Have audio-stream and json track-info feed - Want LMS plugin for KCRW Eclectic24 !?!

[Stig Nygaard]

Hi!

Until recently KCRW Eclectic24 had "built-in" track-info in their audiostream - At least when streamed via TuneIn Radio. However track-info disappeared a month or two ago.
The station is great for discovering new music, and is generally very much in my taste. And I greatly miss playing the station with "now playing" track-info on my squeezebox.

The audiostream is here:

http://media.kcrw.com/pls/kcrwmusic.pls
(https://help.kcrw.com/s/article/How-...y-music-device)

And I found json feed with track info here:
https://tracklist-api.kcrw.com/Music/all/1?page_size=5
(or jsonp, but probably not very relevant in this case: https://tracklist-api.kcrw.com/Music...ack=eclectic24)

And I thought it cannot be the first time there's an audiostream and a json feed with trackinfo. Someone must already have combined an audiostream and a json track-info feed into a LMS plugin playing the audio while showing track info? With a little luck you could create a new Eclectic24 plug-in by replacing stream and feed URLs and do a few adjustments to json parsing adating to the format from KCRW's json-feed?

Would be nice if scrobbling in "radio mode" (not permanently stored in my last.fm profile) was supported too. But could easily live without that :-)

Any such thing out there which somebody maybe could modify to work with KCRW Eclectic 24?

I have no knowledge about LMS plugins or Perl myself, but *maybe* I could even create one myself if there was a "skeleton plug-in" I was allowed and able to modify like described.

/Stig

[Paul Webster]

I think I can make that work as I handle json NowPlaying info in my Radio France and the new Supla Radio plugin.
I’ll take a look tomorrow.

[Stig Nygaard]

I’ll take a look tomorrow.

That is super cool Paul!
I'll cross my fingers it will work :-)

/Stig

[Paul Webster]

I have the basics working ... will upload something Tuesday morning UK time.

[Paul Webster]

Here is a first version - add the following repo to your LMS plugins and then enable "KCRW Track Information".

They do not give the expected end time / duration of tracks so showing the currently playing one after a track change can take a few seconds.

You should see artist, title and artwork.
In the More area you should see Year, Label and album as well.

It might also show the tracks when the programme "Morning Becomes Eclectic" is on the main KCRW station.
However, you will lose the programme information at other times ... so you can disable that from the settings.

For now, I have left all of the settings that I have for Radio France - not all are appropriate for this one but they don't hurt things.

Repository (will probably change if/when this gets released)
http://www.dabdig.co.uk/slimserver-rep/repo-kcrw.xml

[Stig Nygaard]

Here is a first version

Thanks so very much. I'm at work right now (actually from home, but I guess I'm not meant to start fiddling with my LMS and plugins right now ;-) ).
But looking very much forward to try it after work! :-)

[Paul Webster]

You could try it while at your sønderjysk kaffebord

[Stig Nygaard]

You could try it while at your sønderjysk kaffebord

Unfortunately (maybe luckily?) we do not get that many sønderjysk kaffebord in Copenhagen. Have you been to Sønderjylland and tried it?

Have just installed your plugin. At first I was a bit confused. Couldn't find the plugin in My Apps. Then I started my existing Eclectic24 "bookmark" in Favorites, and the artwork and trackinfo immediately appears! So the plugin automatically detects and hooks up on any playing audio-stream I guess? Nice :-)
And track-info actually appears to change pretty fast, sometimes immediately. Also very cool I can see trackinfo for The Morning Becomes Eclectic show on the main channel.

I cannot see where I can find the Label info. But maybe I haven't studied the More area good enough. And anyway, it is the least important detail.

I have two players. An RPi3 in the livingroom and a "real" SB Touch in the bedroom. I noticed the trackinfo seems to change less reliably on a player if it is not the one I have selected in LMS-UI on my webbrowser/PC. It could be a coincidence, I will try investigate it a bit more... But usually I'm only listening on player in livingroom and have my LMS-UI connected to that. So not much of an issue for me in reality.

I think it's really great work. Thanks a lot :-)

I owe you a bottle of something. I'll send you a private message...

[Paul Webster]

I also played Morning Becomes Eclectic as soon as it started (still listening) and was really pleased that it worked as well.

In Settings/Plugins things are listed alphabetically and this one is "KCRW Track Information".

I'll add in KCRW Santa Barbara just for completeness (largely simulcast of KCRW).

But I need to work out a way to show programme information when no songs are listed ... I have an idea for how to do it but do not want to praise their schedules web page otherwise people who are used to seeing some programme info via TuneIn would be disappointed (although you can tell the plugin not to interfere with the main KCRW at all).

[Paul Webster]

Just in case you wondered why it is not showing what is playing right now ... I think it is because they have a problem with the timestamps in their data.
As I write this it is 07:23 in UK (06:23 UTC) and in California it 23:23 (PDT) ... but their timestamps are for a few hours earlier. so my code does not show the song because it would be way to long ...
I'll check it a few times during the day to see when this goes back to normal and then again check tomorrow ... perhaps things go wrong when the requester is in a different day to their site.

          'datetime' => '2020-04-14T19:23:58-07:00',
          'program_end' => '21:00',
          'program_start' => '18:00',
          'program_title' => '6 - 9pm',
          'time' => '07:23 PM',