iLiad Contentlister Based Music Player w/ Playlist support

[Adam B.]

Nice. You've definitely done great work making my "barely working" version, a real viable solution.

Something I was thinking about... Why not relative paths for the scripts. So instead of calling /mnt/cf/music/mpd You can cd into the directory, and ../music/mpd. That way as long as the folders are all within the same folder, the user can put them wherever they'd like.

[JSWolf]

How long does the battery last if it's playing music?

[yokos]

Originally Posted by Adam B.

Something I was thinking about... Why not relative paths for the scripts. So instead of calling /mnt/cf/music/mpd You can cd into the directory, and ../music/mpd. That way as long as the folders are all within the same folder, the user can put them wherever they'd like.

Mmmh, I had the same thought. Next version does this.
# I doubt mpd's config file can handle relative paths, therefore installation script sets the correct paths.
# mpc in /usr/bin/mpc -> we can use e.g. "mpc next" in mrxvt in all paths.

2 screenshots are attached as a small sneak preview of v.2.2 , which show the new "generate playlist by search for meta data"-feature.
Scripts found 2 genre tags in mpd's database: Rock, & Electronic.

[yokos]

some of the new features:
# Playlist Control: You can load external .m3u playlists
created with your favourite software music player, &
generate playlists by searching for metadata in mpd
database (artist, album, genre, date).
# crossfading
# seeking
# Jukebox is now path independent. You can install it anywhere you want.

This is a beta version because I found a bug in Playlist Generator. This bug is not listed in pdf Readme file. Contentlister doesn't show correct entries when additional characters like "&" occur. e.g. if you have the genre "R&B in database, you will see a entry like 101.genre instead of the correct one in "Add Genre to Playlist".

Screenshots & pdf Readme are include in zip-file.
pic #1= jukebox main page 1
pic #2= jukebox main page 2
pic #3= Playlist Control
pic #4= Add a date to Playlist

[yokos]

A new shiny version is out. Have a look at the screenshots in previous post & Readme.

Changelog of ver 2.2.1:
1. optimization of shell scripts:
• I removed the & bug.
• I deactivated forgotten bug logging.
• Searching for metadata in database does a shell script
function: better overall view for me, easier to patch.
2. added "Contentlister Playlist of current Playlist", you can
use this to navigate trough running playlist.

Feedback, comments are welcome.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

How long does the battery last if it's playing music?

Mmmh, good question. I have never stopped "using time".
After reading output of

top

it is clear, that mpd uses up to 6 % of CPU. I think the most power gets lost thanks to turning on sound card.

[The GreatGonzo]

Help! After installing the new version on a CF card, gnuchess and emelFM2 no longer work. Also, I couldn't get the MP3 player to work at all.
Suggestions?

I was going to delete gnuchess and emelFM2 from the Iliad's memory and re-copy them, but I don't know what - if anything - the music player installation did that might render that approach futile.

[yokos]

@GreatGonzo: I can't see any possibility that installing jukebox interferes with other apps. [stopping playback at some times is a known bug).
I can't understand this.
Maybe the filesystem of CF is corrupt. Runnning a program which checks and repairs filesystems and bad clusters can be one option.

What happened after installing jukebox? Can you run the "update database" script? But you can't get sound output? Sound card is turned on? Get's the status message "song xy is playing etc" updated?

[The GreatGonzo]

Originally Posted by yokos

Maybe the filesystem of CF is corrupt. Runnning a program which checks and repairs filesystems and bad clusters can be one option.

Doing that right now ...

Originally Posted by yokos

What happened after installing jukebox? Can you run the "update database" script? But you can't get sound output? Sound card is turned on? Get's the status message "song xy is playing etc" updated?

Sound card was turned on, couldn't run the update database script, never got the "song is playing" message. MP3 files were still marked with an X for unknown filetype, too.

Does the jukebox application copy anything to the Iliad's memory?

[The GreatGonzo]

Wiped CF, re-copied & installed music player, worked fine until I hit update playlist; it created a nameless file with a question mark icon and refused to play music again. Does this help?

