Topic: Music files over network

Hi!

Is it possible to listen to music files over the network? I have a NAS (QNAP 110) connected to my home network, where all my music files (mainly mp3) are located.
Can I play them with my Chumby? Is it perhaps even possible to play them with the alarm function?

Thanks!

Klaus

Re: Music files over network

Looking for the same info.
Did you ever find the answer to this?

Thanks.

Re: Music files over network

i contacted the online support and they say this is not possible directly with the Chumby.
You would need to run SqueezeBok or Slimserver on a networked computer, choose the songs or playlist you want to listen to then send that stream to the chumby.

So you would need a computer to control the music played on the chumby as there is no interface to navigate or select files to play over the network.

Unfortunate as it would be a perfect device if it could do this with a remote control as well.

Re: Music files over network

There is a QPACK for the Sqeezebox-Server at Qnap.

Just install it and use the Chumby build in Sqeezebox client to connect.

Re: Music files over network

amenophisiv wrote:

Hi!

Is it possible to listen to music files over the network? I have a NAS (QNAP 110) connected to my home network, where all my music files (mainly mp3) are located.
Can I play them with my Chumby? Is it perhaps even possible to play them with the alarm function?

Thanks!

Klaus

see
http://www.chumby.com/guide/widget/LAN%20Music

works fine from windows share but is hit and mis with some NAS boxes - dependent on chumby CIFS support

cheers

Nigel

Re: Music files over network

Does anyone know if Insignia is blocking this app on the Infocast 8"?  I followed the instructions and it seem to install from the website, but is not visable on the device.  If I click channels on the device it shows the "Lan Music" icon as the channel icon but it does not show up inside of the channel.  Seems like Insignia is doing everything it can to keep this device from connecting to the local network to play music.  sad

Re: Music files over network

kenvance wrote:

Does anyone know if Insignia is blocking this app on the Infocast 8"?  I followed the instructions and it seem to install from the website, but is not visable on the device.  If I click channels on the device it shows the "Lan Music" icon as the channel icon but it does not show up inside of the channel.  Seems like Insignia is doing everything it can to keep this device from connecting to the local network to play music.  sad

Hi Kenvance,
     I checked the config and bacause its written for chumby sized display (320 x 240) its not loadable on 8 inch device. I can change it so it will load but i have no idea how it will work.

Chumby Ind guys
     - will an app written for small screen scale / fit in top left corner on an Inforcats 8. If the answer is yes then i can chnage this in the setup.

cheers

Nigel

smile smile smile

Re: Music files over network

If you use the default settings for a movie, it should scale proportionally to fit the screen.  You can change what you want the movie to do by setting "Stage.scaleMode".

Re: Music files over network

NigelS,

Thanks for the help!  Let me know when you make the change and I will test it out.

Ken

Re: Music files over network

kenvance wrote:

NigelS,

Thanks for the help!  Let me know when you make the change and I will test it out.

Ken

Hi Ken, 
    have changed this so you can try it out now.

cheers

Nigel
smile smile smile

11 (edited by kenvance 2010-11-29 21:51:07)

Re: Music files over network

NigelS,

I have removed and reinstalled the LanMusic app but have not had much luck in getting it to run.  I get the "Error loading file list", but from what I can tell it is not running the background perl script to connect the share and parse the files to build the playlist. 

Here is what I have done do far:
-Install the pl script via USB and have confirmed it is in /psp/cgi-bin
-Run the LanMusic app, but no mus directory is created and therefor no remote share is mounted.  The lanmusicsh.tmp file is not created either.
-Reading through the perl script I can see the first set of commands that basically  unmounts an existing share and recreates it.   I can SSH into my Chumby and run the command to mount the share "mount -t cifs //borg/chumby /psp/cgi-bin/mus/ -o ro,username=guest,password=guest >> /psp/cgi-bin/lanmusicsh.tmp"  and it will mount the share but does not write anything to the tmp file.  I can use the host or ip and connect to the share since I added it to the host file.  For this test this, I created a new share on my Synology Disk Staion DS408 and validated all permissions and made sure there was only a few files/folders are in the share for the test.  NOTE:  I can manually mount the share CIFS but could not mount it NFS (my filer supports both).
- reviewed the file permissions on the tmp file and reset it to 777 and still I cannot get the commands to log in the tmp file.
- I also manually mounted the share and started the application  and do not see the expected behavior from the perl script to unumount and remount the share.  This is why I don't think the perl script is running.

Got any suggestions of other things to review?

Thanks

Ken

12 (edited by NigelS 2010-11-30 17:48:12)

Re: Music files over network

kenvance wrote:

NigelS,

I have removed and reinstalled the LanMusic app but have not had much luck in getting it to run.  I get the "Error loading file list", but from what I can tell it is not running the background perl script to connect the share and parse the files to build the playlist. 

