Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

I downloaded pypianobar and it works great...idunno if i'm messing something up but it doesn't work in silent mode even with the volume up. Why not? The standard music player does. There are many settings where my phone is in silent and i have headphones in and listen to my music. In fact today at school my phone was on silent and i was listening to music with my headphones in.

I can't switch my phone in to the general setting just to listen to music.

Also, a nice feature i think would be the volume decrease or even mute when your headphones get pulled out. With a classic ipod you dont have to worry about it because it doesnt have speakers but with the n900, it could be kind of embarrassing if you're in a library playing pandora and your headphones come unplugged and it takes you a few seconds to turn the volume off or plug your headphones back in. There is already an app for the standard music player for the n900 but i think the pypianobar could use it as well.

Thank you!

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

Unfortunately that's one thing I can't really test in anyway without an N900. This just rely's on pianobar to send the Audio which is likely using whatever the system is set at. In silent mode it's turning the sound off and thus muting pianobar.

There's probably a trick around that which is what the built-in media player does but I wouldn't have any idea how to do that and no way to poke around a system to find out. I can look through some docs here and stuff and see if they mention anything... but I wouldn't get my hopes up for that one for a bit.

As for the headphone bit... I'm sure that'll have some kind of signal in dbus. I'll have to look at the docs but is another one I can't test properly since the SDK dbus doesn't work right (and I wouldn't know how to "emulate" pulling the headphones out of the SDK.)

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

Oh, well that sucks. food for thought i guess then. Good luck, i'll keep checking back, maybe you'll be able to figure something out

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

This is just a bump for testing... Come on guys - would be nice to get this up to Extras so everyone can enjoy Pandora Radio.

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

I agree. Any way to move this to Extras soon would be great. Minor problems I assume could be taken care of with an update later on. Pandora Radio would be a really good addition for the N900.

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

If you use it it would help to get some votes in the extras-testing queue.

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

Noob question: Which should be downloaded to get pandora: pianobar or pypianobar? What does each do? Differences? Do they work together, thus needing to download both? Thanks.

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

Pianobar is the work-horse. It's the one that actually controls communication with Pandora Radio.

The problem is it's entirely command line only. So you have to open a terminal, run it, and it'll list you your stations and let you pick one - and you control it completely by using keys such as "n" for next, and "q" for quit. It also won't remember your account unless you manually edit a configuration file and put your information in there.

Many people don't like being in the command line that much.. they want graphics.

So what Bratag and I have done is written GUI front-ends to pianobar. What pyPianobar (and qtPianobar) will do is run pianobar in the background transparent to the user and allow them to do commands such as Like, Dislike, Tired, next, play/pause, create and delete stations, etc - using graphical buttons.

I have also extended some things in having pyPianobar grab the album art for the song you're playing, and also having it read and write to pianobar's configuration file for you - so that it can remember your Username and Passwords and don't have to enter it in every time.

So... if space is completely critical in /opt (both packages are optified) - then you can get away with just having pianobar and using the terminal for Pandora. If you want a graphical interface to make life easier, then you'll need both pianobar and pyPianobar (pyPianobar will pull down pianobar automatically.. you don't need to manually install both.)

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

Hey. Fairly new to the site(mostly just been reading and not posting thus far). Just wanted to thank you for the work put into the app, it's sick. I came over from a G1 which, thanks to Google, had tons of first party apps. I was spoiled with them, but after see how good some of the apps can get, I'm enthusiastic. The app works really well, but it seems that either the program or phone gets a little bog down. The music flows fine and sound quality is phenomenal(the Android Pandora had an option for Normal and High quality, thankfully, that's no problem here), but whenever I lock or unlock the phone, it freezes the track for about a second or two. If I multitask, it seems to do the same. It really isn't anything major(especially for the price of free), but I'm just curious if its the app or the nature of the streams or something. Just to clarify, I'm on a N900.

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

To be honest I'm not entirely sure. Most of the actual communication is done via pianobar which opens a stream to the Pandora Radio. I haven't added any coded to deal with sound output, or integrate in with the N900 at all... it just uses whatever the system default sound configuration is.

Does the same skipping occur if you're playing an mp3? Or streaming from the website?

