1 (edited by wrybread 2008-03-06 17:09:26)

Topic: A good start to making a college/community radio tuner

I posted this in the widgets forum but I think it's more applicable here since apparently Chumby's version of Flash can't stream MP3s.

College radio stations are constantly changing the URLs of their shoutcasts, so I made a database to keep them updated and for other programs to easily interface with. It just includes college, community and internet-only streams that I've found to be good, and are mostly all high bitrate. The idea is the DB is somewhat human filtered, as opposed to the automated chaos of iTunes and Shoutcast.com.

Here's one project I made from it, plotting each station on a google map. The icons are the actual locations of the radio towers as listed in the FCC database:
http://radiogizmo.org/map

Here's another project:
http://gizmoware.net/radioactive

There's lots of ways to access the streams. For example I can listen to WFMU like this:
http://radiogizmo.org/wfmu
http://radiogizmo.org/play.php?station=wfmu

Playlist of all stations:
http://radiogizmo.org/play.php?station=all
http://radiogizmo.org/all

XML files:
http://radiogizmo.org/xml.php
http://radiogizmo.org/map/gps.php

You can currently use the database from the Chumby by going to My Streams then add a station, select PLS file and type a URL like gizmoradio.org/wfmu. Unfortunately playing random streams doesn't seem to work since the My Streams program apparently caches the PLS file, but this would normally play a random station: http://gizmoradio.org/random

Anyway, I gather that development of sharable programs for the Chumby is somewhat of a closed garden, so if anyone in that garden wants to make a college/community radio tuner and needs an easily accessible and updated database of college and community radio stations, there you go.

There's more notes on how to access the database here: http://gizmoradio.org/map/#notes , and email me (wrybread at gmail dot you know what) if you need access to the DB in any other way.

Re: A good start to making a college/community radio tuner

The chumby's Flash Lite Player will cache an HTTP response for 5 minutes if you do not provide a Cache-control header.

If you want to defeat the cache, simply configure your server to set the header to "Cache-control: no-cache".

Re: A good start to making a college/community radio tuner

> If you want to defeat the cache, simply configure your server to set the header to "Cache-control: no-cache".

Awesome! Thanks hugely, random station now works from the Chumby.

4 (edited by wrybread 2008-03-06 23:07:56)

Re: A good start to making a college/community radio tuner

Been playing with BTPlay, and apparently it wants the URL of the stream itself, as opposed to a PLS. I made an interface for it, accessible in either of these two ways:

btplay http://radiogizmo.org/query.php?station=kdvs

or

btplay http://radiogizmo.org/chumby/kdvs

All the stations listed on radiogizmo.org are accessible like that.

Also, guessing I'm not the only one who'll find this command useful: you can control the volume of the chumby from SSH with for example "chumby_set_volume 80".