cool tech zone zone - General

Selling Tangara

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 12:00:14 +0000

Hey folks. I reached out to someone a few months back here who was asking to buy a Tangara player, but they ghosted me, so I am putting mine up for sale publicly.

It works and is complete, and I'll throw in the 128GB microSD card I was using for it too. I didn't use it much and probably would never actually make use of it like I thought I would.

Looking for $200 USD. If it is domestic shipping (US), I can cover that. International shipping I will ask the buyer to cover.

Tangara for SALE

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 15:07:22 +0000

Hi all,

I have a fully built and working Tangara for sale, in great condition. Looking for £180 or 200 euros for it which I think is roughly cost minus tax. I am selling as I have had an operation that means listening to music up close with headphones is extremely difficult for me now so it simply won't get used.

Any questions let me know!

Technical support please for Tangara?

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 21:35:29 +0000

Hello Support Team,

I am seeking technical assistance for a Tangara device that is no longer functioning. Firmware was successfully updated to 2.0.

Issue Description:

The device is completely unresponsive; the screen remains off.
The rotation wheel no longer provides haptic feedback when turned.
Companion software does not detect the device when it is plugged in and powered on.

Troubleshooting Attempted:

Performed a hard reset (previously effective, but now unsuccessful).
Left the device plugged in for over 24 hours to rule out a dead battery.
The device was working as recently as last week, and I have not attempted to open it.

Could you please suggest further troubleshooting steps or advise on repair or replacement options?

I also have two specific questions:

Is it possible to replace the battery?
Since the device does not work even while plugged in, does this suggest the issue may not be battery-related?
When I switch the device on and plug it into the USB-C port, Windows Device Manager does not detect it at all. Could this indicate a faulty USB port on the device, or does it point to another underlying issue?

Thank you for your guidance.

Best regards,
Bryan

What wireless earbuds are you using?

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 05:24:00 +0000

I've got a bunch of wired headphones that I normally use with my Tangara, but I wouldn't mind having a set of bluetooth earbuds (ideally noise cancelling) so I can listen to music when I'm walking to work. What do you folks use for earbuds?

Tangara hanging on logo screen, wont turn off until power runs out

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 14:17:37 +0000

Irritatingly every time my Tangara breaks it manages to do it in a new way as title, when turned on my Tangara is hanging on the logo screen, and won't turn off until power runs out. I was having this issue on firmware v1.3.1, I used the CLI to flash v2.0.0 and I'm having the same problem still.

playback speed - podcasts

Sun, 18 Jan 2026 13:43:54 +0000

Hi all.

I've had a bit of a look around and I've not found a playback speed setting - any ideas or is this something I can put a feature request in for a future firmware version?

I've pretty much got it set up how I like and am enjoying the latest firmware.

Thanks!

Unable to Perform File Operations on Mounted Player

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 15:36:23 +0000

Summary
When the Tangara device is mounted, i'm unable to perform any file operations: creating new files / folders; deleting files; renaming files; etc.

Observed Behaviour
Steps to Reproduce

Plug the Tangara into my PC via a USB-A to USB-C cable.
Enable USB Storage in the Tangara settings.
Mount the Tangara—either via automagic by clicking on the icon that appears on my Debian desktop, or via

Code:
$ doas mount -o uid=$MYUSERUID -o gid=$MYGROUPID /dev/sdXX /path/to/mountpoint
Attempt any file operations, either in Thunar or in a terminal window.

Results
Thunar tends to hang when attempting anything. I can browse files mostly successfully, but right-clicking virtually anything; or attempting to move or create files always hangs. Right-clicking on the Tangara's device icon in the sidebar also hangs.

The terminal window is nominally more successful. Operations take an eternity, but appear to succeed. They do not, however. For example, earlier today i attempted to create a new Music directory, and once "finished" the directory was filled with mysterious (non-existent) garbled garbage (fake files and directories with nonsense names), and

Code:
$ du -hd0 /path/to/mountpoint/Music/dirname/

reported that the directory had a size of 26G, and that the fake folders could not be accessed, returning a permissions error. The folder and all of the falsely-reported garbage within disappeared upon umounting, and were not present upon a remount.

