The downside is that (for some unfathomable reason) when you open in file view, it only shows the song title and not the artist, album or cover art.

I used MP3Tag (a windows shareware program, been around for years) to create a script that prepends a random number to each Title. Then you simply start from the songs view at the lowest numbered song and it plays through all in the order of the random numbers. In that mode you get full metadata, including cover art.

(one other point, if you are using the filenaming approach. The car caches info and seems to base a refresh on directory name. So if you have a directory such as 'MyMusic' and then rename all the files within, it won't refresh the cache. So be sure to always rename the directory in order to force a re-cache)

An idea I haven't yet got around to trying (partly because I'm not keen on shuffle play):

I believe the Model S supports Ext4 (and some others) formats as alternatives to FAT32. If you had the drive formatted in such a filesystem, you could have all your songs organized in their conventional folders by album/artist etc. and then create a separate set of folders with randomised names that are links to the same files. Hence you could have several different shuffle mix selections without taking up any extra space, and still keep the original layout.

Doesn't work with the re-tagging approach of course, since that's inside the file itself.

I have the usb drive you posted (BTW, if you want it quick, go into Best buy and have them price match it) and the only problem I have is it's very difficult to remove it from the usb slot since you don't have much to grip. Take this into consideration if you're planning on removing it often.

RichardL said:

The downside is that (for some unfathomable reason) when you open in file view, it only shows the song title and not the artist, album or cover art.

I used MP3Tag (a windows shareware program, been around for years) to create a script that prepends a random number to each Title. Then you simply start from the songs view at the lowest numbered song and it plays through all in the order of the random numbers. In that mode you get full metadata, including cover art.

Click to expand...

Good to know. I've done other work with audio file tagging in python as well, so tweaking the song titles might be better in my script than renaming files (it does, however, require an additional python module, and may be limited to only certain kinds of audio files). Based on your experience, I'll probably add to my script to be able to either shuffle filenames or shuffle titles (so it can continue to work if the additional python module is not available).

-se

neroden said:

I got a USB hub with an extension cord, so I can plug in multiple USB sticks.

Click to expand...

If you plug in 4 USB sticks (each with music) do they all show up in the car UI? Or just 2?

Now we have shuffle, but...

Posting in an older thread to give newer owners some context. MODS - feel free to start a new thread if deemed appropriate.

I just got a new 1TB portable hard drive to replace the 750GB one that I've been using for over two years now with no issues. I have my entire music collection synched from MediaMonkey - a great program for large music collections or organization freaks (you know who you are - check it out). The files are organized on the drive in folders by artist with album folders inside. Typically, I'll select a genre and let the car shuffle within the genre. That's a good enough, 90 percent solution, but it results in lots skipping of oddball sampler selections or one-offs.

I'm considering organizing the files differently on the new drive to facilitate some other shuffle options. Sometimes I would like to be able to shuffle by artist which is [frustratingly] not possible since you have to start with a song from an album and then it just shuffle that album. There may be a way to do this but I haven't figured out a way to do it yet. I think I'm going to organize files just in folders by artist name and then shuffle within the artist Folder in the car.

Has anyone tried this? Come up with a different solution? Please discuss!

PS - Tesla: Please add searching or type ahead to navigate large collections. Scrolling through hundreds of M-named artists/albums on the screen still isn't very efficient.