iPeng support thread

[darkrail]

Ikbob,

I'm no technical expert at all, but I think you may be having MySB.com problems without knowing it. In my case, I could access certain normal functions from one of my two players (the Boom worked, the Touch not so much) if I used the controls on the player itself, so it seemed like MySB.com was working. But I guess iPeng finds your player through MySB.com if that's what you're using, so it's the cause of the problem.

You can find out for sure as follows: Switch your Squeezebox from using MySB.com to using a local computer that you've installed Squeezebox Server on. I did this and all my problems vanished. I could see my Squeezeboxes again, and I could easily access Pandora. Switch back to MySB.com and the problems resumed. I plan to get a Squeezebox Server computer working full-time at our place so I'm not dependent on Logitech in the future.

[pippin]

To clarify my post, I don't seem to be having any problem with mysqueezebox.com. I can listen to my music service(Slacker) just fine. The IR remote also works fine too. It's just that my trusty ipeng remote cannot seem to locate my player today. I am sure it's a temporary problem and since I do have IR it's not posing a big problem for me.

It depends on the player model.
This will usually still work:
- playback
- web control on MySB
- control through UI of older players (Boom, SB3, Transporter,...)
This will usually NOT work whenever MySB has issues:
- control with iPeng/SqueezePad/SqueezeCommander
- control with the Squeezebox Receiver
- control on the player UI of new players (Radio, Touch) when connected to MySB

The latter can completely inhibit connecting one of these players to MySB but playback usually continues to work if they are already connected

[epoch1970]

This is my recollection of what happened, perhaps you want to see if you can reproduce ?

I was using iPeng/iPhone (not yet upgraded to yesterday's -?- iOS version) on an unsynched SB3 player. The player was in alarm mode (it plays for 1 hr. in the morning), but I had taken over the random playlist and was ready to start a MusicIP playlist. I was ready to hit the "play this mix" item on top of a MusicIP mix, or did hit the item, but the subsequent choice for >, + or >| was not yet displayed.
No other player was on at the time.

At that moment the alarm popup from iOS appeared (I use my iPhone as a backup alarm in the morning). I hit "snooze" to quiet the alarm for a while. That dismissed the popup as expected.

Then I hit the "play" item in the MusicIP list and nothing happened. The player was greyed out at the bottom of the window.
I looked at the player and it was in stop mode (from the looks of the screensaver)
I went to the player list in iPeng and my SB3 was *gone*
I started the web interface and found it under SBS as power on, stopped, empty playlist.

I *think* I restarted iPeng -hit the (-) sign in the list of active apps- and it still wasn't there.
I launched an album from the web interface and the SB3 started playing.
I restarted -again ?- iPeng: I am positive this time it showed the (-) badge and I killed it. When I came back into iPeng the player was there and the playlist was correct.

I could start a MusicIP mix and everything was nominal.
I saw later another alarm popup while music was playing, I dismissed it and iPeng continued working. I was doing nothing at the time, just browsing the current playlist.
I can't say nothing happened on the wifi side: my player is wired, the only wifi node in sight was the iPhone. Usually my wifi does not cause issues.
My server version is 7.4.2, SB3 firmware is 132 (from the current stable release)

[Bryan Jan]

Hi Pippin,

I'm not sure this has been asked/requested before.

Can iPeng store the data into the iPad? I mean when iPeng retrieve the library data from the Squeezebox server (album, artist, genre, cover art...etc) it only stays there when the network is available, once the wifi is off or network is unavailable, all the data is gone.

The benefit to store this into the iPad internal memory:-
a. it will greater improve the speed;
b. it can reduce the wifi traffic, only incremental data will be retrieved from the server;
c. user can still retrieve data when off-line.

Thanks in advance.

[pippin]

Can iPeng store the data into the iPad? I mean when iPeng retrieve the library data from the Squeezebox server (album, artist, genre, cover art...etc) it only stays there when the network is available, once the wifi is off or network is unavailable, all the data is gone.

The benefit to store this into the iPad internal memory:-
a. it will greater improve the speed;
b. it can reduce the wifi traffic, only incremental data will be retrieved from the server;
c. user can still retrieve data when off-line.

iPeng does already cache the artwork and the long lists (albums, artists, genres, albums by artists).
It will do even more of that in one of the upcoming releases but this will only have an impact on speed. The network load is negligible except for these long lists (the server load is not, though) and browsing the whole library when offline is problematic for other usability reasong, I don't know yet how far that will be possible.

The problem is to know whether data is still valid which invariably involves to still request data from the server since there is no reliable expiration information on the server side.

[Bryan Jan]

iPeng does already cache the artwork and the long lists (albums, artists, genres, albums by artists).
It will do even more of that in one of the upcoming releases but this will only have an impact on speed. The network load is negligible except for these long lists (the server load is not, though) and browsing the whole library when offline is problematic for other usability reasong, I don't know yet how far that will be possible.

The problem is to know whether data is still valid which invariably involves to still request data from the server since there is no reliable expiration information on the server side.

but the cache will be gone once the iPad is disconnected from the wifi network and I cannot continue browsing my library. how to keep that cache data?

regarding the validity of data maybe you can add an option to let the user decide whether it should be updated from the server or continue using the stored cache data, after all, the user should know it better than letting the iPeng decide

[Mnyb]

when iPeng does this background refresh it has other usability problems, if iPeng has been in the background you can not imidietly switch to iPeng and press pause for example, you have to wait a long time.

further if you are on the now playing screen ? It migth never update, you sometimes have to switch to the main view to trigger iPeng to update and then be usable.

it would be better if iPeng could send pause and skip orders and similar even if it's unsure of playlist status etc.

[pippin]

but the cache will be gone once the iPad is disconnected from the wifi network and I cannot continue browsing my library. how to keep that cache data?

Well, right now only the main lists are being cached. And they are being kept.

regarding the validity of data maybe you can add an option to let the user decide whether it should be updated from the server or continue using the stored cache data, after all, the user should know it better than letting the iPeng decide

No. Be assured, most users will NOT know it better, especially on all the server versions with autorescan.
Also, most users don't want to be bothered with it. They don't want to eventually find out that they now can't play something they have found but have to restart browsing because they forgot to clear the cache, this would be a usability horror.

I understand that it's interesting to browse the library when offline but it's clearly a secondary use case over browsing stuff while online and must not get in the way of the latter.
As I said: some of this _might_ work in one of the next releases but I'm not yet sure, I have to see how I create a usage model about the extended cache and what I plan to do with it.

when iPeng does this background refresh it has other usability problems, if iPeng has been in the background you can not imidietly switch to iPeng and press pause for example, you have to wait a long time.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the background refresh but only with the time it takes the iThingy to connect to the network, which is usually a function of the router you use.
As soon as a network connection is establish, commands like pause work, they don't even require the server connection to be up although that latter one usually only takes a few ms.

further if you are on the now playing screen ? It migth never update, you sometimes have to switch to the main view to trigger iPeng to update and then be usable.

The NowPlaying screen has increasing timeouts for retrying the update if there is no connection to the server so if it initially took very long to re-connect to the WiFi it may take a while until the update finally comes in. It will eventually update. I cant hammer the device with requests permanently or it will dramatically drain your battery once your network is off.

it would be better if iPeng could send pause and skip orders and similar even if it's unsure of playlist status etc.

It does that. This is completely independent. It can't send anything if the network isn't up, though.

[local.bin]

Appreciate I am behind the curve, but where did 'New Music' and my Spotify icon go from the latest iPeng for iPhone and iPad releases?

Thanks

[pippin]

Do you maybe use an older SBS 7.5.4 or 7.6 beta build? If yes, please update!