I've written enough to get RioPlay to pull songs and tag information from the local hard drives. It won't do anything with your playlists, but you can still select from a master list of artists, genres, albums, or song titles.

Display stuff is still quirky, working on that soon.

For anyone who wants to have a poke at this new empeg-drive enabled version, let me know. I'd like a couple of guinnea pigs before I release it to the general public.

Greg

Wow Greg, you are the first person that I know of to implement a viable 3rd party player for the empeg. Cool! I'm no linux expert so i'm not sure I would be able to get it to work, but maybe once someone writes some directions i'll be able to give it a shot.

Sean

Here's some basic instructions. Keep in mind, at this point, in this early stage, using it in the car isn't that viable, simply because you've got to get it started via the serial port (or telnet) and command-line.

At this point, you probably have to have a rioreceiver server app running, in the future this won't be required. You can get one at ftp://ftp.sonicblue.com/pub/multimedia/rio/receiver/mercury_v103.exe
Get this up and runnnig and drop a few songs in it for testing. Or if you're adventurous, try getting JReceiver going instead.(available at Sourceforge.net).

1. Have the empeg plugged in via ethernet, and also serial'ed to your computer.
2. Use hyperterminal, or your favorite terminal application, to connect to the empeg (this stuff is in the faq, I'll bet). Hit 'q' and 'enter' to get to a command-line.
3. type 'rw' and 'enter' to enable read/write access to player.
4. 'cd /var'
5. In hyperterminal go to the "transfer" menu and select "send file", selecting the rioplay archive (empegreceiver.tgz) as the file to transfer, and start it going. It'll take a few seconds.
6. 'tar -xzvf empegreceiver.tgz' and hit enter.
7. 'cd empegreceiver', then 'chmod 700 rioplay'.
8. 'rwm' to enable read/write to the music partition.
9. 'mv streams.cfg /etc'
10. 'rom' to set it back to read-only for the music partition.
11. 'ro' to set it back to read-only for the system partition.
12, './rioplay', will start up the new player. It'll take a few seconds to finish loading the database. From here, let your remote be your guide.

Caveats:
Some items are off screen in long menus.
The track info screen is way ugly and some text is hidden. Bitmaps are twice as tall as they should be.
Long periods of inactivity make it a little confused on remote codes. If your remote suddenly isn't working, turn the volume dial and try again.
Hold down the "Source" button on the remote for about 6 seconds to get the player to sleep. From here, in the command-line, you can hit Control-C to kill the app.
Typing 'exit' at the command-line (via serial line) will start the built-in player back up. You may wish to reboot the empeg to get a fresh start with the old tried and true software.

Greg

hows the cpu load compared to the regular player? is going into vital signs even possible w/ the new player running?

These figures are from about halfway through each song (the songs are different), since the load may be higher towards the beginning during caching or loading the disk.

On a local mp3, LoadAvg: 0.21 0.22 0.18.
On a network mp3, LoadAvg: 0.25 0.26 0.19
On a network flac, LoadAvg: 0.21 0.26 0.19
On a network ogg, LoadAvg: 0.29 0.26 0.19

I don't know what the normal commercial empeg player runs at ... anyone want to look?

By the way, I've fixed the track display (at least until another release comes out), the menu listings, some remote bugs. New build is available at http://www.swampzombie.com/empegreceiver.tgz

Greg

Play an average about 200kbps MP3 and leaving it on the Hijack "Vital Signs" screen with out doing anything else shows about 0.7 0.6 0.3.

So it would seem your player is pretty good. However I think you will find it's doing a lot more than just playing. I have a feeling a lot of the visual stuff is running even when not on a visual screen. My readings were taken on the track info screen (behind Hijack) which had one scrolling line.

Trying the player now....

Doesn't work with the new directory format of fids where you have _00000/001 for the fids instead of all the files in the root /drivex/fids directory. I guess I should expect that though .

No idea why I set my drive up like this. I saw the release notes mentioning fast database rebuilds or something so I decided to write some funky scripts to convert everything into the directories. Oh well, looks like another script to move everything back to normal

I guess I haven't been paying much attention, there's a new layout for the fids directory floating around??

This could get interesting.

Greg

I'll bet good money I'm the only one silly enough to try it outside the SB/empeg guys. From the release notes of b13.

The player now supports a partitioning scheme for the fids directory, which
should improve performance when rebuilding the database. The partitioning
works by e.g. FID 34da0 is placed in (e.g.) /driveN/fids/_00034/da0,
where N is 0 or 1, according to the player's normal rules. Essentially,
the number (in hex) is zero-padded to 8 characters (xxxxxyyy) and saved
as _xxxxx/yyy.

