So, i just pushed out the Tspigot Radio Guide widget into the public sphere..

Currently, none of the music streams show Now Playing content (or other meta-data) on the Chumby... So i went ahead and whipped up a widget to do just that for Tspigot Radio (a internet stream i run with a group of friends in our spare time, ie. while at work).

Here's what it does:

The default screen displays:  Current Show Title, Current Show Description, Spinning (genre tag), Listeners to stream, Track Duration, Track Title, Artist, Album, Tags (genre tags used for creating playlists for shows), Score (rating by tspigot radio admins), Comments (random comments about a track by tspigot radio admins).

Buttons on main screen:  "Now Playing" and "Schedule".  Clicking the blue "Now Playing" button will take you to the Queued Tracks screen.  If there are any tracks in the queue, it will display them.  Clicking the "Schedule" button takes you to the list of Scheduled Shows for the day.  Everyday there are different shows at different times with different djs, so check them out and tune into your favorite ones.

Known Bugs:   (1) Some fields display "undefined" in Virtual Chumby, but DO WORK properly on a real Chumby.  (2) occasionally attempting to click "now playing" or "schedule" buttons causes screen to quickly switch back to main screen, causing you to play a tug of war to advance to the screen you want displayed.  (3)  i find it works best to create a separate channel with only this one widget in it, if you want a constant display whats playing.

Behind the Scenes:  I am NOT pulling any meta-data from the stream itself.  Tspigot Radio has a funky setup that allowed me to hack this up.  To begin with, all mp3s are associated with a mysql server that contains IDv3 track info + other data fields.  The streaming server is running Icecast, which is administered via code in a MOO environment (MOO = MUD Object Orientated, ie. we're controlling the radio stream from within a text-based role playing game).  The data used by the Tspigot Radio Guide widget is outputted to rss feed via PHP (for the Now Playing track info) and via MOO-code using the embedded webserver in the MOO core.  (it is the rss feeds from the MOO that appear as "undefined" in the Virtual Chumby, known bug #1 above).

CHUMBY ADMINS:  You might want to tag this widget as [MATURE], as there are occasional "naughty" words displayed in song titles and track comments.