Release MinAmp

[kool65]

Hi all,


Introducing MinAmp for Pandora V0.3 (and desktop Linux), a minimal music player mainly designed for use as a car player. This is my first application for the Pandora. Actually it’s my first C++/SDL application. Feed free to provide feedback on this application, you can also suggest changes and features requests.


On first run MinAmp will look for the Music directory on your mounted SD cards (either “music” or “Music”). If running on desktop Linux it will look for music or Music in your home directory. If this fails to find your music for some reason you can manually edit the minamp.conf file but hopefully this won’t be necessary in most cases.


I have assumed that your music directory is organised so that each artist is in its own directory with each album below that in it’s own directory. In each Album directory you can have a cover.jpg with the album cover art. If this doesn’t suit you I’m sorry, I may entertain alternate layouts but may need some incentive


At present I only support the MP3 and OGG music file formats, I tried WMA but track length and reliabilty issues made me take it out. Audio output can be sent to the default, digital (SPDIF) or Bluetooth outputs. Bluetooth on the Pandora may require modifying the .asoundrc file (See the forums).


Controls:


- The touchscreen is active, and hopefully fairly obvious in operation.


- Click an Album cover to play that album.


- Click on the progress bar to jump within the current track (not 100% accurate).


- Shoulder buttons are Previous/Next track, very sensitive at the moment (probably not good for jogging but works for cycling).


- Press a letter “A” to “Z” to seek to the Albums that start with that letter (ie “c” for Coldplay).


- Left/Right Arrows (Nub) to move the album list left and right.


- Up/Down Arrows (Nub) are Previous/Next track.


- Enter plays the Album in the center of the list.


- ESC exits the player (Also clicking on the X on the screen).


- HOME (or “A” button on Pandora) goes to beginning of Album List.


- END (or “B” button on Pandora) goes to end of Album List.


- SPACE goes to next track (to be changed to “Pause” in next release)


- BACKSPACE/PAGEUP (or “Y” button on Pandora) goes to previous track.


- PAGEDOWN (or “X” button on Pandora) goes to next track


- Numbers keys 0-9 will select tracks (eg Press 1 for track 1 and then again for track 11)


If you exit the player while it is playing a track, on next use it will try to start from the same track.


Possible Future Enhancements (Keeping in mind it is supposed to be a minimal player):


- Random Play


- Album Queue


- Options to make Shoulder buttons less sensitive, (Maybe double click or hold for next Album)


For more details and the Linux versions (for those still without their Pandora), please see http://linux.kewley.name/minamp


The PND is available from these sites :-


Pandora Repo


Pandora File Archive


Pandora Apps


I still consider this software to be an Alpha release, features and functionality may be changed, added or removed. Enjoy and don’t hesitate to provide feedback and comments below.

 

[SirDregan]

Haven't tried it yet but will soon. But I have to say:


THANK YOU!


Really! That's exactly what I've been putting off for so long, because I've always wanted to use it in the car but hadn't had the time to create / mod a good tool yet

 

[MarioPandio]

This sounds wonderful. I love that you've managed to get the bluetooth side of things working aswell. I will give this a blast later once I'm finished battling re-installs for masochistic reasons.

 

[meandu229]

Will you be able to implement changing tracks via bluetooth?

 

[fr4n]

Nice one!


A random play enhancement would definitely get my vote.

 

[Nintendo]

Thank you very much, mate.

 

[kool65]

Hi All,


Thanks for the comments...


fr4n: Random play will definitely happen, when I get time, as I also want this feature.


meandu229: Track changing doesn't work at the moment, I think it may be possible though.

 

[(naw)mcx]

Hey, if you want some help with graphics, give me a PM, here's my stuff


http://godlikemcx.deviantart.com/

 

[lucidchaos]

This app gives me the black screen stating I need to install the community codec pack and mplayer is not installed. I have verified the codec pack is installed and cannot find mplayer as a separate download. Please advise.

 

[kool65]

This app gives me the black screen stating I need to install the community codec pack and mplayer is not installed. I have verified the codec pack is installed and cannot find mplayer as a separate download. Please advise.

MinAmp checks for the existance of 'mplayer', which should is installed with the codec pack, not sure why you have this problem. I am running Hotfix 5 with the community codec pack. If you have both of these, I suggest maybe you reload the codec pack and see if that fixes it.


To check for mplayer open a terminal (on the accessories menu). then type "which mplayer" (without quotes), you should get "/usr/bin/mplayer", if you get nothing returned then mplayer is not found/installed.

 

[foxblock]

Nice program, keep working on it and it will be a good addition to the Pandora library as we currently don't have a very finger-friendly player also making use of the Pandora-specific buttons.


Keep it up

 

[fr4n]

Just took it for a spin and it certainly does what it says on the tin!


FYI, Start/Alt also exits.


The PND doesn't seem to clean up properly all the time. Once, after exiting minamp, the mplayer process was left hanging around. Unfortunately I haven't been able to reproduce this since...


Below is the last part of the pndrun_minamp.out file.