A better test might be listening to an online radio station? It could be something with the phone.. but I am unable to test any phone-specific issues as I don't have one. It seems like it could be related to threading and how the CPU handles multi-tasking.. as this is very noticeable on, say, the old N810. But how the default media player would work around it I don't know.

I'm glad that, for the most part, the app seems to do as you require. As far as sound quality, there is actually 3 settings for pianobar - I just haven't coded them into the gui.

There is mp3-faad, aacplus, and a High Quality mp3 that is only available for paid accounts/subscriptions. The option to change this is in your ~/.config/pianobar/pianobar file near the bottom. From the pianobar documentation:

---

As a side note: In the upstream the latest version/update of pianobar has appeared to remove the internal last.fm scrobbling. It has introduced a new eventcmd scripting procedure to pass it off to third party apps instead.. I'll need to look how it all works before compiling any of the more recent changes and submitting them up. For now.. I'm leaving the version in the testing repo's there until they get tested and moved to extras - or noticeable faults found and I am notified of extras-preventing bugs.

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

Ok. So I apologize for not giving some of my test examples and such. If I'm using the built-in media player, I never have the audio freeze up or stall(unless I get a phone call obviously). When I use the built-in Internet Radio player, it doesn't freeze when locking or unlocking, but its not exactly the most reliable app but I honestly believe its because of T-Mobile's network(it will work fine for a stretch of time and then out of nowhere it will start buffering, playing one second of music, and then buffering again). I only have the streaming headaches during rush hour, its usually fine in the morning. But I never have problems with the Pandora streams that you have in PyPianoBar. The audio simply cuts out when and resumes fairly quickly whenever I lock the phone or doing anything with say: transitions or multi-tasking windows. The streams don't drop or anything(which was a big problem I had with the official Pandora app on rooted my G1 after the Android 2.1 update).

So I understand that these problems may all stem from the Backend. Maybe I should try the command line program first and see if I get the same issues.

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

That would definitely help... it would let me know if the problem is in the Python UI somewhere or in pianobar itself.

Another test would be to try qtPianobar from Bratag and see if the same behavior occurs as his is in C++/Qt. If it happens in his and mine, and not in pianobar from the command line, then the problem may actually be in the implementation of QT... but we'll see.

Let me know what you find out.. I can't test any of this myself unfortunately. :(

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

I haven't tried running from the command line recently but I've had similar issues as The Arsonist running pianobar from the command line. Playback noticeably improved from your first release but it definitely skips every time you wake/sleep the display or anything like that.

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

This is interesting. It's got to be on some low level somewhere... wonder if it has to do with libao or the way it uses libmad..

I would wonder if compiling it to use libfaad2 and aac instead of mp3 would work better.. but libfaad2-dev seems to have missing dependencies in the repo's: http://maemo.org/packages/package_in...ubuntu6maemo1/ (the i386 one works though... maybe it's possible.. I'll have to try it.)

Not really sure where to go from here.. I am not the original author of Pianobar, simply ported it (from GitHub), so I'm not intimately familiar with how it works internally.

If anyone has any suggestions where to look I'd appreciate the help.

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

So I also tried using QtPianobar and I got the same results, so like you said, it is all Pianobar applications, not just your's. Out of curiosity, who is the original creator of Pianobar? I did a Google search, to no avail. I do feel a bit bad that guy isn't getting any credit.

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

I linked it in the post above yours... PromyLOPh.

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

Hey guys,

i would like to start out by thanking fatalsaint with this AMAZING program. It really has made my N900 complete.


However there has been a bug that I have discovered. Im not too sure if this is because of the phone or pyPianobar is doing something. However this is my findings; whenever I charge my N900 and have pyPianobar running while charging, the device begins to get warm (which normally doesnt do this when its charging). After a full night of charging (and is also pretty warm as well) with pyPianobar running throughout the night, the following day I will ALWAYS find my N900's battery life drain very quickly. Usually Im able to get a 12-15 hour charge out of the device quickly become a 3-4 hour charge out of it. Upon recharging it again after the device dies it goes back to normal.

Not blaming pyPianobar because it could simply be the N900 not charging properly when 3G is constantly being used when charging? Or maybe there is something wrong with Pianobar? I dunno. Anyone have had similar problem?