Unmounting is also dirty. Via a GUI, it is claimed that file operations need to complete before unmounting (even when none were initiated), but no tool performing said operations is listed. However, when told to unmount anyway, this completes successfully.

No corruption appears to have yet resulted.

Expected Behaviour
File operations should succeed, etc.

System Info
Computer
Debian 13 "Trixie" x86_64 / amd64
Xfce v. 4.20
Thunar 4.20.2
xfce4-terminal 1.1.4
Kernel 6.12.63+deb13-amd64
Attempts were made on multiple ports (USB-A v.2 and 3) and over multiple USB-A to USB-C cables.

Card
Sandisk Extreme PRO [full-size SD card]
SDXC I, V30
128GB
Formatted as FAT-32L [0x0C]

Tangara
ESP32 v. 2.0.0
SAMD21 v. 6.0
Collator Generic

Additional Notes
I've seen in another forum post that SD card operations via the Tangara's internal reader may be unreliable in general; should i just plan on ejecting the card and mounting it separately in the near-term (i have been doing so on a separate laptop running OpenBSD [which has /never/ played nicely with the Tangara] to this point, but i thought it might be worth reporting this—i was unable to find a similar issue on Codeberg, though apologies if this is redundant >_<)? Or is this the sort of thing i can troubleshoot, work around, and/or remedy?

Any tips or assistance are appreciated, and i'll be happy to provide additional info if it'd help. Thanks in advance!

Help! I'm outta my league!

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 12:20:26 +0000

Hello, I'm very new the whole "diy" type tech, tech as whole I suppose. I got relatively basic understanding of it. I bought the tangara to escape the clutches of "big tech"constantly watching me, nickle and dime-ing me for every little function of tech that used to be free. And while I was super excited to finally get my tangara a few months ago. trying to use it has been a bit of a headache. Downloading music and building my library hasn't been that hard. But I'm super confused about how to proper sort my library or make playlists. I have read the tutorial on how todo it. but that just results in a file sitting on my sd card that only plays a single song queue. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong or if I'm doing anything wrong at all.

If anyone's able to give a bit more of an indepth tutorial on how to properly make a playlist, I'd really appericate it!

Thank you!

[SOLVED] Queue clears on reboot

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 14:47:24 +0000

Note: Fixed in Firmware v. 2.1.0

Thanks! Original issue archived below as a quote.

Quote:Summary:
Whenever the system restarts or is manually restarted, the queue clears.

Observed Behaviour:
Whenever the system is automatically restarted (i.e. when play is paused and the screen is switched off for the appropriate period) or is restarted manually (by holding both volume buttons and toggling the display switch), the queue is cleared. This persists through multiple restarts.

Notably, if the SD card is ejected and then reinserted, the queue is mysteriously restored.

Possibly also worth noting: i primarily use my device for Podcasts, which is why this issue is so noteworthy to me.

Expected Behaviour:
I would expect the queue to persist through restarts.

It's good to have the workaround of ejecting and reinserting the SD card to restore the queue in a pinch, but this also, of course, puts wear on the SD card slot, and these slots do seem to wear out comparatively quickly ime.

System info:
ESP32 v. 2.0.0
SAMD21 v. 6.0
Collator Generic

Please let me know if there's something i'm missing or doing wrong; any additional troubleshooting i could perform; and/or any additional info i could provide to help make sense of this. Thanks so much in advance for any help and advice!

Distortion / buzz / noise when playing

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 07:01:22 +0000

I just picked up a Tangara second-hand, and am quite excited about it! Today was my first day using it, and i encountered a… troubling, transient issue: when playing music, i noticed some significant distortion in the output.

Here's what happened:

First, my headphones are Sony WH-1000X M3. I noticed this distortion:
* When connected via cable through an external volume-control potentiometer (with and without active noise cancellation);
* When connected directly via (a quality) cable (with and without active noise cancellation);
* When connected over Bluetooth (which forces active noise cancellation) [a rude surprise that this change didn't affect the situation!]

