iPeng support thread

[pippin]

Thanks for the help. I've updated my Squeese-System to 7.4 and now it's OK. But it's unusable slow. The Server is running on a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+, with the Duet and the Boom everything runs quick, but when I use iPeng it's impossible to use. The artists comming quick, the albums in 10 or 20 seconds but the songs after 1 or 2 minutes. And when I choose a song nothing happens by direct tapping (the play symbol in the top right corner), when I tap over a second and choose then the titel, the cover is showed on iPeng, the titel scrolls on the Boom, but no sound is comming.

What is wrong here?

CORRECTION some hours later:
After a hour waiting it's seems OK. I see that 7.4 is away now for ReadyNAS, but until now it's OK for me!

There are two possible explanations. Generally, SBS (and SC) are not very fast on ReadyNas ans there are a few speical challenges wrt iPeng due to iPeng's caching. The up-side is that once the cahing is done, iPeng will be rather fast using ReadyNAS, too.

1. Could it be this bug: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=68524
There seems to be an issue with 7.4 on ReadyNAS that 7.4.1 beta is supposed to fix.

2. Please (in SBS) go to Settings->Advanced->Performance and check the "Artwork Resampling" option. On ReadyNAS it should be set to "Resize Artwork, faster, lower quality).
iPeng uses artwork thumbs of a different size than The Controller and the WebUI (75x75px) and it starts to read the first 450 of those right after the caching of the lists is done. At least before you do the next "Clear and Rescan" of your library since if it's faster now, a lot of the conversion is probably already done.
Now the CPU on the ReadyNAS doesn't have a floating point unit so resampling on the ReadyNAS is very, very slow and consumes a lot of CPU power.
The resizing/resampling is only done after you do a full Clear and Rescan of the database, between that, the server will cache the artwork files and between any rescan, also iPeng will cache them, so once this is done it should have no impact on speed anymore.

The important thing for me, and many other happy users I hope, is that development and support are kept up, not the rather small amounts needed to be paid by each user to ensure this or how or at what level you make a living (from first time buyers only, from upgrades, from donations, from a day job or private fortune etc.).

Yes. The button is not there.
Currently I have no plans to no longer support iPeng and let me assure you, before I do that because there's no revenue in it anymore I will try to find sources to get some money out of it again. There are a few unexplored opportunities here...

One more argument for player controls on the song info context screen accessed from the now playing screen: Unlike when you are in the "content" section of iPeng, you cannot from the context screen get back to where you were if you have to press the penguin icon to pause playback to answer a phone call.

The problem is that the paging stays and you lose some screen space. I tried it and it doesn't really look good in the small Window.
You could at least turn down the volume using the hardware buttons on the side :-)

And I may have just found what might be a bug:
1. Find an artist for which there is no biography and go to that artist in the artist list.
2. Touch & hold that artist to get to the artist info context screen. Tap on Biography.
3. Tap on Read Biography. This takes you to the now playing screen.

I guess this is not the intended behaviour, but I do not know if this is an issue with iPeng or the Biography plugin.

I've seen that one but didn't have time to check for what's going on, may be iPeng, may be the plugin.
Could you file a ticket for it?

How can I listen my music with iPeng over the iPhone?

download ipeng app

You can't (yet). Working on it for a later release, though.
What abelincoln talks about is probably not the iPeng APP but the web skin plugin, which has a basic playback feature, although that's really just a hack:
http://penguinlovesmusic.de/ipeng-th...squeezecenter/

There's also an App called "Squeeze Mobile" but I'm not sure it will work with ReadyNAS. It uses http://<your_server>:9000/stream.mp3 so the server needs to transcode. You could try that stream from a computer, if it works, SqueezeMobile might work.

[pippin]

iPeng has been working wonderfully for me since the day it became available to us 'non-betas'!

Forget Last Server didn't help.

Uninstall/Reinstall didn't help either.

In troubleshooting this, I now realize that I can select music to play from the web interface, and i can make changes to player setttings, but the player controls DO NOT show up in the right side of the UI.

What is going on? I know... this is not an iPeng issue!

Is your footer still correct?
SqueezeCenter 7.3.2 is not supposed to work on Mac OSX 10.6! You need to use 7.3.4 or 7.4.

[neilcoburn]

Hm. This sounds like a connection issue to me.
Did this happen since the update? If so, please try to uninstall and re-install iPeng.

