Announce: Spicefly SugarCube (Automatic MusicIP DJ)

[Philip Meyer]

>It would play about 1 sec of a song and
>switch to another over and over and finally after about 20 songs it
>locked into one.
I saw a similar thing happen this morning. My alarm fired, which is set to play random songs. SugarCube really messes this up, causing songs to skip after a fraction of a second.

I then tried browsing to an album to play a single song, and SC decided to play add the whole album to the current playlist, which also didn't work too well. I'm guessing its the damn SqueezeNetwork integration again messing up my preferences. I'm fed up with that; will find a way to disable SN I think.

So, ensure that you are only attempting to play a single song, and hopefully it will work.

Phil

[Philip Meyer]

>I am currently running SC 7.2. I tweaked the install.xml to set maxVersion=*. The plugin seems to load without any errors, but doesn't seem to work.
>
>I browse to a song, press play, it starts to play and then finishes, and that's it. No errors or warnings are reported.

Version 1.1 of your plugin (removal of CAUTH string) fixed that.

[mherger]

> # MIP name and Port
> If its all on the same box use something like

Did you ever get SC/MIP integration working in a situation where they are
_not_ on the same machine? The port can be read from the prefs (port).

> # SqueezeCentre name and Port
> If its all on the same box use something like
> $myss = "http://localhost:9000/";

This really shouldn't be needed. As this code is run in SC itself, it's
always localhost. And the port can be read from the prefs (httpport).

And you don't even need to access SC's web interface.

> # MIP Style - RANGE IS 0..200 (DEFAULT 20)
> # MIP Variety - RANGE IS 0...9 (DEFAULT 0)
> MIP Filter

These values are available from the prefs, too (mix_style, mix_variety,
mix_filter). Users can change these through the web UI.

> Regarding Linux question.. no idea I dont run Linux, but let me know if
> it works or not

It's all SC code. So yes, I'd be surprised if it didn't work on any
platform SC is running on.

cparker - you'd do yourself and your users a great favour if you used the
information available in SC. There's really no need for them to fiddle
with the code. And thus less confusion on the user's side.

Michael

[mherger]

> I then tried browsing to an album to play a single song, and SC decided
> to play add the whole album to the current playlist, which also didn't
> work too well.

Please note that SugarCube will fully take over your system. AFAICT it
will _always_ kick in, whenever you play a track. I'd expect a lot of
unexpected bahaviour using it.

> I'm guessing its the damn SqueezeNetwork integration again messing up my
> preferences. I'm fed up with that; will find a way to disable SN I
> think.

You'll be happy to find a preference to do this.

Michael

[Philip Meyer]

>*To Do List*

>Web interface? - Not sure seems a lot of work for stuff that wont
>change after initial setup
Did you mean web interface, or webUI settings page?

>Enable/Disable - Something like hold the play button and select
>SugarCube and then off it goes, otherwise always be disabled
I think the way to go would be to make a SugarCube mixer. i.e. pres-and-hold play, and you will get a list of mixers; from the list pick SugarCube, and away it goes, until you stop SugarCube. You should be able to crib the code from the official MusicIP plugin, which adds a MusicIP mixer to songs, albums, artists, genres. Only show the SugarCube mixer for songs that have the mixer enabled property, so that you can't attempt to seed a song that's not validated.

It would be really nice to also have the option to change the variety and style from the player UI. Either like the official MIP plugin does (when starting a mix), or perhaps even better as a settings page under Extras menu.

You will also need an option to stop sugarcube! eg. Extras -> SugarCube -> Stop mixing.

>Play tracking - Keep track of played tracks to reduce duplicates
Adding <n> songs to the end of the playlist after <n> songs have played may be easier/better. You wouldn't get duplicates in the <n> songs if you request them in one go from MIP?

>Add Schedule filters - ie. multiple filters such as more dance during
>day and start sending more chilled tracks in evening
Could add a player UI setting option to change filter. The current settings could be read just before requesting new tracks from MIP.

>Multi user filters - So multiple users can have different filter and
>selection criteria, so if your wife is at home she isnt treated to drum
>and bass but gets nice Kate Bush tracks
Partially solved by selectable player UI settings (per-player).

It's probably worth waiting until SC supports personas, as many plugins/settings could do with per-user settings.

[Philip Meyer]

>You'll be happy to find a preference to do this.
Never noticed it before.

What I'd really like is just to stop SN from trying to "sync" preferences. It's nice to have SN as a backup music service. But it only syncs down from SN to SC, and there lies the problem in that SC will always have more options than SC and therefore loses local settings. It would be nice to sync both ways too, so My Radio Stations for example can be configured locally and would then be available in SN.

[Philip Meyer]

>These values are available from the prefs, too (mix_style, mix_variety,
>mix_filter). Users can change these through the web UI.
It would be nice if these were configurable from a player UI. I'm still tinkering with the style and variety to get nice mixes - I'm finding that mixes vary too much at the moment. It would be nice to be able to adjust the mix settings on the fly from a player. An alternative easier to use player settings page could perhaps give a list of preset mix styles such as "No variety" to "nearly random"; each name representing variety and style values.

[Nonreality]

>I just remembered that I'm using MusicIp 1.9 beta 5 and that is probably
>why it's not working.
I am using MIP 1.9 beta 5 and SC 7.2 and it's working fine for me.

Hmmm I'm not running shuffle and it's doing the 1 sec skip thing. I think I have it set up right looking at your post. I'm running 7.1 is the only difference. So if I wanted to play an album I would have to shut off the plugin and stop and restart SC? That wouldn't work for me as I listen to albums more than mixes.

[cparker]

Right here goes Version 1.2

Version 1.2 - Released 26th June 2008
Depreciated port name and numbers for MIP and SC, SC no longer required as we inject via different method.

Depreciated unique MIP scalars.

MIP port is read from MIP settings as we assume that MIP is running on the same machine as SC.

MIP Settings are used for the Variety, Filter and Style settings. Plugin is now hands free requiring no configuration.

MIP Settings are read dynamically before selecting the next track, so changes are reflected straight away on the next track selection.

Enable/Disable via Extra Menu - Always starts up disabled by default.

Plugin version SC 7.2 enabled as it appears to work ok :s

Hope this works ok

[Blu3IcE]

Hi there,

i tried to use your plugin with Linux.
MusicIp Server is functional, as far as I can see.
Plugin is installed correctly.

When I start to play a song, I get this in my log:

[08-06-26 18:14:19.9447] Slim::Control::Request::notify (1963) Error: Failed notify: Couldn't get http://localhost:10002/api/mix?song=...e=25&variety=1 at /usr/share/squeezecenter/Plugins/SugarCube/Plugin.pm line 173.
[08-06-26 18:14:26.0365] Slim::Control::Request::notify (1963) Error: Failed notify: Couldn't get http://localhost:10002/api/mix?song=...e=25&variety=1 at /usr/share/squeezecenter/Plugins/SugarCube/Plugin.pm line 173.

Any Idears?


EDIT...
Just updated to V1.2
Error disappeared in the Log files.
But noting happens when I start to play a song.