Here is what I have done do far:
-Install the pl script via USB and have confirmed it is in /psp/cgi-bin
-Run the LanMusic app, but no mus directory is created and therefor no remote share is mounted.  The lanmusicsh.tmp file is not created either.
-Reading through the perl script I can see the first set of commands that basically  unmounts an existing share and recreates it.   I can SSH into my Chumby and run the command to mount the share "mount -t cifs //borg/chumby /psp/cgi-bin/mus/ -o ro,username=guest,password=guest >> /psp/cgi-bin/lanmusicsh.tmp"  and it will mount the share but does not write anything to the tmp file.  I can use the host or ip and connect to the share since I added it to the host file.  For this test this, I created a new share on my Synology Disk Staion DS408 and validated all permissions and made sure there was only a few files/folders are in the share for the test.  NOTE:  I can manually mount the share CIFS but could not mount it NFS (my filer supports both).
- reviewed the file permissions on the tmp file and reset it to 777 and still I cannot get the commands to log in the tmp file.
- I also manually mounted the share and started the application  and do not see the expected behavior from the perl script to unumount and remount the share.  This is why I don't think the perl script is running.

Got any suggestions of other things to review?

Thanks

Ken

Ken,
   wow that was a pretty good effort. I think your comments are spot on - the script doesnt appear to be executing. Some haphazard thoughts here - when you installed was it using the shell script provided or did you do it manually - you can get issues with unix line termination CR/LF etc. SSH usually fixes this during the transfer but its possible that it gets stuffed up from USB. Interesting that you can get redirection of output to a file e.g. >> ...tmp - that makes me wonder if the file system on that directory is weird. Your certainly on the right track - can you run the script manually using SSH - you cant pass parameters but you could hardcode them in the script as a test. Hope this helps - let me know if you find anything else and I will see if anything comes to mind.

Last minute thought - does perl run the same on your model ?

cheers

Nigel

smile smile smile

Re: Music files over network

Nigel,

I tried a few more things tonight.  I originally installed the scripts by the USB method, but I have checked the files and they came through intact.  I ran the chmod command from the shell script to be sure the permissions are correct.  In trying to get everything to work I set the permissions on the files and the cgi-bin dir to 777, but no luck.  I did find one interesting thing about the redirection command, it does work for everything but the mount command.  I can redirect ls or ps to a file with no issue but mount will not redirect, so that leads me to believe that it is not a permission issue.

I did take the perl script and comment out the $request lines and hard coded everything else with $field[0] as "FILELIST" and the script did run and create the lanmusic.tmp file.  After creating the filelist I replace the modified perl script with the original perl script and tried to see if it would read the created filelist and it can not and does not overwrite the filelist.  So for some reason I don't think the app can call the perl script.  Since I can run perl from ssh I don't think that is the issue either.

I did get one error in the command list "insmod: can't read '/drivers/cifs.ko': No such file or directory", so it can load the module. I am not sure if that is the issue as linux is not my strong point.

One thing I could try is passing the $result variable in the script to see if throws any other errors but I need to know the format of that string.

Thanks

Ken

14 (edited by NigelS 2010-12-01 01:57:49)

Re: Music files over network

kenvance wrote:

Nigel,

I tried a few more things tonight.  I originally installed the scripts by the USB method, but I have checked the files and they came through intact.  I ran the chmod command from the shell script to be sure the permissions are correct.  In trying to get everything to work I set the permissions on the files and the cgi-bin dir to 777, but no luck.  I did find one interesting thing about the redirection command, it does work for everything but the mount command.  I can redirect ls or ps to a file with no issue but mount will not redirect, so that leads me to believe that it is not a permission issue.

I did take the perl script and comment out the $request lines and hard coded everything else with $field[0] as "FILELIST" and the script did run and create the lanmusic.tmp file.  After creating the filelist I replace the modified perl script with the original perl script and tried to see if it would read the created filelist and it can not and does not overwrite the filelist.  So for some reason I don't think the app can call the perl script.  Since I can run perl from ssh I don't think that is the issue either.

I did get one error in the command list "insmod: can't read '/drivers/cifs.ko': No such file or directory", so it can load the module. I am not sure if that is the issue as linux is not my strong point.

One thing I could try is passing the $result variable in the script to see if throws any other errors but I need to know the format of that string.

Thanks

Ken

Hi Ken,
     you have been busy - a couple of points in response to the above.

