• Registered: 2007-12-19
  • Posts: 8

Topic: Music visualization widget(s) would be great

I'd love to see a music vis widget for the Chumby that worked with whatever audio was playing on the device (Shoutcast stations, music from USB stick, Slimserver or whatever). Or even a series of different vis widgets that could be combined in a channel to give the device MilkDrop/Gforce-style variety. (Or maybe even a music vis engine built into the next version of the firmware that could then open the way for more simple vis widget creation.)

  • From: St Ives, Cornwall, UK
  • Registered: 2008-01-18
  • Posts: 435

Re: Music visualization widget(s) would be great

What we would need is for the control panel to expose current information about the music playing.

But really, I'm left wondering if the Chumby is powerful enough?

View widgets by gingerbeardman

gingerbeardman's Website

  • Registered: 2007-12-19
  • Posts: 8

Re: Music visualization widget(s) would be great

Oh, I figured that given you can now get basic music vis on mobile phones, Chumby should be able to handle it too (granted, with the relevant Control Panel upgrades and a bit of nifty development work). Aren't there fairly 'processing-light' beat-detection algorithms around these days? But, hey, I'm not a developer, so you may well be right about the lack of necessary horsepower. In which case, perhaps it's something to put on the back-burner until a souped-up "Chumby 2" emerges. (Incidentally - nice to see another UK Chumby user!)

  • Registered: 2008-02-29
  • Posts: 1

Re: Music visualization widget(s) would be great

Second on the visualizer + basic controls and song info on a widget.

I feel that the basic controls + song info should at least be a semi-transparent overlay on all widgets, maybe the bottom 1/5 of the screen.  The controls can be called up whenever the screen is touched.

  • Duane
  • Duane
  • Blue Octy
  • Offline
  • From: San Diego, CA
  • Registered: 2006-08-24
  • Posts: 8,197

Re: Music visualization widget(s) would be great

gingerbeardman wrote:

What we would need is for the control panel to expose current information about the music playing.

Well, it actually does - if music is playing, the Control Panel will expose certain information to the widget when it is launched:

_root._chumby_music_source_selector - the internal token for the source - 'ipod', 'shoutcast', 'mediafly' etc
_root._chumby_music_source_name - a more conventional name for the music source - 'iPod', 'SHOUTcast', 'Mediafly' etc
_root._chumby_music_source_label - the label of the currently playing music, as seen on the Music screen
_root._chumby_music_source_state - an XML fragment describing the state of the current source

I'm looking into making more of this kind of information available to widgets, within the boundaries of security, of course.  I don't want a situation that exposes keys, passwords, etc. for the proprietary services.

Duane's Website

  • Registered: 2008-03-04
  • Posts: 16

Re: Music visualization widget(s) would be great

Would it be possible to have a "private" feature, so I can decide if I want to share this with widgets.  I know it is probably a little over the deep end, but if this is shared with one widget, it can be shared with any widget.  And that second widget may just send that data to a collector...

So while I know shoutcast (AOL, right?) knows I'm playing reggaeton now, I don't want MTV Spike widget to report that to MTV (nor do I want AOL to know I'm playing spike widgets!)

  • JMII
  • Member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2010-01-15
  • Posts: 10

Re: Music visualization widget(s) would be great

I realize this is an old thread but as a new Chumby One owner (loving it!) the first thing I started looking for after getting all my streams set up was a visualizer of some kind. You know the kind of screen saver type things that "dance" to the music with different lights or animations. I'd love to see a little graphic EQ showing frequency levels, iTunes has this built into the top info bar.

It would also be nice if Chumby reported the song that was playing during a stream, currently when on the "My Streams" widget it just displays the name of the station but since that is already highlighted below I really don't need that information repeated again. I know the song information (title artist) is encoded in the stream because iTunes shows it for all my 'net based radio stations.