[bossanova808]

I had a quick look at getting the squeezeslave out of that squeezeplug distributuon but it was non-obvious. If anyone extracts it, send it to me (assuming it works) and I will commit it...although I have run into the current broken googlecode/git issue and can't commit right now (grrr)...so a bit stuck.

[ReducedToZero]

Hey bossanova808,

I've been taking a quick look today at knocking out / hacking up a skin for XSqueeze.

Would it be possible to also expose the file type and the genre from the songinfo list returned by LMS as window.properties so they can be got at via $INFO in a skin?

In a similar vein, directly writing image id's from the python kinda sorta seems wrong from a separation perspective. Have you considered instead exposing the image paths (MAINCOVERART, UPCOMING1COVERART etc) as window.properties too? Ideally, XSqueeze shouldn't bail if a control isn't present in a skin.

In a totally different vein, my remote has a play / pause button. XSqueeze sees it as play and so sends a play.single. Any chance of some logic so that if already playing, XSqueeze takes a 'play' event as a pause instead?

[bossanova808]

Hey

Ok, the problem with using the window properties was that way simply wouldn't update the images for me - that's why I moved to doing it the Python way, as otherwise coverart just wouldn't come up and/or wouldn't refresh appropriately on track change etc. It was annoying, but the python way jsut works more reliably. I *think* it's all to do with the way it's a big game loop thing - if you just use window properties, and they're not available when the window is drawn, xbmc seems to give up on them. (Indeed, this whole XSqueeze thing is a big weird double game loop - xbmc itself of course, but then also XSqueeze which polls the LMS server rather than using subscribe/listen, as it really should - but that wasn't in the library I used and at the time I didn't know enough to implement it myself - I probably do now, but I am not sure I have the time anymore as it would be a fair bit of re-work).

Honestly though - what sort of skin won't have those major controls? Coverart, progress bar etc - I think it's all pretty essential stuff and liveable with as is, no? If you fancy it feel free to hack the Python yourself to see if you can get it working consistently the other way...happy to accept a pull request if so. Also, I should add some exception handling so it doesn't bail, for sure.


So, anyway:
* I have added play/pause logic - I like this too
* I have exposed BITRATE, FILEFORMAT, GENRE to the skin
* I have tried to make it not fail when the controls are absent

Can you test this version and tell me how you go? https://dl.dropbox.com/u/108804/script.xsqueeze.zip

[ReducedToZero]

All makes perfect sense. Thanks for looking at this for me.

The exception catching you added seems to do the trick nicely, I can confirm XSqueeze no longer bails if bits are missing from the window

Although the 'bits missing' log line fills the log fast fast fast, I've personally not had any issues with using window properties just added in parallel to the updateCoverArtFromURLs try block. It also still works with your default skin when they are in place. I *have* only tested on windows mind.

Honestly though - what sort of skin won't have those major controls?

I was coming from the future perspective of hacking up an existing skin MusicVisualisation.xml with the minimum of required changes, or trying to get skinners (or other amateurs like me) interested in including the add on by making it as easy as possible to swap internal music player labels for your external XSqueeze ones. It's no biggy, the exception catch works perfectly.

If you fancy it feel free to hack the Python yourself to see if you can get it working consistently the other way...happy to accept a pull request if so.

Cool, if I do make anything beyond a minor change I'll get all GIT'ed up and submit a pull

So, anyway:
* I have added play/pause logic - I like this too
* I have exposed BITRATE, FILEFORMAT, GENRE to the skin
* I have tried to make it not fail when the controls are absent

Thanks for the extra labels!

Play pause works well, although it's unexpectedly a little counter intuitive when using the Slimplayer infolines interface thingy as it's easy to get to a state where you have to double press play. Adding something like the below to the new condition seems to make it more intuitive by only sending the pause if on Now Playing.

Code:

and "Now Playing" in xbmcgui.Window(self.windowID).getProperty("XSQUEEZE_DISPLAYLINE1")

I really like XSqueeze (and the nifty music chooser), and with the shenanigans around the UE Radio I can only see it becoming more useful in the medium term.

[bossanova808]

Ok cool I tried it with properties again and it indeed worked, must have been some other weird bug that led me down the rabbit hole there. All now using properties except the progress bar and that has exception handling - also no log spew now.

Also, updated Squeezeslave version to 1.2-376 (367 for the Rasp Pi hardfloat version now included).

So - if you force refreh the repo, 0.6.9 is available from there. (Those of you running with latest Frodo should find it arrives automatically as the googlecode repo update bug is supposed to be fixed - but note there is in the very latest nightlies some addon breakage that means you can't exit XSqueeze or run the music chooser - this has apparently been fixed in mainline so should be usable again from the 15th Sept nightly on).

*Only tested on Windows so far, bit short of time - test reports both positive and negative appreciated!!

[bossanova808]

**** 0.7.0 with bug fix for linux pushed & available now...

[Fliposide]

I have had a problem with 0.7 running on Openelec.
Only caught a glimpse at error "cannot run try chmod manually" not sure if that was all..
Then it screwed up Keymapping as you would expect. I rolled back to 0.6.5 and all is now ok


Info: current version of OpenELEC 2.0 (Beta 7) - 1.95.7 ION x86_64 (99 MB) MD5

Skins tried: Conflunence (default) and Aeon Nox (not GIT)

Great plugin though and can't wait for future updates

One issue I have is I can just hear the audio from my bathroom when in another room. So I get a strange echo effect. I can resolve with volumes but how about a delay setting for each of the players?

[bossanova808]

Yeah that will be a 64 bit thing - i could only find one linux binary this time and assumed like Win it was for both 32 and 64 bit, but I am guessing not. There should be an exception in the log about this, can you post that maybe?

Anyway, I will see what I can dig up....

Re: echo/timing - there are iptions you can tweak in both LMS and squeezeslave for delays etc to improve the sync. Not my department on how that all works though, so I leave that up to you to investigate. I will post back once I have a new version with a 64 bit friendly binary up!

[bossanova808]

Ok I pushed 0.7.1 which should restore linux 64 bit compatibility (albeit with an older squeezeslave binary that other platforms).

Can't test here though, so a report in it working yay/nay would be great...

[bossanova808]

Just tried it on the Pi - using XBian 0.7 beta 1.

XSqueeze 0.7.1 achieves fairly consistent playback at least - seems to maybe be some distortion though, but I am using tiny usb laptop speakers, hard to tell for sure - but fair to say the UI is crawling compared to other platforms..indeed you'd have to call it pretty non-reactive really.

Hopefully others will try Openelec or Raspbmc....

[illiac4]

Hi. Any news about touchscreen buttons implementation?

[bossanova808]

No, sorry, - betweeen the googlecode bugs meaning I couldn't commit, and the various add on bugs in XBMC right now due to the python code-gen merge, it's all a bit messy and I have been doing other things related to that, and testing Pi a little.

I'll look at it soonish though, probably

[bossanova808]

Ok I have made some progress - controls are up and responding to 'simulated' touches but it's all a bit messy right now...still, I have proven to myself it should be possible...

[illiac4]

Cool. If you want i can give it a shot on ipad and o2 joggler.

[bossanova808]

I shall pop a test version up in a bit for you to try....