Oh and if I can put a suggestion is if we can choose which codec to choose? It would be nice if it could stream the higher bit rate :)

Again much thanks to the developer, hoping this can get resolved :D

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

For the bug, one way to test if it's just active 3G connection all night is to stream internet radio using the native app and see if something similar occurs. I have no idea what would be causing decreased battery usage. What if you streamed pandora from the website in the browser all night?

As to the codec's, currently only the one codec is compiled into pianobar. I've been meaning to submit a new one that compiles against both options but haven't had time - and I still haven't figured out the skipping problem.

Unfortunately, there's no real way for me to test any of these bugs :(. So fixing them is a little beyond my capabilities ATM.

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

Hey, thanks so much for this! Since I love pandora so much, and since you don't have your N900 yet, I made sure to add a little bit of money to your N900 piggy bank :)

The app has been working well for me so far (I just downloaded it earlier today), and if there's one issue i've been having its that i feel the "tired button" should not be a dash/minus sign. I hit it twice earlier without knowing what it did, and it skipped a couple of my songs. In my opinion, I really believe that you can either use the z's which you had been using in previous updates, or you can do like the Pandora web app, and just have the "I'm tired of this song" as an option in the menu....

But besides that one issue, its been absolutely amazing for me.... now i can change songs on pandora when i'm driving a lot easier than before :p

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

Thank you!!!!! This was greatly appreciated!!

I am up for suggestions on anything other than the ZZZ's. ZZZ makes it look too much like a snooze/sleep mode which I have moved to the menu system. Everyone I showed the app to around me at work and such and asked them what they thought "ZZZ" was on a radio app they said Sleep.

If we can come up with a better icon I would gladly put it in place.

For now.. despite the minor annoyances above I do not see anything world-shattering that would prevent promotion of the current pyPianobar to extras and I just got the 10 needed votes!! yay!

Unfortunately, pianobar is also in the user section and it won't let me promote pyPianobar without promoting pianobar first! So please, I need 3 votes on pianobar so I can get them into extras and users enjoying pandora!

I am still looking at (albeit, have had significantly less time of late) trying to find the skipping problem when switching between things. Promy, the author, has contacted me on it and is equally unsure of how to fix it though he had some suggestions where to look. He seemed to think that it had to do with mp3 decoding being a bit processor intensive and may be a touch harsh on the phone: But we don't have an answer as to why the built-in player does not suffer the problem since both apps would need to do the decoding.

Obviously, however Nokia is doing it more optimized for the hardware.

However, both this and the battery consumption issue are beyond my ability to truly debug or work until I have something to reproduce the problem(s) with.

Thanks everyone for the feedback thus far and the support on this app. I truly hope it's helping you all enjoy your new Nokia phones that much more!

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

Just DL this, and well... TY! Works great, even on att 2.5,if i can get it to work with the FM transmit we will be in buisness. My only question is what is the button on the right with the "-" for?

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

Pandora has a "tired" function that will hide a song for a short time. Unlike "Thumbs Down" which will hide it permanently, this will just not play that song for a while because you're tired of hearing it. That's what the "-" button does... but we all agree it should be something more indicative of that :D.

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

Just as a note here, Vagelume also does a similar thing. It "skips" when the phone goes into sleep mode. So, it isn't just this application that does that.

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

It's probably something to do with how these apps communicate with the audio. There is obviously multiple ways since some things can go silent, and other not, when you put your phone into silent mode..

The original developer of pianobar sent me a note that by simply changing drivers on the computer and using OSS instead of ALSA there was a rather dramatic decrease in overhead and memory. (It's already very small, but even smaller with those changes).. so evidently there's some impact also regarding audio drivers and what underlying audio system is used.

But still.. I'm unable to test, verify, or fix any of this at this time.

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

I use pianobar (command line version) almost daily. Its a great app! But the past couple of days i've been getting errors when i try to run it:

Attempt 1Attempt 2Attempt 3Occasionally a song or 2 will play but I will eventually get an error. I've tried on a few different internet connections with the same results. Was just curious if anyone else is having a similar issue.

UPDATE: For anyone interested I found a solution to the issue (even though i'm not exactly sure what the problem was to begin with). After actually visiting www.pandora.com in the microb web browser and logging in and listening to a few songs, I tried running pianobar and it works again. No "Connection Failed" errors. Not really sure why visiting the site allows pianobar to connect again (maybe pandora.com blocks ips that repeatedly connect using a non-approved client?) Anyway, all is well again and pianobar is still amazing :)

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

Before i go to sleep, I run pandora without sleep mode. When I wake up in the morning, pandora is no longer playing. (I forget the error message.)