1. loading cifs.ko is done to support cifs capability - as this has already worked for you it sounds like this driver gets loaded automatically - hence just comment it out. Is it possible that when this fails the script dies?
2. Cant redirect mount output - thats weird - not sure what will happen if you take out the redirect - it would be a problem if the output is sent back calling process (widget). Can you get the help for mount e.g. mount --help etc
3. The format of the important requests are as follows.

The policy file
"http://"+ipaddress+"/cgi-bin/custom/lanmusic.pl?POLICY"
this returns a small file telling flash that its okay to get content

getting a file list is
"http://"+ipaddress+"/cgi-bin/custom/lanmusic.pl?FILELIST?"
        + config_devtype + "?"
    + config_server + "?"
    + config_share + "?"
    + config_username + "?"
    + config_pwd ;

where device type = cifs and the others should be obvious

get a file to play is
"http://"+ipaddress+"/cgi-bin/custom/lanmusic.pl?FILE?"+
          songlist[currentsong] + "?" + extensiontype[tempstr];
where
songlist[currentsong] is the name of the file
extensiontype[tempstr] is the MIME type - set it to "audio/mpeg3"

the simplest way to run this is as a URL from a browser from a PC/Mac etc.

Hope this helps.

cheers

Nigel

smile smile smile

Re: Music files over network

NigelS,

Sorry for the delay between sessions as I have not had time to work on this for a while.  I tried a few things today with no success. 

I commented out the KO file and it had no effect.    I played around with trying to send commands to the chumby from a web browser but it is not responding.  I don't think he Insignia model has a web server installed.  I have not had time to install one on the device yet and can do so if you think that is the issue.  I think the underlying problem is the perl script is getting called since nothing is getting redirected lanmusicsh.tmp file and the share is not being removed or created.    I even removed all of the redirection from perl script for the mount command just in case that was killing it and it had no effect.

Thanks

Ken

Re: Music files over network

Hi NigelS and kenvance,

I also have an Insignia branded device, mine is the 3.5" one.  It does appear to have a web server built-in and running (busybox), but I'm also having some trouble with the lan music app.

Using your previous posts as a guide I was able to I was able to run the "http://"+ipaddress+"/cgi-bin/custom/lanmusic.pl?FILELIST?" command with the appropriate arguments.  Unfortunately, I get the following back;

XML Parsing Error: not well-formed
Location: http://XXXXXXX/cgi-bin/custom/lanmusic.pl?FILELIST?cifs?XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX?Music?guest?XXXXXXX
Line Number 3289, Column 82:   <File Name = "./mus/Compilations/Putumayo/Acoustic Brazil/01 - Aquele Frevo Ax?.mp3"> </File>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------^

I believe this points to a character set problem, the file in question is "01 - Aquele Frevo Axé.mp3".  My limited knowledge of such things leads me down the path of the accented e possibly being a double-byte character.

Do you have any thoughts on getting around this, short of renaming all offending files?

It doesn't sound like I have the same problem as kenvance, as at least I can see the share being mounted and can query it.  Maybe the 8" Insignia is missing some critical binaries?

Doug

17 (edited by bho 2011-03-30 19:13:49)

Re: Music files over network

fwiw  I appear to have a problem similar to Ursula's (just above) -- on a Chumby One, in this case.  The LAN Music widget keeps choking on a "Error loading file list".  The LAN Music / Chumby seems to be picking up the file list from the share ok -- and this is a cifs share on a Lacie NAS.   I can tell this by hitting the Chumby with that FILELIST?  command to the script; I get this page returned:
   This page contains the following errors:
   error on line 156 at column 4: Encoding error
   Below is a rendering of the page up to the first error.
   *there isn't anything below that line*

HOWEVER -- I can look at this error page's html source, and it has a perfectly lovely XML file starting with ?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"? MUSFiles tags --  and listing every single file in that selected share, a couple of thousand of them.  All good.

Column 4 is the opening bracket of each File Name= tag.
Line 156 is the very first listed file with a filename containing a character > 0x7F, specifically: 0xeb or the ë character (if that doesn't show up here: e with an umlaut)

Interestingly, the file list contains files with  ' escaped, i.e. %27 -- but all sorts of "high ASCII" characters are just there as is.  Opera and Icelandic singers are the real offenders here!

So close!  Can anything be done?

[ADDENDUM a little while later]
Adding ,iocharset=utf8  to the mount command's -o options makes the XML error go away when hitting the script with the FILELIST? command from a web browser.  And sure enough, looking at the generated XML, the  ë character formerly encoded as 0xeb in a single octet is now nicely UTF-8'd into two octets: 0xc3 0xab -- but, sadly, this doesn't seem to make the LAN Music widget any happier: it still craps out with "Error loading the file list", even though the file list is now (apparently) well-formed UTF-8 encoding as promised by the xml header tag.