• From: Seattle and Los Angeles
  • Registered: 2008-01-04
  • Posts: 102

Topic: Nicecast?

Anybody gotten the Chumby to work with it?  I'm just trying to grab my iTunes stream on my LAN and feed it to the Chumby.  I can get Quicktime to play the streams just fine; the Chumby, on the other hand, coughs and spits and pops and wheezes and refuses to play.  And yes, it'll play other internet radio no fuss no muss.  And no, I couldn't quite get Slim Server to talk to it, either.  Tried M3U (the local URL Nicecast generates is http://10.0.1.200:8000/listen.m3u ) and MP3, neither of which work worth a crap.  Any thoughts?

Yeah, Nicecast costs money and Slim Server doesn't.  SS is grunty, though - every time I add music I have to deal with SS being all pokey and not paying attention.  *and* the interface is stupendously ugly.  iTunes is what I use to manage my mp3s, Nicecast lets me treat the Chumby like an Airport Express with speakers and that's cool.

Seth

Slave to the Light, Inc.
Los Angeles & Seattle USA
www.slavetothelight.com

slave2thelight's Website

  • Duane
  • Duane
  • Blue Octy
  • Offline
  • From: San Diego, CA
  • Registered: 2006-08-24
  • Posts: 8,203

Re: Nicecast?

Could you please post the *contents* of one of these m3u files (download it and open in a text editor)?

Duane's Website

  • From: Seattle and Los Angeles
  • Registered: 2008-01-04
  • Posts: 102

Re: Nicecast?

I *think* I know what you're asking for.  It simply gives me http://76.86.196.84:8000/listen.  When I went in and edited the stream address on the Chumby and took away the .m3u, I got audio!  But wickedly choppy, ugly audio.

When it streams *nothing* it reports the listener as "Mozilla /5.0 (compatible; U, linux,Chumby" or something like that; it drops it when I hook it up in a way that works (for example, by ditching ".m3u" from the stream title).  When it's *working* it reports as "Neptune/0.7.0".  I've tried it as mp3, m3u, ogg and pls (just for fun, ya kna). 

No combination of bitrate, frequency or CPU load makes the choppiness stop.  This choppiness is nowhere evidenced when I cue it up in Quicktime (on the same machine, a brand new Mac Mini, or on my 4mo-old Macbook laptop).  I've tried 8khz 8kbps mono and 192kbps 48kHz stereo; the glitches remain virtually unchanged.

Here's a start/stop as MP3 (which works) as reported by Nicecast's console:

[2008-02-04  17:16:49] INFO source/source_main listener count on /listen now 1
10.0.1.199 - - [04/Feb/2008:17:16:51 -0800] "GET /listen HTTP/1.0" 200 17032 "-" "Neptune/0.7.0" 2
[2008-02-04  17:16:51] INFO source/source_main listener count on /listen now 0
[2008-02-04  17:16:52] INFO source/source_main listener count on /listen now 1
10.0.1.199 - - [04/Feb/2008:17:17:24 -0800] "GET /listen HTTP/1.0" 200 509862 "-" "Neptune/0.7.0" 32
[2008-02-04  17:17:24] INFO source/source_main listener count on /listen now 0

...and here's an abort as m3u (which doesn't work) as reported by the same console:

[2008-02-04  17:19:42] INFO source/source_main listener count on /listen now 1
[2008-02-04  17:19:44] INFO source/source_main listener count on /listen now 2
10.0.1.199 - - [04/Feb/2008:17:20:11 -0800] "GET /listen HTTP/1.1" 200 455164 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; U; Chumby; Linux) Flash Lite 3.0.2" 29
[2008-02-04  17:20:11] INFO source/source_main listener count on /listen now 1
10.0.1.199 - - [04/Feb/2008:17:20:11 -0800] "GET /listen HTTP/1.1" 200 429964 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; U; Chumby; Linux) Flash Lite 3.0.2" 27
[2008-02-04  17:20:11] INFO source/source_main listener count on /listen now 0


Any thoughts?  There's a number of nifty audio apps I use that I'd love to be able to throw at the Chumby and for forty bucks... dunno.  I've always liked Rogue Amoeba, if only for the name.  ;-)

Slave to the Light, Inc.
Los Angeles & Seattle USA
www.slavetothelight.com

slave2thelight's Website

  • Duane
  • Duane
  • Blue Octy
  • Offline
  • From: San Diego, CA
  • Registered: 2006-08-24
  • Posts: 8,203

Re: Nicecast?

OK, I've download Nicecast, and it seems to be working fine for me.

What I did was enter the local address of the Nicecast server, not the public address, set the URL to that of the listen.m3u file, and made sure I set the "M3U" radio button in the New Stream dialog.

So, for example, if the IP of your Mac is 10.1.0.100 on your LAN, you'd enter "http://10.1.0.100:8000/listen.m3u" in the URL line.  You can get your local IP in the System Preferences, or enter "ifconfig" at a Terminal prompt.

Use the public IP only if you're hitting the Nicecast server from outside your local network - and you may have to open and forward ports if you have a firewall.  Using the public IP from behind your router is shovelling data across your router and cable/DSL modem for no reason at all, which is probably causing the stuttering.  Some consumer routers choke on this altogether.

"Neptune" is the user-agent for btplay.

