ANNOUNCE: Group Players

[philippe_44]

Here is a plugin which adds a new type of players to LMS: Group Players

A Group Player is a new player that you can create using the plugin settings. Each Group Player represents an arbitrary set of real SB players and you can create as many Group Players as you want

They will appear in LMS like any other "real" player but as soon as you start to play on a Group Player, all the real players (the "members") will be assembled in a synchronization group and will play together.

When a Group Player is stopped or paused, the group is immediately disassembled. It's really on-the-fly LMS group creation. Of course, a real SB Player can be member of multiple groups, there is no limitation in combinations.

For example, you can have a Group Player named ‘Master Bedroom’ made of a SB and a Duet, a Group Player named ‘1st Floor’ that contains these two plus a Boom and a last Group Player named ‘Whole House’ which adds another Boom and a duet.

You can also think about "scenes" where a Group Player is more dedicated to a type of usage, rather than to a topology of players. For example when you listen to Podcasts, you might want a certain set of SB to play across the whole house, but not all of them, then just create another Group Player named "Podcast"

Starting with version 0.6.1, it's possible to manually synchronize a "real" player with a Group Player. It's an option which is disabled by default as it can be a bit confusing. Such extra player is not part of the group, for example it's volume remains independant. It should be used for temporary additions to a Group, but if such extra player should always be a member, then add it in the Settings

Version 0.6.1 adds as well some compatibility with playlist transfer plugin like Music Walk With Me or iPeng player's transfers. It's not as smooth as between players, though. It is not compatible with Triode's Switch Player plugin, but I've created a version 0.4 that adds compatibility. It's called "Switch Player (Groups compatible)". You must remove Triode's version first. For iPeng, as of Group Players 0.6.2 and iPeng 9.5.1, you cannot switch a Group Player to one of its members (need to use MWWM of SwitchPlayer plugins) and when you want to switch a Group to another player, *never* use one of the members to start from, always start from the Group Player (master) itself. We'll work with @pippin to improve that

That's pretty much about it. A Group Player shall be seen by LMS as any other SB player, so - in theory - everything that works with a player should work with a group

You cannot have nested Group Players - DON’T TRY - there is some protection against that, but it's not fool proof, just DON'T
The stable version is now part of the 3rd party plugin built-in list, so you should find it in the plugins page. If you want to test the development version (there is not always one on-going), just add the following repository

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/lms-plugins-philippe44/dev/repo-sf.xml

A few more details

• Volume of a Group Player is the average of the volume of each players. Changes made to the Group Player are applied to each player with the same ratio. To set all member's volume at the same level, just set the Group Player Volume to 0 then set it to the desired volume.
• The Volume settings of each member only applies when the group is assembled. The values before the "gathering" happened are restored when the group breaks up.
• Powering on/off the Group Player powers on/off all members. This can be disabled in Settings
• Initial power state will be restored when the group is broken up
• Member’s playlists are restored after group is broken up
• In LMS Settings, Player tab, you can change group memberships & members. You can also create a stereo pair only when two players are assembled as a Group

More details and special cases:

• Powering on/off a member has no effect on the Group Player. A powered off member will restart playing when powered back on but only if it was already on when the gathering started
• When pausing a member, the Group Player stops but the group is *not* broken up and this is the only exception. It is assumed that resume with occur later using one of the members (for example using pause button on Radio or a Boom). Be careful with that, do not try to change playlist
• When stopping (or clearing playlist) of a member, only that member stops, the rest of the gathering continues without that member. That allows you to start playing something on that player without affecting the other members
• So if you change the playlist of a member, only that member will be affected. You must change the Group Player if you want all to be affected.
• When a member is separated from an active Group by playing something different on it, the Group will not re-claim it at next playlist change unless that member is idle.
• If a member was part of a LMS sync group before the Group Player started, it is re-affected to that group when the gathering is broken up. If that LMS sync group is playing then the ex-member will be powered off (otherwise it would start playing what’s on the group, which could be inconvenient)
  This re-assembly can be disabled (which I prefer)
• If a member was not connected when a Group Player started to play, it will not join the group whenconnecting. You must pause/resume the Group Player
• If a member belongs to Group Player A and B and a track is started on B while A was playing, the member moves to B without interrupting the playback on A. Note that when B finished, this Player will NOT be re-affected to A. Now, if a play/resume/playlist change happen on A, then that member will be re-affected to A. Basically, whoever came last wins the member

Note that synchronization might be off for a fraction of a second when starting to play while the gathering happens

One very interesting trick: when many players are assembled together using LMS regular synchronization feature, network bandwidth might be badly affected when playing hi-res files. It’s always possible to limit bitrate of players, but limitation will apply even when they play standalone.

