903 webradio / wifi radio: proof of concept

[paola]

Originally Posted by review

@paola
indeed it is that simple. However you have to add -playlist between mplayer and http://...
That's all. With this particular radio station there is however a problem...

sorry, I thought I understood, but I do not: putting aside the fact that it is not going to work with this particular radio station, I am not sure where I should put "-playlist", since there are a few "words" between mplayer and http://.. Would something like this be what you mean:

#!/bin/sh
/ebrmain/bin/netagent connect
/mnt/ext1/system/mplayer/bin/mplayer -ao oss:/dev/sound/dsp -playlist http://bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r3.asx >/dev/null &

Thanks for your patience!

[review]

@paola
Yes, exactly. That's right. Some streams are playlists and mplayer appears to fail to recognize it without that option.


I'm not entirely sure what the cause is that this particular stream doesn't work. I have two hypotheses:
a) a problem with the inofficial SDK / the compiling options I used to do the cross compilation
b) a problem with the codecs

If it's (a) it might be solved with the official SDK. I'm at the moment quite sure that I haven't done anything wrong with the cross compilation (I ran out of ideas what could cause it). Although I'm still in the process of compiling mplayer an emulator environment. That is really sloooow. A compilation process which usually takes 5-10 minutes is now running already since about 8 hours. The good news is that I don't have to do anything just be patient. So that will run in the background now a little longer (another program needs to be compiled as well so I won't expect anything in the next days
This should sort out if the cause is (a) or (b). So what is the codec thing? You remember that you couldn't play my video regarding the note taking? That's a classic codec problem. The codec is, if you like a definition how the video/audio information is stored on the computer. If you don't have the right codec you won't be able to play any video / audio. Now, I've posted were you can get the codecs from. However, it might be possible that those codecs depend on the CPU (processor) and the processor of a computer and the ebook are very different (which you certainly can well understand as no windows programs would run on the ebook). So I'm not sure but it might be that those binary codecs might not be compatible with an ebook processor.
Currently I wait until the compilation in the emulator is complete. Then we'll know for sure if it's a or b.

[paola]

Originally Posted by review

@paola
Yes, exactly. That's right. Some streams are playlists and mplayer appears to fail to recognize it without that option.


I'm not entirely sure what the cause is that this particular stream doesn't work. I have two hypotheses:
a) a problem with the inofficial SDK / the compiling options I used to do the cross compilation
b) a problem with the codecs

If it's (a) it might be solved with the official SDK. I'm at the moment quite sure that I haven't done anything wrong with the cross compilation (I ran out of ideas what could cause it). Although I'm still in the process of compiling mplayer an emulator environment. That is really sloooow. A compilation process which usually takes 5-10 minutes is now running already since about 8 hours. The good news is that I don't have to do anything just be patient. So that will run in the background now a little longer (another program needs to be compiled as well so I won't expect anything in the next days
This should sort out if the cause is (a) or (b). So what is the codec thing? You remember that you couldn't play my video regarding the note taking? That's a classic codec problem. The codec is, if you like a definition how the video/audio information is stored on the computer. If you don't have the right codec you won't be able to play any video / audio. Now, I've posted were you can get the codecs from. However, it might be possible that those codecs depend on the CPU (processor) and the processor of a computer and the ebook are very different (which you certainly can well understand as no windows programs would run on the ebook). So I'm not sure but it might be that those binary codecs might not be compatible with an ebook processor.
Currently I wait until the compilation in the emulator is complete. Then we'll know for sure if it's a or b.

many many thanks review, you are always very patient and very clear

[paola]

Originally Posted by review

I have two hypotheses:
a) a problem with the inofficial SDK / the compiling options I used to do the cross compilation
b) a problem with the codecs
... So what is the codec thing? ...

could the problem be that (if I understand correctly) the BBC
uses AAC codecs (which I see are also installed on some e-readers)?

[Henri2all]

Hallo review,

I am still enjoying your radio on my e-rader.
I have a question.
Maybe it is a stupid question, but maybe you can give me an answer.
The Pocketbook e-reader works with a kind of linux, right?
Android on my mobile phone is also a kind of linux, right?
Is there a way to make Android apps work on the e-reader?
Something like an emulator?
Probably a lot will not work, but some may.

[zebrella]

Installed the app (added several radios) and it's working well. Thank you Review!

Just a quick question. You mentioned you added volume control. Is it included in the file available in your first post?

Karma for you!

[hasenrupfer]

Hi Review,

thanks for your great work. Installed mplayer like you told us and it works great.

Added a new german radiostation (SWR3), works fine.....