I exit pyPianobar, but I notice the CPU has constant high usage. I wait for awhile and it is still there. So then I run htop and pianobar is running and using most of the CPU.

After waiting to see if it will close on its own, I kill-9 it.

This has happened multiple times. Anyone else experiencing the same thing?

Edit: So seems like pianobar stops playing when the token expires. After that, pianobar has high CPU usage, even after pypianobar is exited.

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

Probably an unnecessary question..
I live in the Netherlands, I can't listen to Pandora on my desktop.
I suppose it won't be possible for me either to listen to Pandora through pianobar, or is it?

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

We are in Extras!

Thanks all for your support and your votes! Now many more people will be able to listen to Pandora Radio without dealing with the resource-intensive flash!

@Ceevee - That is very interesting, I've never listened to pianobar that long straight. I have been extremely busy lately but eventually might be able to just leave pianobar running until the token expires and see what exactly pianobar "says" when it crashes out. I imagine what's happening is pianobar is dying, and thus pyPianobar is stuck in an infinite loop waiting on pianobar to return... something. If it's pianobar itself that sits at high usage, and not pyPianobar this actually sounds like a bug for the Pianobar application! I was going to redirect you over the PromyLOPh as I'm sure he'd want to know but there's Already a bug report on it! Thanks for reporting this. I may be able to get pyPIanobar to gracefully exit pianobar by sending the Q when it gets that error.

@Restap - Pandora is only available to US subscribers, however, you can use a proxy to make it *look* like you're in the US and get access to Pandora Radio. Pianobar supports using a proxy through the configuration file in ~/.config/pianobar/pianobar. There should be a commented out option regarding proxies that you can set. However, its up to you to find a proxy that works and you trust using; I don't use it and therefore can't recommend any.

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

Wako - I would venture your problem is related to the same problem as Ceevee. Run TOP in a terminal and see if Pianobar is running 100% CPU usage; that would certainly cause your battery to drain very quickly through the day and currently requires you to kill it. Easier to kill it than wait for your phone to die or to reboot though :).

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

I'm diggin pypianobar.

I think it would be great if you added:
1) fmtransmiiter/fmboost on/off button.
2) automatically load the last played station.

Personally, I do not care about the album graphic.
What I prefer is the ability to get pandora up and going with the least amount of work.
Anyhow, keep up the good work!
Thanks so much for this.

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

Thanks! That would be great! Hate having to kill the PID every morning.

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

You could just set the sleep timer to something like 180 which should be 3 hours. I don't think it would take you 3 hours to fall asleep ;). (I know that's obviously not a solution and will look into the graceful exit when I get some time.)

@Zappa,

Those recommendations are good ideas and there was another good idea on the main pyPianobar page in downloads that wanted a history of whats played. When I get some time to look at all this again I can try.

The FM Transmitter, however, I have no way to test or know how since I don't have a phone. So the auto-start and the history I can do but still SOL on phone-specific features.

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

I really wish Nokia would release PR1.2 already. Like half of my most used apps are bricked at the moment(this App, all Qt apps, KOffice, Zoutube) because the Devs have the update, but us regular users are sitting in the dust...

Also, I'm kind of just making some suggestions to other users. I've pretty much all but confirmed that this app isn't the whole Wake/Unlock problem, it's ANY audio that comes out the phone. I've made a strange observation that the phone is using different mixers or something because some audio gets routed through the phone and other stuff gets routed through my Bluetooth headset. I stream this through my Pioneer Premier head with Stereo Bluetooth. Whenever I make a selection or I click on a link for instance, ALL of those sounds are routed through the head. Whenever I receive an IM or a text message, the audio pauses momentarily, plays the text notification, and then goes back to my music that was playing. It's like having a CD skip on you basically. I'm going to PRAY that PR1.2 addressed this. I've had a hard time finding a bug to track on bugs.maemo.org because it's not exactly a clear cut thing to post a bug for. This doesn't happen with the built-in media player, just any "third party audio," if you will. There maybe some kind of audio priority of some sort built in. This is like the only kind of reason I can predicts that this happens. I'm just hoping some kind of workaround comes out of this. I'm sorry if I'm kind of filling your thread up with problems that are more OS related than your software. I think I'll open a new thread actually.

