XSqueeze - XBMC and Squeezebox, together at last!

[bossanova808]

Michael - any thoughts on what might be the best approach for a more sophisticated joining of these systems??

[mherger]

> Michael - any thoughts on what might be the best approach for a more
> sophisticated joining of these systems??

I'd second your thought from earlier in that thread:

"But for 99.9% of people, Squeezeslave does very well indeed."

--

Michael

[Davidg1]

I'd second your thought from earlier in that thread:

"But for 99.9% of people, Squeezeslave does very well indeed."

--

Michael

Really? You think the desire for streaming services on Squeezebox is that low? Certainly there seems to be lots of active discussion around the various streaming apps.

I agree some of this is supported in other ways in XBMC but for Squeezebox users the advantages of multi-room control and synchronised (semi-synchronised in the case of the PC, but still better than nothing) multi-room playback are significant.

I realise that just replacing SqueezeSlave with Squeezeplay is not going to work, but an up-to-date headless player to replace SqueezeSlave, capable of direct streaming (and other things) seems sensible and I would not have thought it would be a lot of work for the right person. I do appreciate though that is easy for me to say!

[mherger]

> I agree some of this is supported in other ways in XBMC but for
> Squeezebox users the advantages of multi-room control and synchronised
> (semi-synchronised in the case of the PC, but still better than
> nothing) multi-room playback are significant.

If the music service doesn't allow you to stream to a SB emulator/software
client, then we can't change this.

> I realise that just replacing SqueezeSlave with Squeezeplay is not

Even Squeezeplay has its limitations in this regard.

--

Michael

[Davidg1]

> I agree some of this is supported in other ways in XBMC but for
> Squeezebox users the advantages of multi-room control and synchronised
> (semi-synchronised in the case of the PC, but still better than
> nothing) multi-room playback are significant.

If the music service doesn't allow you to stream to a SB emulator/software
client, then we can't change this.

> I realise that just replacing SqueezeSlave with Squeezeplay is not

Even Squeezeplay has its limitations in this regard.

--

Michael

Yep, Squeezeplay has some limitations, but you must agree they are not as great as SqueezeSlave. Specifically, Spotify works, with Triode's plugin.

[mherger]

> Yep, Squeezeplay has some limitations, but you must agree they are not
> as great as SqueezeSlave. Specifically, Spotify works, with Triode's
> plugin.

Ok, the original statement of 99.9% was wrong. But even if it's 80%, and
bossanova had to decide whether he wanted to spend more time with his
friends and family, or implement a feature he and 80% of potential other
users might not be interested in, then guess what I would suggest him to
do.

I'm sure he'll be happy to include an improved solution if somebody is
willing to help him out. But don't expect anyone to do all the work for
you for free.

--

Michael

[Davidg1]

Yeah, of course, Michael. I don't think I was particularly moany, pushy or expectant! In fact I said that this might not be the best thread to discuss this and also said that I understood this was "easy for me to say".

On the other hand, XBMC support for Squeezebox is potentially a great step, as you indicated by joining in here. I think it is fair to say baseing it on a fragile old player

At this point it's highly unlikely that squeezeslave will ever work with the spotify plugin in it's current form. SS is at the point where every change breaks something elsewhere in the code and really needs to be rewritten. With the current state of Logitech's "support" for the SB platform, I'm not willing to invest time to do this.

is less than ideal.

In no way is this bossanova808's (or Ralphy's) fault or problem, but I guess I am hoping someone with Squeezeplay experience might be able to offer a headless option without too much work.

[ralphy]

Really? You think the desire for streaming services on Squeezebox is that low? Certainly there seems to be lots of active discussion around the various streaming apps.

Squeezeslave works with most streaming services even without direct streaming support.

If I remember correctly, Triode choose to block players that didn't support it in the spotify plugin to reduce the chance that users would capture the spotify streams to disk. That's part of the requirements to using the spotify api library.

I capture several SiriusXM late night shows with squeezeslave, so I can listen to them at a more reasonable hour.

[bossanova808]

Yeah to be honest it (squeezeslave) plays all my local radio streams fine, and here in Aus. there is very limited access to other types of streams due to onerous licensing restrictions - so I won't be putting effort into something I probably can't use anyway, realistically.

Also I repeat - the very basic two line + button approach I can use with Squeezeslave is very very easy...the other protocols are obviously more feature rich but harder work too.

My code is on googlecode @ http://code.google.com/p/bossanova808-xbmc-addons/ so anyone is very welcome to fork and run with this...

[tobiasfunke]

Hi,

Really appreciate this plugin, I'm gonna try skinning it later on. I'm using it as a remote/display for my squeezebox receivers.

Just a few questions/suggestions:

1) Is it possible to have visualization to show in the app?

2) When playing internet radio/spotify the app shows a standard squeezebox radio icon as cover art.

I just looked at some of the php code I previously experimented with (together with squeezebox json rpc) and this is how I did to get around this and display the correct cover art ($value is the array with the json "status" response):

<?php

$squeezeboxserver = "http://localhost:9000";
$id = $value['id'];
$artworkurl = $value['artwork_url'];

if(empty($artworkurl)){ 
	// artwork_url is empty, probably local playback, get the cover art with $id
	$artwork = $squeezeboxserver . "/music/" . $id . "/cover_2000x2000.jpg";
		}
		else{
		// artwork_url not empty, probably internet radio, try displaying external cover art
				$findme = "http";
				$pos = strpos($artworkurl, $findme); // look for http
				if($pos !== false) {  
					// album_url contains http, get that image
					$artwork = $artworkurl;
					 }
				else {
					// album_url does not contain http, use this to display it
					$artwork = $squeezeboxserver . "/" . $artworkurl;
				}
		}
echo "<img src=" . $artwork . " />";
?>

It was a long time ago I did this so I don't exactly remember how the json response looked, but looked today at the php output for the three different outcomes in the script and they look like this:

[1 - with empty 'album_url', just grabbing the coverart with 'id']
json response:
'id' = '28830'
'album_art' = ''
set artwork:
$artwork = "http://localhost:9000/music/28830/cover_2000x2000.jpg";

[2 - 'album_art' contains http, grabbing the http]
json response:
'album_art' = 'http://radiotime-logos.s3.amazonaws.com/s25681q.png'
set artwork:
$artwork = "http://radiotime-logos.s3.amazonaws.com/s25681q.png";

[3 - 'album_art' does not contain http, add the string to the squeezebox server url]
json response:
'album_art' = 'spotifyimage/spotify:image:f0dd4a841252c146768d8a6637a45a270ab9 13af/cover.jpg'
set artwork:
$artwork = "http://localhost:9000/spotifyimage/spotify:image:f0dd4a841252c146768d8a6637a45a270ab9 13af/cover.jpg";


Sorry if my explanation is kind of messy.