Note that the player won't create directories of this form. A future version
of the player will. This code was partially back-ported, in order to
allow v2.0 betas to work correctly on players which had music added by v2.1
player code.



I tried it, didn't seem to make much difference to performance to me. I wrote another script to convert it all back to the old way tonight. BTW It also breaks the Hijack HTTP playlist stuff. I'm sure Mark will fix it as soon as it becomes the standard though.

I'm sure it's easier on the hard drive to not have so many files in a single directory, but it definitely complicates the programming aspects. Not so much that it's impossible, but simply a hassle to look in four different places for a file, just to see if it exists.

I guess once it's standard it won't be any more difficult than it is right now ..., just supporting two layouts at once is a bit of a stinker.

Greg

Hi Greg,
I just downloaded in installed your player software on my empeg. So far its working perfectly. File browsing is kinda weird, but thats my fault because my id3 tags suck for the most part, about half my 3350 tracks are tagged correctly.

It would be nice to have a visual volume graph, but otherwise great work so far, and keep it up

I want to be clear that RioPlay is written by Dave Flowerday. My only contributions are that of writing enough code to get it working on the empeg and that's about it. Not that I don't mind praise, but it was a pretty neat product before I put my hands on it

Greg

Well, thanks for porting it to the empeg

Greg,

This is a real cool project. Now I understand your interest in the player database format.

Will you turn this project into an open source project? I suppose a lot of people will want to help you. At least I will.

Pim

well, since rioplay is under the gpl, i would imagine that he would be obligated to release the source.

the cooler thing to do is to set up a sourceforge project for it.

the cooler thing to do is to set up a sourceforge project for it

Rioplay already has a Sourceforge project at http://sourceforge.net/projects/rioplay/. Greg and I (I'm the original author, BTW) are working on integrating his changes so the same binary will run on the Empeg or the Rio Receiver. Most of his changes are already checked into CVS there.

It is open source, but I want everyone to know, all I'm doing is writing empeg code for it. The framework and basic functionality was already in there from Dave Flowerday.

Most all of my changes are checked in to CVS at http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/rioplay ... The only thing that's not in there yet is my Remote code ... so it'll compile and run (with added pthread libraries), but the remote won't do anything unless you fix KeyCodes.h to work with your remote.

We're in the process of co-habitating the empeg remote codes with the RioReceiver's right now.

The playlist code is coming along, and you can see how I got it working in EmpegSource.cc. I just need to figure out the best way to do recursing menus like the current Empeg software.

If anyone has any interest in helping out, I know we could use it. We still need the ability to scan through tracks, forward and back. As well as some visuals/screensavers and general feature building. Any help with playlist ideas/coding is also more than welcome.

Greg

Hi,

I tried to get it working, but I must have missed something. Here is what I get:

RioPlay version 0.29alpha2 (09-07-2002) started
Copyright 2002 by David Flowerday
Please see http://rioplay.sourceforge.net for more information

Hardware Platform: Empeg

Gathering Empeg Database Info ...
Retrieving Tag Database ...
Retrieving Song Database ...
Loaded 3249 Tracks ...
WebThread.cc, Line 58, bind() failed: Address already in use

The empeg's screen goes blank.

Sean

Does it blank out immediately after the WebThread error? FYI, this error is normal for those running hijack, it can't start the web server on that port.

As soon as you see that error, or at least right after it says the songs are loaded, you should be able to bring up a menu via remote.

Also, make sure that streams.conf file is in /etc/ ... but it should just complain if that's not the case.

Also, try pressing "Tuner" on the remote ... since this isn't programmed it should say it's an unknown code. This would tell me if it's actually still running the app behind that blank screen.

Greg

I guess if we can't get it figured out here, we could always meet up at school. What's your schedule like?

Greg

Ok you are right, the app is running behind that blank screen. I was able to get it working with the remote. I was able to play songs from the rio server and from the empeg. Very cool! The shoutcast streams didnt work, but maybe hijack is already running on the ports it needs. I should have bought more empegs@199 to use as rio receiver clients, the screen is much more visible than the RioReceiver. In short, great work guys! This has a lot of potential for home use.

So you still have a blank screen when you run it? Or does it come to life when you start pressing buttons?

Greg

I finally finished the playlist code for RioPlay. Works pretty good considering ...

I've checked in my changes into cvs ... look for the file EmpegSource.cc under Sources/ ... reminder that the cvs tree can be found at http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/rioplay

Also, I've put a new build, complete with playlist functionality, up on my web site ... http://www.swampzombie.com/empegreceiver.tgz

Greg

It shows rioplay on the screen until I start hitting buttons on the remote. It was hijack's screen blanker that was blanking the screen out after a certain amount of time.