Still supporting this app otherwise though man. I can't continue to thank you enough!

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

This sucks :(... have you tried removing and reinstalling PyQt libs or just the QT portions? AFAIK this stuff should still work. Using Apt in the command line and seeing if you've got any broken packages may help..

No worries! I'm glad to know that it appears to happen to all third party apps; which is as I suspected. The built-in media player must have some trick of direct access to audio without going some other layer like ALSA or ESD or something.

I appreciate it!

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

Ok well,

Not sure what to do here. Evidently Pandora updated their API, again, so none of the pianobar's are going to work until I can re-compile one of the newer pianobar's and release that.

The other issue is the newer pianobars don't have Last FM scrobbling built in anymore, it's all through a third party wrapper which I don't know how to use yet or if it's even available on the N900. So this will require testing and some work before I can get something new submitted.

Problem I have now is.. how do I remove the app from Extras since it is now broke? And what's really frustrating is that it took this long to get the app *in* to extras that now I have to start all over and by the time I get it back there it'll probably be time to upgrade again (seems to happen near quarterly-ish).

Frustrating.

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

Damn bro. Sorry to hear about that. Hopefully something can get figured out quickly. I'm here if you need N900 testing for anything. They probably weren't too happy about the ad-revenue coming straight to them from third party apps...

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

I've often wondered about how pianobar exists when the Pandora API is not open and Pandora likes having ads on everything.. but that is for Promy to figure out - I just bum off his genius ;).

This is a really simple fix, all it requires is a number change in the libpiano source code and Promy usually has it up within a day on his Github. The problem is the QA procedures here can take forever to get an app all the way to extras. In this case it was in testing so long that by the time it made it to extras it was time for Pandora to update again.

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

I nearly cried last night as I desperately tried to open pianobar only to see an error that Ive never seen before. Glad to see you're already on the case!


Keep up the amazing work!

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

Well I think for the sake of speed I'm going to have to lose last.fm scrobbling for now. Looking through the documentation and the example script that is provided it relies on Audio-Scrobbler which, as you can see, is normally available via CPAN. I'm not sure if the full perl CPAN is on the N900 or not, and frankly it doesn't matter, trying to code an auto-installation of that would be silly.

An easier solution would be to package Audio-Scrobbler, make it an optional dependency of pyPianobar, and coding in a check for whether it is installed or not when someone goes to use the Last FM scrobbling feature.

But, I really don't want to have to maintain any more software for a phone I don't even get to use. So, as it is, I should be able to get the latest pianobar up and running tonight, and I'll remove the Last.FM menu options from pyPianobar, and have newer versions of both submitted to the repositories.

It's a shame, I really did like the Last.FM feature of pianobar and thought it really made it stand out from the rest. Now the biggest benefit to it is solely that there is no "skip" limit like on the official apps (and the significantly smaller overhead).

Re: [application] pyPianobar (with pianobar)
 

So, here's what we got.

I've submitted Pianobar and pyPianobar v2.0 to the repositories. I decided to up both to 2 for a couple reasons:

1) It provides me the opportunity to sync pyPianobar versions with Pianobar versions, making it easier to tell what version of pianobar the pyPianobar was made for.
2) Pianobar has had several code changes in the git since the last one, and a major change with the removal of last.fm and the extensions of the eventcmd api. This warranted a jump.

For pyPianobar - I have added the recommendation to autoplay the last station you were listening too and I removed the Last.fm menu options.

I have not added the play history yet, I don't know how I'd do it. There isn't really a UI element or room for a "history" list anywhere... taking suggestions here. My thoughts were maybe to make the graphic art clickable that would change it to the play history, then change it back?

I also have not added any fixes for the session timeout bug. I didn't really have 6+ hours to wait on pianobar to time out over and over again to test any fix for this one :D. For now, we'll have to keep with killing pianobar in these cases.

If I could, I'd be begging here for people to test these new versions in extras-devel ASAP and provide feedback. If I get positive results here I'll work on getting it to testing through whatever waiting period or whatever I need as soon as I can. Then we'll need everyone to give their votes again as quickly as they can so that a broken app doesn't sit in Extras for too long.

For now, just test the new ones in Devel if you can and let me know if they work.