Premise SqueezePlayer for Internet Radio in Premise?

[samgreco]

So, thanks to Waynedb, I have started looking at using SqueezePlayer (henceforth SP) with Squeezeserver for Internet radio. I have SP using a separate audio output that is not in Premise. I am using 123s Weblink to create a frame with SP in it.

Anyone have any idea if I can use this as a source with mSense? Or any other thoughts on how to make use of this so I can call it up in a given zone and add other zones, etc?

I think I need to create a device. But what type of device would make sense and let me use the Weblink frames interface. Any guidance would be appreciated.

 

[etc6849]

I'm not a programmer or Premise expert yet by any means, but...

If you don't want Premise to control the thing with msense, just create a modified webcam like module (there's a few of them in the downloads section).

If you do want to make msense work with it, use the dvd changer driver posted in the download section as a guide; inherit the same classes and copy most of the methods into the webcam like module from above. However, I don't think you can do this unless there is a known protocol that uses html and will talk to SP. For example, is there a method that you can invoke to play a song by browsing to a given web address (where the address would contain the ip address for SP, an action, in this case play, a song id, etc...)? What about a method you can invoke via html that will list all the songs? If you can't use the html method, is there a way to use command line parameters to talk to SP that would do this? What about using telnet? You can use vbscript to invoke actions over html, command line and even telnet (use the virtual Lantronix UDS10 trick to make a telnet connection appear as a virtual serial port).

If you can figure out how to talk to SP, it would be very doable to use Rob Brun's dvd changer module and modify it.

I'm actually wanting to do this for an all complete windows media center module that works with msense. For media center, you can communicate with it using a free program (vmccontroller.codeplex.com/) that can control MC over telnet; the same program can grab artist info, library info etc... All information is received in ascii, so it appears this is very possible for Premise integration via the virtual Lantronix UDS10 trick. I'm not sure how to handle the album covers, but tcpip controller also outputs those over telnet. It looks like someone could write code to automatically generate a library in Premise (i.e. generate a collection of virtual discs). When the user clicks on the disc in AB, Premise would automatically connect to the media center pc source and a script would run that would send the play command for selected media. When I finish my current projects, I'm thinking about attempting this and starting a new thread.

 

[Waynedb]

Not a programmer but the Squeezebox stuff is pretty open, people who know how to program should be able to find lots of info on how to integrate Squeezebox players with just about anything.

Here is a link to a some info on the TCP protocol for clients and servers. http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/SlimProtoTCPProtocol

Here is a link to the developers guide wiki.
http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/Deve...of_version_6.29

 

[pete_c]

You can even install the Squeezebox client on the Dockstar making it a headless player and and now with a small display.

Squeezebox client

 

[samgreco]

Thanks for all of the responses. Actually, it may even be easier, I think, but I am such a non-programmer type in most things.

I am using a software player, not hardware, on the same box as Premise. So the only thing I really need is a module to understand that there is an audio output, and so it understands that it is a media device. Then embed the web based controller via weblink or whatever when that object is selected.

Does that make sense? Is that what one of you said already ?

It's funny, I am building websites using Drupal and doing CSS stuff with ease, but I look at ASP and VBScript and my eyes gloss over.

 

[pete_c]

Sam, enjoy your adventure. My preferences today are music over video in the home and sometimes just leave music on all day never turning on the television.

I usually "offset" my multimedia to an autonomous box rather than the HA box. Many HS users today run their MM from their HA box. For many years keep the audio one one box with its own directory of music and backed the same music to a NAS box. Later it went to playing in house music and then streaming the music to various devices. The audio box itself was pretty much only providing the stream; then later doing transcoding to the various devices. I have utilized (tested) the HA server touch screens such that they control the music box or such that the Touch screen itself provides the audio but utilized the TS based on the HA server. The audio box itself doesn't have a physical audio card. I utilize an application called virtual audio cable (which is a mixer of sorts) such that the OS thinks there is an audio card in it.

I'm kind of setting up for doing similiar with video (even though I don't watch much television). Much different world and the new CPU's today do it much better than the ones from yesterday. Transcoding video made the computer work a bit. Today just an RSS video streaming link directly to the device for video works well. I personally like the ability to have a choice of video; in house sources, satellite, cable, OTA and newest "a la carte" internet video on demand. Kind of wierd but we watched a few old "Ed Sullivan" shows from the early 60's via the CBS streaming on demand links the other night. Not bad considering it was all in black and white.

 

[samgreco]

I consolidated everything on one server a while back. I run SageTV and Premise on a Vista-64 box AND run VMWare with a virtual Linux box running my Zimbra email server. And it is my backup device for my web hosting server. It has 6TB of storage.

But this did get me thinking that running a very small virtual PC for streaming might be an approach too