Spoiler

umount: /mnt/utmp/minamp: device is busy.

        (In some cases useful info about processes that use

 		the device is found by lsof(8) or fuser(1))

umount: /mnt/utmp/minamp: device is busy.

        (In some cases useful info about processes that use

 		the device is found by lsof(8) or fuser(1))

umount UNION failed, didnt clean up. Process still using this FS :

 1349 ?        S      0:00 mplayer -slave -quiet -msglevel all=2:global=6:cplayer=7 -idle -fs -zoom -ontop -noborder -nolirc -nojoystick -mouse-movements -nomouseinput -noar -nograbpointer -noconsolecontrols -vo null -nofixed-vo

 

[lucidchaos]

MinAmp checks for the existance of 'mplayer', which should is installed with the codec pack, not sure why you have this problem. I am running Hotfix 5 with the community codec pack. If you have both of these, I suggest maybe you reload the codec pack and see if that fixes it.


To check for mplayer open a terminal (on the accessories menu). then type "which mplayer" (without quotes), you should get "/usr/bin/mplayer", if you get nothing returned then mplayer is not found/installed.

Sure enough, "which mplayer" reported nothing. I reinstalled the codec pack for the third time - this seems to have done the trick for whatever reason. Thanks for the guidance.

 

[CFWhitman]

I'll have to try this one out. I've been using Rockbox for playing music in the car, but I don't like how it looks through every file in the file system rather than just a directory that you specify (by default anyway; I haven't checked to see if I could change this).


If you're thinking of adding support for any additional formats, then I would think FLAC should be first on the list rather than WAV. (It would probably work better as well.)


Random play would also be nice, especially if it could work for either albums or all tracks in the directory/database.


Thanks for your efforts.

 

[kool65]

I'll have to try this one out. I've been using Rockbox for playing music in the car, but I don't like how it looks through every file in the file system rather than just a directory that you specify (by default anyway; I haven't checked to see if I could change this).


If you're thinking of adding support for any additional formats, then I would think FLAC should be first on the list rather than WAV. (It would probably work better as well.)


Random play would also be nice, especially if it could work for either albums or all tracks in the directory/database.


Thanks for your efforts.

You'll be glad to know that I already have FLAC working, I will release it in version 0.31 (in progress) with some bug fixes. MinAmp looks for the directory of 'music' or 'Music' at the root of any mounted media. If you don't have your music there, either move it there or you will need to edit the "minamp.conf" file to specify the directory manually. Random play will be in a future release, I plan to have it play random tracks from all albums (hopefully). Maybe I'll have a random album option also

 

[kool65]

Hi Guys,


I have just released Version 0.31, these are the updates:


- Change spacebar to Pause function.


- Reset progress bar when seeks backwards.


- Added FLAC support.


- Cleaned up music directory detection & coded error screens


- Fixed crash when user has < 7 Albums (or no albums in music directory)


- Fixed track seek positioning problem


- Set Window Title & Windows Icon (Desktop)


- Fixed directory scan issues with Ubuntu 11 & Fedora 14 (lack of d->d_type?)


- Detect current screensize without full screen switch (SDL)


- Disabled progress clicks bar within help screen


(Tested with Pandora(HotFix5), Mandriva 2010.2, Ubuntu 10.10, Ubuntu 11.04, Fedora 14)


At the moment it is only showing up on the repo, http://repo.openpandora.org I have submitted it to File archive but it hasn't updated yet and I can't update it on Pandora Apps yet. I'll have the updated desktop edition available shortly at http://linux.kewley.name/minamp


Enjoy

 

[fr4n]

Thanks!

 

[BaDToaD]

Thanks for this update, it`s my player of choice on a daily basis. I'll grab the update later today.

 

[kool65]

Hi,


For those without their Pandora's yet, I have now updated the Desktop Linux edition of MinAmp to 0.31. It is available here http://linux.kewley.name/minamp


I have tested it with Mandriva 2010.2, Ubuntu 10.10, Ubuntu 11.04, Fedora 14. If it doesn't work for you please let me know what distro you are trying. Sorry, no Windows edition yet (maybe later).


Cheers.

 

[MarioPandio]

Hi kool65, lovely program you've made. Your update reminded me to try it out and its certainly a great interface with great controls.


I haven't got the PND run out files to hand at present but there is an issue with the BT side of things.


Whilst it controls lovely if the Pandora or headphones are used for playback and whilst it does output to BT (in my case a creative speaker), it will only playback 1 track before locking up and any touching of the controls either on screen or physical sees it lock up immediately. So its no use for BT at present.


I'm not the best person to test it, as at present only have a few albums installed minus any cover art etc but thats what I found a few days ago. The program can still be quit cleanly using the Pandora button for a kill box dialog but it fails everytime and once the first track has been chosen the first time around, you are stuck with that track only on 'resume' when you next run MinAmp. Of note is that Mplayer itself is pretty prone to locking up on BT output anyway, so its probably related to that. Only Exaile can give controllable playback but that lacks many controls at all anyway. MinAmp is definitely the app of choice for Pandora playback though.