*bump*

It seems as though if hijack is installed the client can't connect to the 'server'...any way around this?

I am also having problems getting 'Shoutcast' to work...

Has any more work been done on this? Source?

I am trying to allow a NFS-mounted directory to be accessed by rioplay but having no luck...

K, got shoutcast working...but not at all on NFS...

Never tried to use NFS serving the files. What are you using for the server? I've had no problems using the rioreceiver server software, I think you can find it on empeg.com's ftp site. I've also had some luck using some linux package to serve up rioreceiver compatible data.

If the server is on a different subnet than the player (rioplay) then chances are it won't find it. Don't remember if there's a way around this in editing the code or not.

g

cool, my mp3 are all on linux hardware, where'd you find linux compatible server software?

I have noticed that if the server is not running on my windows box the client won't start on empeg. But I still can't see it in the servers client list once it launches...

sidenote: streaming on the empeg kicks a great deal of ass!

I was thinking that NFS would not even be necessary in this server/client environment, as long as the server could see the files...

I am still not able to 'see' the client from the server app...I will play with it more tomorrow

http://homepage.mac.com/pauljlucas/software/yarrs/

I noticed, last night, that I had to first select a random mp3 to play off the 'empeg' menu in order to access the 'shoutcast' menu without it crashing. Once I did that it worked fine.

http://www.mock.com/receiver/server/

The empeg won't list itself as a client in the client list. This is due to it not advertising it's MAC address to the server. I consider this a bug.

Greg

AHA!

I should state that it's not a problem with the empeg per se, rather it's a bug in rioplay.

Greg

Gotcha

Counting the minutes to go home and check it further.

Does the real Rio Receiver allow mp3s to be pushed to it from the server? Or is it only controllable from its console?

The client software that comes with the Rio Receiver only supports pulling mp3s and playlist from the server. It doesn't do pushing at all.

Dangit...that is what I am really looking for...a way to push external mp3s to the empeg and have it play them...

You could use RioPlay to play a ShoutCast stream and then "play" MP3s into the stream on the server.

That is a terrific point...

"My initial goals for this software were to simply support streaming music in addition to music served by my computer. " --The RioPlay Home Page

So I'd say it's definitly possible. I'm not sure if creating a shoutcast stream is as simple as an output plugin in winamp, but it might be.

I personally want a windows sound driver that outputs to the empeg over the network. I've been toying with this idea for a while but I don't have any idea how to write windows drivers. If shoutcast/rioplay is easy enough, I might try that out though.

Matthew

Shoutcast needs a server, client, and broadcaster.

You can install a shoutcast server on either windows or linux machines. Then you need the broadcaster, which is simply a dsp plugin for winamp.

This will work, and accomplish what we want, but I am still searching for a simpler 'Windows push to Empeg' method.

I have used this setup before and really like how it works. I just didn't like having a cpu tower by my entertainment center

Roomjuice

This setup uses mpg123 and php

Hi Greg, I've been thinking about buying an mp3/internet receiver box to stream my audio files from my computer to my home stereo. I had an epiphany and thought that I could stream audio to the empeg unit. I found this thread !!!! You guys are way ahead of me by two years. (You guys are my Heroes) My Question to you is -- what would it take for me to do it. I'm just an average windows user who doesn't have too much experience with linux or programming in general. I own two empeg units and successfully installed the hijack software. I'm not afraid to try. Is this project still alive and is it possible for me to do it ???? I have a few internet radio stations I like to listen to and my home system is far superior to my computer setup. My current setup is to use microsoft media encoder as the audio server and use my Ipaq pocketpc as the client and run the audio thru the headphone jack to my receiver. I was thinking it would be way cooler to use my empeg to do the same. Any thoughts or help would be very much appreciated !!!!!

Best Regards,
Markc.

This project has more or less stalled, but the software is still functional. I was successfully streaming music to my empeg from another computer in my house using the Dell Rio Receiver Server software (still also available through the empeg guys, I think). There's no automatic startup of the RioPlay application, but you can drop it on to your empeg, telnet in one time and turn it on via serial port or telnet.

I don't remember much about it at this point. My main goal was to use RioPlay to get Flac and OGG working and now that there's "supported" software from the Rio guys to do this, I've let this project be as it is.

I recommend giving this RioPlay software a whirl (I think the link to it is in an earlier post) and if you run into problems, just post here and I'll see what I can remember ;-)

g