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chumbysphere forum → Product Suggestions → Audio book widget
would anyone find a widget that streams audio books on the chumby particularly useful. I for one would love it if there was a widget that streams audio books, but I'm curious about what others think about having such a widget.
Out of curiosity, are there public streams of audio books available somewhere?
there are a few, but they aren't the best sources. I'm just curious to hear about what others may think about having such a widget. would you find it useful to have an audio book widget? if you had to sign up for a service to be able to access audio books on the widget, would this be something you'd do to have access to audiobooks on your chumby?
Project Gutenberg human-read audio books http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/categories/1 is one source. -Jodi
Project Gutenberg human-read audio books http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/categories/1 is one source. -Jodi
Very interesting. I wonder if Chumby Ind. could talk to these people, very cool resource.
I may noodle around myself, but there is a streaming limitation on Chumby widgets right now.
Cheers.
One could readily create "music source" for this, however, the main issue is that Project Gutenberg does not provide a web service for the catalog (mainly for bandwidth reasons - this is a non-profit group).
However, they *do* provide the catalog in XML, which could easily be used to create a third-party webservice that serves up the catalog in bite-sized chunks - all it takes is someone to put it together and host it. I'd guess a couple of days of work for the service.
They're also not set up very well for streaming audio - their intent is that one download the audio files and store them somewhere to play them - unfortunately, a stock chumby does not have the built-in storage to hold the audio.
I'd love to see someone knock out a Project Gutenberg "music" source - however, it really needs to be done is a way that is polite to the upstream service, since they're very light on resources and heavy loads could put them out of business.
Hi Duane,
I assume when you say "music source" - that this data would be something that could only be loaded on a USB stick? I have to apologize as I have not looked in creating these. I make that assumption because we can not stream audio via a widget yet.
A random thought would be to perhaps create something like Radio Free Chumby where books could be added by the group, so as not to have every title, and the mess required to maintain it. At that point the file could be pulled down from the Project Gutenberg system (with permission, and acknowledgement of course), and then stream from my server (which has healthy bandwidth).
Any other ideas? I think audio books on the Chumby would be a pretty cool idea. 
Cheers.
edit: of course I have no idea how many people would actually use it, so maybe my bandwidth would get stomped - not sure. :x
With recent Control Panels, it's possible to create an external "music source", which acts just like the ones listed when you hit Control Panel->Music (ie, Pandora, SHOUTcast, etc). The documentation and example code for making these is on the wiki.
These "music sources", unlike regular widgets, have access to btplay and can therefore stream music. Two of the current music sources, Pandora and iheartradio, are both implemented using this functionality.
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