Notices

I would like to start off saying that I have no programming skills which is why I am asking this of the community. I think that the N8x0 has huge potential to be used as the ultimate audio controller/ portable music player using already developed software.

The N8x0 could be used in conjunction with software initially developed by Slimdevices called SqueezeCenter. SqueezeCenter is an open-source project when can be used without any proprietary hardware, is cross platform, can be run on almost any hardware including NAS, and plays pretty much any audio file type. It basically works by creating a virtual server (of sorts) and then serves music up.

The N8x0 has been able to serve as remote for this since the early days with a pretty neat skin made for the N770 by Ben Klass. The cool potential comes in by using software which is used in what they call the “Squeezebox Controller”. Basically this remote runs a Samsung 200 MHz ARM processor, provides a nice GUI to control the remote player with, but also can be used as a portable player, albeit within your house (video). I think this software could be ported over to Maemo, or even better to Ubtuntu/Mer, without too much difficulty (but again, am a complete Noob).

The key part here is that it can play music from the server, not just control another player.


*in the above fake N800 shot, the screen is actually a screenshot of SqueezePlay running on my desktop.

The software that the controller runs was based on something called Jive, and is also a cross-platform service. I think you could run it on the a debian boot on the N8x0 and it does have many screen size options which would help, but I haven’t figured out how to get it to work with Easy Debian to run within Maemo.

The benefits of having this software ported over to Maemo or Mer would be:
1) great remote for a nice music server (no fiddling required to get the server setup)

2) a way to remotely listen to your music stash remotely (given you have your server setup right and a nice connection).

Also, playing around with the desktop version, the only controls are left right arrows and it also takes volume input, which seems like it would work well like I have shown below:



The software is called SqueezePlay and info can be found here: http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/SqueezePlay

Also, the source code is available here (and the group working with it, well at least Ben Klass, are super helpful and easily contacted):
http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.ph...d_Instructions


This has been recently talked about http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=278810 but I figured a better pitch might demonstrate the potential.

This idea similar to TabletBridge? See also.

Similar in that it would be remote, but the beauty of SqueezePlay is that it can also stream from the server. Also, I just have a PC hooked up to my stereo and TV and use slimserver to play music and therefore no additional hardware requirements like a Roku or other device.

And I forgot to mention another benefit of this port would be with the recent news of Ubuntu MID and Mer joining up, this could be used on numerous devices in the future, beyond N770/N8x0.

This is what most interests me.

I can run the controller fine, but would really like to just stream.

R.
==

Err. you can alreagy control and stream music from slimserver to the N8x0.

point an internet radio player (media player, canola etc) to http://slimserverort/stream.mp3

There is about a 20 second lag between switching tracks and hearing the change. I used to do this around the house, before I dropped 32Gb into my N800 and just carried the music locally.

But in that case, you still have to control the server, while also listening to the stream, and like you said, a huge lag.

Using SqueezePlay on my desktop, its pretty instantaneous, and much faster than even using the N770 skin as a remote (which IMO was pretty slow and buggy).

Good thoughts though. Has anyone looked at the code to see about the porting aspect, or is it just not worth the time?

there is a build for debian in the nightly build area. It would worth installing EasyDebian and seeing if the deb will work..

Otherwise try tracking down the scratchbox VM image, and compilie the source in that. Compiling source is really easy, and a very useful in working with linux.
If the compile breaks, them I'd be stumped myse??

So, I installed easy debian, but I guess I am too much of a noob to figure out how to install the deb in the debian chroot. I couldn't even figure out how to get synaptic to load the deb from the disc, nor could I find any repo to add.

Somewhat stupid question here, but what do you mean by scratchbox VM image? For the software, or the maemo one? I might not be experienced but am a decent learner and am down with the challenge.

Thanks for the help/suggestions.

EDIT: This Scratchbox VM image?
http://maemovmware.garage.maemo.org/beta1/

Despite the fact that the squeezeplay .deb offered at their site is "all architectures", I find it very difficult to believe that it is really for all architectures. Are there no binaries? Is it all written in an interpreted language like Python?

I have emailed Ben Klaas to see if he knows the language. I feel like it is C++, but I don't know where I saw that. Thanks for your input (and btw, easy debian is great).