Duane's Website

  • From: Seattle and Los Angeles
  • Registered: 2008-01-04
  • Posts: 102

Re: Nicecast?

Should have clarified; I'm using the local.  However, when I saved the .m3u, it gave me the above.

I also don't think it's streaming out to the world; Rogue Amoeba's "server check" doesn't find it.  Again, my laptop on my LAN does...

(20 minutes of meddling ensues)

So okay.  I tried messing with where the server broadcasts from.  I messed with bandwidth.  I messed wth frequency.  iTunes and Nicecast both crashed on me once.  It *seems* that if I run Nicecast at the *identical* encode as the MP3, and start from nothing, it works (ish).  If I downconvert or run VBR, it grenades.  Worse, once I've grenaded it it never gets better again.  Most interesting, the CPU load I'm getting out of Activity Monitor is minimal; I'm reading 6-8% on both iTunes and Nicecast with maybe 200MB of memory between the two of them (I've got a gig and the only other thing running is Finder).

It seems to have plenty of headroom on the encode... and again, it sounds just *fine* on my laptop.  Is the internet radio on the Chumby starved for resources?  Dropping packets or something?  Do I need to figure out how to sneak in there and up its RAM?  ;-)

One more thought:  It's all running through an Airport Extreme.  The Mini is wired CAT5.  Don't think I'm using the WAN port.  MP3s are streaming from an Airport Disk through the USB port on the Airport Extreme.

Seth

Slave to the Light, Inc.
Los Angeles & Seattle USA
www.slavetothelight.com

slave2thelight's Website

  • Duane
  • Duane
  • Blue Octy
  • Offline
  • From: San Diego, CA
  • Registered: 2006-08-24
  • Posts: 8,203

Re: Nicecast?

Dunno what to tell you - I just streamed a 30 minute playlist from a MacBook Pro to an chumby running the same firmware you have, both on the same Wifi network hosted by a Linksys WRT54G (WEP-40 encryption) with default settings in Nicecast.  The songs were all purchased from iTMS so they're transcoded on the host.  This is at the Chumby office, which is a brutal Wifi environment because of all the chumbys on the network (23 at the moment), some of which are running "wet paint" software.

No stuttering or skipping.

Duane's Website

  • From: Seattle and Los Angeles
  • Registered: 2008-01-04
  • Posts: 102

Re: Nicecast?

Huh.  I'll take it up with Rogue Amoeba and report back.  Thanks, Duane!

Seth

Slave to the Light, Inc.
Los Angeles & Seattle USA
www.slavetothelight.com

slave2thelight's Website

  • From: Seattle and Los Angeles
  • Registered: 2008-01-04
  • Posts: 102

Re: Nicecast?

Duane - I've been battling Nicecast with the Rogue Amoeba guys for a few days.  Funny thing:  The Nicecast stream goes out to my Macbook, which coughs and sputters and "Rebuffers stream" and then is fine.  Oddly enough, sometimes when the Macbook has rebuffered the stream, the Chumby is *fine.*  Not always, but sometimes.  It's as if it just needed a nudge and now it's dandy.  Is there any way to rebuffer streams in Neptune?  Anything I might do to make things more robust Chumbyside?  Is it looking for any particular formatting of stream?  I haven't had any particular luck with any stream depth; it really seems to be happenstance as to whether or not the Chumby is going to work with it or not (like a transmission with gears that just won't mesh but sometimes you hit it just right and it locks in).

I'd *really* like to make this work.  There's a really cool ocean waves generator that doesn't rely on recordings that I'd love to stream overnight, and there's no way I can hit it with Slim Server...

Rogue Amoeba has been really helpful (currently running a development build of Nicecast and I haven't even given them any money yet) but I think they're a little unsure what to do with Chumby as a client.

Thanks, Duane!

Slave to the Light, Inc.
Los Angeles & Seattle USA
www.slavetothelight.com

slave2thelight's Website

  • Duane
  • Duane
  • Blue Octy
  • Offline
  • From: San Diego, CA
  • Registered: 2006-08-24
  • Posts: 8,203

Re: Nicecast?

I don't know if there's a way to modify the buffer size in btplay - we'll ask the upstream developer.

The Nicecast guys could just buy a chumby - they're cheap.  The source code is all available so they can see in some detail what's going on if they like.

Duane's Website

  • From: Seattle and Los Angeles
  • Registered: 2008-01-04
  • Posts: 102

Re: Nicecast?

So.  Apparently

"Updated chumby BlueTune player. The update contains fixes for playback of streaming MP3 files, mono recorded audio files, plus other minor fixes from BlueTune."

in the new firmware update made it work hella better.  All is now well with the world.  AWESOME!  This opens up all sorts of annoying possibilities... it gives the Chumby the feature set of an Airport Express... with programmable events.  I'm crackin' my knuckles...

Incidentally, despite what the firmware update sticky says, it didn't blow away "my streams."  You guys are too modest.

Seth

Slave to the Light, Inc.
Los Angeles & Seattle USA
www.slavetothelight.com

slave2thelight's Website

  • From: Chicago, IL
  • Registered: 2007-11-11
  • Posts: 235

Re: Nicecast?

I noticed that as well. I went through the process of backing everything up on to a USB stick, but was happy to find that I did not need it. Better safe than sorry. In the release notes it says that if you install the update over the USB flash disk it will wipe all settings out, so I guess it just depends.

-HuckFinn