Topic: Getting music to stream to Chumby... that works!

Hi All,

I have a Synology DS207 that can provide music as:-

DNLA Music Server
UPnP
iTunes 'server' (iTunes can see it any play direct from it)

In addition, I've installed SqueezeCenter

The best I've managed is to get it to stream what I'm playing on the SqueezeCenter web interface....

Any suggestions how I can select + play from the Chumby GUI?

Cheers,

Paul

Re: Getting music to stream to Chumby... that works!

I've streamed music from my DS209... it's a bit complicated and not something that I could get to work from Flash widgets directly.

1) On the DS209, I enabled NFS and setup a /etc/exports file with

/volume1/music *(ro,all_squash,no_subtree_check)

2) On the Chumby One, I ran these commands

mkdir /mnt/music
mount -t nfs -o ro,nolock,noexec,intr <ip of DS209>:/volume1/music /mnt/music

3) I can then stream individual songs using the btplay command with a full path to the music file, e.g.

btplay /mnt/music/Music/Flight\ Of\ The\ Conchords/The\ Distant\ Future\ EP/06-Robots\ \(Live\).ogg

4) I can also do a symlink from /mnt/storage into that /mnt/music tree to make certain albums/artists appear as if they were in internal storage.  However, I found that I had far too much music to actually mount the whole tree in /mnt/storage as that would make the "My Files" sound widget take too long before appearing and starting random playback.

Re: Getting music to stream to Chumby... that works!

I just did some poking into how the Audio Station web app on the Synology NAS boxes works.  It looks like it might be possible to build some sort of music widget for the Chumby that interfaces with it.  It's a pretty simple system with some CGI scripts that return JSON objects that specify playlists and playlist contents, then another script that actually streams out the raw file data.  That last part could be used to drive btplay on the Chumby for background audio play.

Getting something that uses the "random 100" playlist wouldn't be too hard, getting the rest of the UI needed to actually navigate through your library would be a bit tougher.  Sounds like something else to add to my to-do list smile

It would still require a little hacking of the NAS box to add the crossdomain.xml file to the root needed to let the Flash widget access all of these scripts, but that's not too hard.

Re: Getting music to stream to Chumby... that works!

Hi Ben,

Ok - get the mapping business, and the symlink - that all works... but how do I make this persistant? Which script in the subsystem should I edit to do this automatically?

Cheers,

Paul

Re: Getting music to stream to Chumby... that works!

You need to add the mount command and any ln -s commands to a script called /psp/rfs1/userhook2.  It will get executed on the device at boot time just before the control panel starts.

6 (edited by LennyMan 2010-01-14 10:45:15)

Re: Getting music to stream to Chumby... that works!

Cheers Ben,


Ok, finally got an automated script to work.

1. SSH'd into the chumby (use WinSCP, its free) and created a new directory:-

/psp/rfs1

2. created a file (and made it executable - 755), called userhook2

3. Edited the file and put the following script in it:-

mkdir /mnt/synology
insmod /drivers/cifs.ko
mount -t cifs //x.x.x.x/music /mnt/synology -o username='admin',password='zzzzzz'
ln -s /mnt/synology /mnt/usb

replaced x.x.x.x with  IP address of the Synology Diskstation, and zzzzzz with Admin password

4. Rebooted the Chumby

I now see files in 'My Music Files' within the control panel.

big_smile

Re: Getting music to stream to Chumby... that works!

I think the larger community is STILL waiting for a UPNP widget. Its been over a year since its been 'in the works'--does anyone have this working? Is it still on the timeline and feature list. Its just that close to being a perfect streaming device for me..

Re: Getting music to stream to Chumby... that works!

Okay I think I at least know how to accomplish this but I have a bit of figuring out to do so I'll run it by you guys..

1. Mount the share
2. Have a small web server sitting on your pc
      - that webserver should be able to provide a widget with an xml representation of your folders
      - widget grabs the xml and displays the folders
      - when you click a folder it pings the chumby webserver that has a cgi-script installed; the cgi-script's job is to be told the file to play and it fires up btplay to play it.

Any reason this wouldn't work pretty nicely?

Re: Getting music to stream to Chumby... that works!

I'd really love to be able to control my Synology NAS Audio Station from the Chumby..

Actually getting the sound out of it, to me, is secondary - the NAS is plugged into my stereo..

But controlling it from the chumby would be awsome - any progress?

10 (edited by stein 2011-11-06 09:34:12)

Re: Getting music to stream to Chumby... that works!

thanks LennyMan!

That really works. Now I can browse the music directories. and select all to play, etc.

Re: Getting music to stream to Chumby... that works!

It would be nicer, if the song name in other language(e.g. Germany, Chinese) could be displayed!

Re: Getting music to stream to Chumby... that works!

Thanks for the interesting post !

On my chumby addad a couple of mounting options to be able to read files and directories containing (by instance) accents.
The modified sample line looks like this:

mount -t cifs //x.x.x.x/music /mnt/synology -o username='admin',password='zzzzzz',iocharset=utf8,codepage=850