Support: ScrobbleDock

Setting up Rockbox

1. On the player, once: open Plugins > Applications > lastfm_scrobbler and confirm playback logging. That is the same as Settings > Playback Settings > Logging.
2. Before each transfer, open the same plugin and choose Export. That is what creates /.scrobbler.log — the file ScrobbleDock reads.
3. Set the clock on the player under Settings > General Settings > Time and Date. Rockbox has no time zone. If a device still writes #TZ/UTC, leave it. With #TZ/UNKNOWN (the normal case, including on the iPod 4G) ScrobbleDock asks once which zone the clock shows and converts timestamps before submitting.
4. Gather Runtime Data is not needed. That database setting only records play counts inside Rockbox and has nothing to do with scrobbling.

On older builds (3.15 and earlier) Rockbox wrote .scrobbler.log directly; there is no export step.

If ScrobbleDock finds only /.rockbox/playback.log and no .scrobbler.log, it tells you to export rather than reading the file itself. playback.log contains file paths only — no artist, title or MusicBrainz IDs.

Which files are read

As soon as a removable volume appears, ScrobbleDock looks for .scrobbler.log and scrobbler.log — in the root directory and under .rockbox/. Nothing is written to the player unless you have enabled archiving or deleting the log.

How device and firmware are detected

The app reads rockbox-info.txt for the Rockbox version, the CLIENT header of the log for the player type, and on iPods also iPod_Control to identify the model. If none of these are present, the device keeps its volume name.

How duplicates are prevented

For every device ScrobbleDock remembers the timestamp of the last transferred track and only submits what comes after it. That watermark advances after every successfully transferred batch — if an import is interrupted, at most the current batch is affected, and it is sent again on the next attempt.

How tracks are submitted

Listens go to api.listenbrainz.org as POST /1/submit-listens, in batches rather than one by one. If a batch fails, the app retries it with exponentially increasing delays instead of hammering ListenBrainz with repeats.

Why tracks are skipped

Many Rockbox players have no real-time clock. After a battery swap or a reset they write timestamps before 2002 or in the future. ListenBrainz rejects those entries. ScrobbleDock detects them up front, leaves them out and lists them in the result instead of dropping them silently.

Timestamps and time zones

Rockbox hard-codes #TZ/UNKNOWN: the number in the log is the displayed clock, stored as if it were UTC. ScrobbleDock asks once per device which zone that clock shows and converts before submitting. The correction applies from the next import. Listens already on ListenBrainz keep their old time — submitting them again would create duplicates, because listened_at is part of the key. Individual listens can be deleted on listenbrainz.org.

What happens to the log afterwards

Configurable per device: leave it in place, back it up to the archive folder on the Mac and remove it from the player, or delete it. Optionally ScrobbleDock then ejects the player — with a 15 second countdown you can cancel.