As a Group Player is seen by LMS as yet another player, it is possible to limit its bitrate, in which case LMS will only apply the limitation when all the members play together, but not individually

And many thanks to Michael for his help, advices and code contributions

[drmatt]

Nice!


Transcoded from Matt's brain by Tapatalk

[Simon_rb]

This awesome! I was just searching for this! I was about to reply in a previous thread where you said you were thinking about making a plugin an here it is!

Trying it now!

[Simon_rb]

Long shot and prob not possible however thought I'd ask anyways. Is there anyway of Caching the playlists on players before the get drafted to the Group then when they are released back to being on their own then the cached/saved playlist is restored? Just an idea.

Working great here. I love that they can be synced and then I can play something an individual player in the group. Pretty handy.

Cheers

[gegen]

Hi Philippe,

Thanks very much for this plugin, works great and have been using it all the time over the last couple of weeks!

Any chance of a new selection in settings that would disable the auto volume settings, so that for example I could
have the group player set at 100 and then control volume individually on each squeezebox instance without affecting
the others?

Thanks again!

[philippe_44]

Hi Philippe,

Thanks very much for this plugin, works great and have been using it all the time over the last couple of weeks!

Any chance of a new selection in settings that would disable the auto volume settings, so that for example I could
have the group player set at 100 and then control volume individually on each squeezebox instance without affecting
the others?

Thanks again!

I don't understand what you mean by each squeezebox instance. You can, if you want, change the volume of one player it has no influence on other members. All you see is the volume of the Group Player changing, but that does not impact the others. Only if you touch the Group Player volume does it change all members

[philippe_44]

Long shot and prob not possible however thought I'd ask anyways. Is there anyway of Caching the playlists on players before the get drafted to the Group then when they are released back to being on their own then the cached/saved playlist is restored? Just an idea.

Working great here. I love that they can be synced and then I can play something an individual player in the group. Pretty handy.

Cheers

Can you try 0.3.0 in the dev repo, it should do the trick

[Simon_rb]

Can you try 0.3.0 in the dev repo, it should do the trick

Works a treat! Top top man. Doesn't appear to restore playlists to players that are sync'd together before they are grabbed by the Group Player. Therefore I will not leave any players sync'd from now on and just rely on the "Groups" to do my syncing.

With that said I have a couple more ideas to make it all a bit smoother with my setup (might be useful to others I don't know).

1. Is it possible that when you turn on the "Group" player that if a slave player is playing that it grabs that playlist? Reason I say that is if I'm playing to the Lounge Radio instead of the group then want to turn the Radio on in the Kitchen to listen to same song then I would have to load iPeng or the LMS web ui to sync them. I currently use Siri for everything so I could say turn on "All Players" which would turn on the group which would grab the players and then grab the playlist from the currently playing player as it grabs it. Then I can say turn on the "Kitchen Radio". Hope that makes sense!

2. This is related to Shaire tunes so I'll post over there.

If you think the above is a waste of time, of that you think its not possible then doesn't matter as its working great so far and I'm sure I can manage with the way it is hehe

Can't thank you enough or all your efforts with this and with the other plugins. You have kept old and discontinued products alive and current. Same thanks goes to Michael for his help, particularly keeping LMS updated with fixes and his fabulous Spotty app - who would of thought Spotify Connect on our ageing LMS products!! Thank you all!

[slartibartfast]

I just tried setting a playlist which was an album as an alarm on a Group Player consisting of two Radios. At the time the alarm went off one Radio was on the other was off. After the alarm went off I turned on the second Radio and expected the second Radio to synchronise with the first Radio. The first Radio continued to play but the second Radio made no attempt to synchronise and remained silent. I have tried this three times now and the second Radio has successfully synchronised twice and failed to even try once. Any ideas?

Sent from my Pixel 3a using Tapatalk

[philippe_44]

I just tried setting a playlist which was an album as an alarm on a Group Player consisting of two Radios. At the time the alarm went off one Radio was on the other was off. After the alarm went off I turned on the second Radio and expected the second Radio to synchronise with the first Radio. The first Radio continued to play but the second Radio made no attempt to synchronise and remained silent. I have tried this three times now and the second Radio has successfully synchronised twice and failed to even try once. Any ideas?

Sent from my Pixel 3a using Tapatalk

You can't do that. You either choose the option to power on all members on play or members won't join when the are powered on later as they were not part of the group at the first place