I stumbled across this thread while i was searching for a possibility to play whole folders with mp3 files. I hate the built in player.... he only plays selected files. Not really useful for audio-books......

I tried to do this with mplayer and your installation, but i didn't manage to get it to work. I'm a Windows user and have no idea about the linux file system.

Think i will open up another thread and ask the community....

Again, thanks for your great work.

[Sirius67]

Hi Hasenrupfer,

many thanks for your post. Will try it today or tomorrow. I would also like to play audiobooks on the Pocketbook 903... Maybe there is somebody here who can help...

[J.C.]

Any progress review ? its been quite a while, if you abandoned the project it would be nice if you could please post the more up to date version you mentioned and the source code so perhaps someone else could pick it up.

[pabloakler]

Originally Posted by review

Forkosigan:


http://translate.google.com/translat...6postcount%3D8

Did I mention that I like those challenges? Well, of course as Forkosigan mentioned, flash on the ebook is not to be expected anytime soon. And I think we also don't need it. But was there no web radio before we got youtube and co? Of course and many flash web players still use the same protocol, they just wrap around the flash container. If you know the url you can very well play any webradio station you like... and there are databases of thousands and thousands of webstations. Not to mention shoutcast.

So I thought, let's port a network enables media player. Preferrentially one which has support for the various windows codecs.

Well, I ported mplayer and it works. Well, sort of. What can you expect in less than 8 hours?

What you get is alpha stage: proof-of-concept. To make a nice user frontend around it is not that much of a challenge. Sure it'll take a bit of time but there is no dead-end to be expected as the crucial part works already.

It was a bit of challenge as initially I got some Permission denied errors. (arrg. /dev/dsp (the linux sound card) had the wrong permissions) but in the end I found a way around it.

But speaking of a frontend: Do we really need a frontend for a radio? It should run in the background anyway, shouldn't it? And there is not much what you could do with a radio anyway apart from volume control. Unfortunately the volume control with the buttons doesn't work so accordingly it is fairly loud... but I guess we should be able to sort this somehow as well.

Installation
1) create in system a folder called mplayer and in mplayer a folder called bin
2) extract and copy mplayer to system\mplayer\bin
3) copy classic.app somewhere
4) copy all-music-off.app somewhere

If you want to turn it off just run the all-music-off app.

There is something to say about codecs but I will do this in another post. Also if you have a look in the classic.app you will see how simple it will be to create an almost infinite library of webradios within no time.


EDIT:
progress update: managed to get volume under control as well. What this means that it is really only the work left to make a nice and shiny user interface. Wifi, streams, decoding, audio output, volume control ... it all works already. (the attached version is the initial release without volume control)

EDIT:
uploaded vers. 1b which has a typing mistake correct. Thanks to all who reported it.

Hi review, I discover your work today, and is great. I use a similar script on my laptop, so I didn't find any troubles to listen my favorite radios. The only problem I have at the moment is that I cannot control the volume. Perhaps, the command oss:/dev/sound/dsp, is not working for the touch model. Can you help me with this? Thanks in advance!

Pablo.

[Wanka]

Hello and thanks,
mplayer and software functions on a pB622 Touch.
This is a link to a radiostation in germany, called Deutschlandfunk.
Copy, Open a new file, paste and save as deutschlandfunk.app
Put it in applications.

Der MPlayer und die Radio-Software funktioniert auch auf einem Pocketbook 622 Touch.
Dies ist ein Link zum eutschlandfunk. Kopieren, eine neue (Text-)Datei anlegen, Einfügen und als z.B. deutschlandfunk.app speichern.
Im PB im ordner applications speichern, während mplayer wie auf Seite 1 beschrieben im Ordner system/mplayer/bin gespeichert ist.

Ich habe mir die wifi-off.app von https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh....php?p=1346191 ebenfalls in die applications gelegt. Das ist ein komplettes Abschalten nicht nur des mplayers sondern auch des energiehungrigen wifis schnell möglich, hne in Einstellungen gehen zu müssen.

But now the deutschlandfunk.app:

#!/bin/sh
/ebrmain/bin/netagent connect
/mnt/ext1/system/mplayer/bin/mplayer -ao oss:/dev/sound/dsp http://st02.dlf.de/dlf/02/128/mp3/stream.mp3 >/dev/null &

----
für Deutschlandradio müsste es dann lauten:
#!/bin/sh
/ebrmain/bin/netagent connect
/mnt/ext1/system/mplayer/bin/mplayer -ao oss:/dev/sound/dsp http://st01.dlf.de/dlf/01/128/mp3/stream.mp3 >/dev/null &

-------
Good luck!