The distortion is hard to describe; it was just sort of a general buzzing whenever music was playing. Silent parts were silent, but when there was sound, there was kind of a… halo of buzzing hum around and within it, almost a kind of frying sound distortion, and it was /very/ distracting. I just switched from a cheap generic player, so it was kind of a shock that the sound being produced from the Tangara was a definite step down from this!

That said: this issue has since disappeared.

I ended up disassembling the unit to investigate whether there was anything obviously wrong. In this process, the unit was switched off for… perhaps thirty minutes, and—perhaps crucially?—i reseated the cable connecting the two boards.

Mostly: is this a problem anyone else has noticed? Is it the sort of intermittent thing i should have a prepared workaround for? Is it conceivable that i might have accidentally resolved it in the disassembly / reassembly process? Are there obvious places to troubleshoot if it occurs again?

So far i do love the unit—i've listened to several hours of podcasts already ^^ (this issue was probably present but not notable when the only sound was voices speaking; and anyway, podcast recording equipment is, of course, of highly variable quality anyway, so the listening experience is much more forgiving). I'd just like to have something ready in my back pocket should this arise again. Thanks so much in advance for any help and/or thoughts!

How to get filenames in log output

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 01:49:40 +0000

I for the life of me could not find out how to do this as it is displayed in this issue here
https://codeberg.org/cool-tech-zone/tang...issues/413

I have esp32 installed and the environment set up correctly and can build and flash the firmware to my device. I just need to understand what options in menu config I need to manipulate to get it to spit out file names so I can figure out what is making my Tangara crash when scanning my library. I have had trouble scanning the 2052 give or take 10 albums in my collection and it is very hard to pin down the problem without this information.

Thanks much in advance,
EricZX

Selling (possibly busted?) Tangara

Mon, 17 Nov 2025 19:28:25 +0000

Hi all, I'm looking to sell my Tangara. Full disclosure, I've had a bit of a tough time using it though that may be due to lacking technical knowledge on my part. I've been unable to update the firmware using TC with the GUI and my usage of the device for playback has been buggy using a number of SD cards. I haven't tried to use the CLI as I'm not a rust user and just don't have the energy at the moment to keep troubleshooting. I'd rather sell the device to someone who missed out on the initial batches and doesn't mind the possibility of tinkering.

Please PM if interested! I'd be looking to sell for $150 plus shipping (from Canada), to recoup some of my initial cost, but in recognition that the number of issues I'm having may be indicative of problems with the specific device itself. Open to reasonable offers.

playing audiobooks

Tue, 04 Nov 2025 22:45:35 +0000

Into to 'Audiobooks' directory I put a subdirectory containing the chapters of an unusual audiobook: some chapters are only two or three minutes long.

I didn't find a way to have tangara play all the files one after the other and had to start each file/chapter manually.

Is it meant to be this way?

Theme and Battery Percentage near Icon

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 00:16:01 +0000

Hello People of the internet, I'm wondering if there is an easy way to to show a battery percentage near the battery icon. I often find myself not being able to determine my battery capacity unless i go into settings and looking at the percentage there. Would this be a simple change in the theme.lua files or would an issue need to be submitted on codeberg for this option?

Beetscasts - managing podcasts for Tangara

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 21:16:19 +0000

Beetscasts is a beets plugin for managing podcasts, it reads an opml file and downloads podcasts to a directory you specify. Additionally, it cleans up the audio tags on the podcasts by

adding the name of the podcast in the Album tag if it isn't populated
adding the title if it isn't populated
writing "Podcast" to the MEDIATYPE tag

which makes them play nicely with Tangara's UI. Once downloaded, your podcasts can be managed with beets by adding the query `mediaodcast` to any beets transaction you want to apply it to (and conversely, adding `^mediaodcast` to any transactions you do not want applied to podcasts)

The way I use it is each morning I have my computer fetch any new podcasts, convert them, and then plug my SD card in. My computer then runs rsync -aPh and sends everything to the SD card

You can find it here, please open any issues you have or send pull requests! Or just comment here I'll reply