Announce: Album Flow applet/screensaver for Radio/Touch/Controller

[erland]

A first beta version of the Album Flow applet and screensaver for Squeezebox Controller/Touch/Radio is now ready for usage. It uses similar principle as Apple Cover Flow on iPod or Mac to scroll through all your albums.

See the following wiki page for more information:
http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/Album_Flow_applet

NOTE!
Since this is a beta version it's only available in my testing repository so you need to setup this manually:

http://erlandplugins.googlecode.com/svn/repository/trunk/testing.xml

It's installed by going to "Settings/Advanced/Applet Installer" on the Touch, Radio or Controller. In the Applet Installer you will find a "Album Flow" applet which you need to install.

To use it you either enter "My Music/Album Flow" or activate it as a screen saver under the Settings menu on your Touch/Radio/Controller. Please note that at the moment the "My Music" menu is only supported on Controller and Radio (I haven't got the touch input to work yet, so Squeezebox Touch only supports screen saver mode).

There are still a lot of things left before I like to consider this finished, for example:
- Support for context menus
- Support for shown tracks on an album (currently the browse view only supports to click play to start to play an album)
- Support for browsing using a Squeezebox Touch
- Improve the zooming/scrolling so it's perspective correct
- Improve performance, browsing is still a bit sluggish but screensaver looks pretty good.

Some screen shots follows below, although they really don't do it justice. It's still a bit sluggish but still it looks a lot more impressive when it animates when used in reality.

Of course this is still just a beta version so it doesn't look as nice as the Apple version yet.

Feedback or bug reports are very welcome

[epoch1970]

Do I have the 1st download ??

A very short test on my Controller, obviously.

A few ideas:
- implement some acceleration when the dial has been rotated for a while ? or use keys to jump at the beginning of a letter ?
- start by displaying the CD image as a placeholder, and fill that with the image only when the CPU has enough time to do it. This is how coverflow works, I think. (my Controller has rebooted when I was writing this. Feeling exhausted after so much exercise, maybe
- could the "front" cover zoom to a larger size on the Controller ?
- what about a vertical bar on a side of the screen, with a cursor showing the current position ?

That's a neat project. Congratulations.

[MeSue]

Pretty cool!

[MeSue]

Oops... after about 3 minutes running as Screensaver on the Touch, it crashed the Touch.

Erland, do you know if there is already an open enhancement about having to reinstall applets after every firmware update?

Now it just crashed the Touch again. I'm going to let it run one more time to see if crashes on the same album...

Can you add random sorting to your list of to-dos?

Edit: It's not crashing at exactly the same point every time, but within 3-5 albums. It also crashed the Radio at about the same place. Most of my covers are ~600 pixels, but I try to get them larger when I can find larger. It seems to always crash on or shortly after "A Day at the Races" and that cover is 945 pixels.

Edit2: I was prompted to send a crash report to Logitech, which I did. I don't know if you're able to access those crash reports, but they might have some clues.

[bluegaspode]

I really like it !

Could you implement that it respects the configured album order ?
For the normal album list you can change it under 'Settings->Advanced->Albums Sort Methode' and I have it on 'Artist, Year, Album'

[Philip Meyer]

What order do the albums rotate in - album sort name order? Can it be configured? I'd like random, I think, otherwise I'm never likely to see albums past albums beginning with A.

[ModelCitizen]

What order do the albums rotate in - album sort name order? Can it be configured? I'd like random, I think, otherwise I'm never likely to see albums past albums beginning with A.

I've just tried this on a controller. It's great. Things I'd prefer are:

* Larger artwork when it's right in front of you with more overlap until then
* Smaller text with less gap between the two lines
* Smoother flow (it's a bit jerky for me)

Overall I'd like to see more artwork on my screen.

I'll definitely use this.

Oops, it just crashed my controller.... at least I assume it was coverflow as my controller has never crashed before.

MC

[MeSue]

What order do the albums rotate in - album sort name order? Can it be configured? I'd like random, I think, otherwise I'm never likely to see albums past albums beginning with A.

Yes, it's alphabetical by album name. I haven't seen any albums past A because that's where it keeps crashing on me.

It's a great start, though. It will definitely become my off screensaver on the Touch if the crashing gets sorted out.

An option to disable certain genres would be nice, so I don't have to see all hubby's country crooners in the rotation.

[erland]

I suspect the crashing might be caused by larger libraries than mine, how many albums do you have ?

My touch has been running the screen saver slideshow for hours but it only shows a 258 album library.

[ModelCitizen]

how many albums do you have?

2041

mc