[yokos]

Originally Posted by The GreatGonzo

Wiped CF, re-copied & installed music player, worked fine until I hit update playlist; it created a nameless file with a question mark icon and refused to play music again. Does this help?

Mmh, it seem that mpd or mpc is not running, therefore you get a empty status message.
Could you please upload the directories "Music" & "mdp", let me know the paths of these folders on CF, send me a PM. I will have a look at it.

[The GreatGonzo]

OK, third time's a charm, wiped & re-installed again - everything seems to be working fine now. Thanks for your offer of help, yokos, much appreciated - but I think I'm ok now. (I have noticed this with other homebrew applications, though - a need to install them 2 or 3 times before they would work properly. A strange and inexplicable reluctance on the Iliad's part to accept non-Irex software?)

I did notice that I do get the empty question mark file if I hit Update while something is playing, so maybe that was the problem. Stopping play and updating again solved it.

Still no working gnuchess or emelFM2, though, no idea why, reinstalled them several times now. They both seem to have an identical hiccup - they start loading, green LED flashes wildly for a second, progress indicator starts up, then a screen refresh back to square one.
They both stopped working after the first Jukebox installation, but I can't tell for sure if it was the cause.

Ah, the joys of inofficial community software beta-testing ...

[Adam B.]

Originally Posted by The GreatGonzo

Still no working gnuchess or emelFM2, though, no idea why, reinstalled them several times now. They both seem to have an identical hiccup - they start loading, green LED flashes wildly for a second, progress indicator starts up, then a screen refresh back to square one.
They both stopped working after the first Jukebox installation, but I can't tell for sure if it was the cause.

Ah, the joys of inofficial community software beta-testing ...

Do you have any linux experience?

If you're not afraid to get your hands dirty, try this.

Download mrxvt.

Open it up, and type these commands.

cd /mnt/cf/emelfm2
./run.sh

This should give you an error, and should help us diagnose what's going on.

Edit: Or you can do it the easy way

Or, just edit run.sh for emelfm2 in windows.

Change the last line to this:

./bin/emelfm2 2> output.txt

Then, just post the contents of output.txt

[The GreatGonzo]

Ahaaaaaaa..... ok, thank you very much, gentlemen, for pointing me in the right direction - everything's working again!

Adam B.'s suggestion No.2 didn't work, don't know why; but installing mrxvt (btw, how do you pronounce that??? Like the similarly named Batman villain whose exact name escapes me at the moment?) ultimately led me to, ahem, the amazing discovery that I shouldn't have stuff sitting in sub-folders ... see, when shell access became available the easy way just recently, I downloaded everything I needed and installed it - and in some cases changed program locations afterwards. Seems that neither gnuchess nor emelFM2 will run when dropped into something called /notes/shell access. I think I read in connection with one of the community-developed programs that "it doesn't matter where you install it" and unconsciously applied this to all of them. I'm sorry I voiced the suspicion that installing jukebox had anything to do with the problem when it was just fussy ol' me rearrangeing my files and folders...

Again - thanks, kudos, assorted grateful bows - couldn't have figured this out by myself because nope, I know next to nothing about Linux ... it is faintly reminiscent of DOS, is it not? What with the cd.. and all that....

[Adam B.]

I don't think you pronounce it, just spell it out.

I'm glad you've got it figured out. Although, I wouldn't expect it to matter where you put it... What was the error out of curiousity?

I think cd is the only command that linux and dos have in common. It's been a long time since I've used a windows terminal without gnu utils installed.

[The GreatGonzo]

Originally Posted by Adam B.

I'm glad you've got it figured out. Although, I wouldn't expect it to matter where you put it... What was the error out of curiousity?

See, I never even got that far ... I really sorta completely cluelessly stumbled in the right direction ... I first installed mrvxt in the root directory, and when it came up ok, I thought "no wait, I'm sure Adam meant install it in the same directory as the other, non-working apps" - closed it again, moved it to the other folder, where it promptly stopped working. It was then that it dawned upon me that location was the key here....