Thanks, that worked. and it's a great new version. A couple of issues: deeper menu levels, especially song info, sometimes take a long time to load - up to a minute, though the length of delays seem quite random. This seems to improve after iPeng has been running for a while. Is this normal? Any ways to improve this? (I don't think this is a new problem to iPeng 1.2)

Also, I use Custom Browse for Genres on the main SqueezeCenter UI and on my players. Is there a way of forcing iPeng to use the Custom Browse version when I select the Genres button at the bottom of the screen?

Finally, a minor bug, I think - artwork doesn't load within an MusicIP mix until you scroll the list.

[.:.impossible]

Is your footer still correct?
SqueezeCenter 7.3.2 is not supposed to work on Mac OSX 10.6! You need to use 7.3.4 or 7.4.

Yeah. I have a problem. I'm using a Buffalo Linkstation. Right now, the latest version I can load is 7.3.3; however, I am running Mac OS X 10.6.1.

Apparently I haven't used iPeng since upgrading to Snow Leopard... a few weeks.

I realize this is not an iPeng issue. I am now completely convinced that Squeezebox will never become a mainstream device. Realistically, I am the most technologically advanced person in my family, group of friends, work peers, etc.

[pippin]

Thanks, that worked. and it's a great new version. A couple of issues: deeper menu levels, especially song info, sometimes take a long time to load - up to a minute, though the length of delays seem quite random. This seems to improve after iPeng has been running for a while. Is this normal? Any ways to improve this? (I don't think this is a new problem to iPeng 1.2)

Could it be that iPeng is still syncing caches in the background? This causes a bit of load on the server and could explain the delays.
Generally, lower level menus are not caches so they always need their server query

Also, I use Custom Browse for Genres on the main SqueezeCenter UI and on my players. Is there a way of forcing iPeng to use the Custom Browse version when I select the Genres button at the bottom of the screen?

Well...
Actually the "Replace Standard Menus" thing has been an outstanding bug for a while, I think I will implement that when I change caching (1.3 or so).
Meanwhile: If you put your new menu to the top level (in SBS: Settings->Plugins->Custom Browse->Settings->Squeezebox Server Menus) you can then also place it on the Tab Bar using the "Edit" button on NowPlaying.

Finally, a minor bug, I think - artwork doesn't load within an MusicIP mix until you scroll the list.

That one again :-( Could you file a ticket?

Yeah. I have a problem. I'm using a Buffalo Linkstation. Right now, the latest version I can load is 7.3.3; however, I am running Mac OS X 10.6.1.

Apparently I haven't used iPeng since upgrading to Snow Leopard... a few weeks.

I realize this is not an iPeng issue. I am now completely convinced that Squeezebox will never become a mainstream device. Realistically, I am the most technologically advanced person in my family, group of friends, work peers, etc.

Wait a moment... If SC is NOT running on your Mac but on the LinkStation you can of course use 7.3.2, iPeng should work fine with that.
Where is your SqueezeCenter running, I'm confused now.
When I saw your comment I originally thought you were seeing the same issue as Snoogly, which we diagnosed last night and it seems to be a really, really strange SBS issue (I suspect some trouble upgrading), but his server was running on a Mac and it was 7.4

[michel]

Thx Pippin for that wonderful upgrade to 1.2. Works better than ever.
One slight annoyance is that non square cover art is shown stretched as it was with early versions of ipeng.

[pippin]

Thx Pippin for that wonderful upgrade to 1.2. Works better than ever.
One slight annoyance is that non square cover art is shown stretched as it was with early versions of ipeng.

Really?
That should not be. Could you file a ticket?

[michel]

I have to specify: cover art is shown stretched only in now playing screen. In lists it shows up as before upgrading.
I am running XP and SC 7.4 final.

[mario21]

Pippin,

When I select in My Music, Artist, for exemple, Paul Simon, I see also Simon & Garfunkel. May I have only Paul Simon like I have with the Squeezebox server Web interface? How? I tried to flush cache but nothing change.

[pippin]

When I select in My Music, Artist, for exemple, Paul Simon, I see also Simon & Garfunkel. May I have only Paul Simon like I have with the Squeezebox server Web interface? How? I tried to flush cache but nothing change.

Unfortunately that's nothing iPeng can influence. It would have to retrieve all contributor information for all the tracks and filter itself and that would be waaay to slow.
The issue is that the CLI queries return data for all contributors, not just the main artist.
There's a lengthy thread about this, I believe in the Duet forum (which has the same issue). I also believe there's a bug open for this, maybe you can find it and vote for it.