• Registered: 2009-04-09
  • Posts: 5

Topic: Need some advise and direction about writing my own widget

I intend on using my chumby in an unusual way.  I want to use it as the central control for a juke box.  An AMI Rowe Black Magic Juke Box to be exact.  I've taken out the piece of plexi-glass just above the key pad on the juke box, and that's where I'm going to mount my chumby.  In order for it to work like I want it to, I'm going to have to write my own widget/app.  I'm completely new to this, so any advise anyone could give me would be greatly appreciated. 

Here's the list of features I want to implement.

I want the widget to play a default list of mp3's from a thumb drive when the chumby is turned on
I want the widget to have it's own built in keypad (numbers only)
I want to be able to skip to any song on that list using a 3 digit "song code" (the code listed on the jukebox's marquee)
I want to be able to custom build a play list from the available songs, based on those 3 digit codes
I want the widget to display the current artist - song name, time remaining, total track length, and have basic skip, play, pause, and volume control
I would love to be able to access the same music item from my widget that is accessible from the control panel.

My questions are

Is what I want to do possible?
If so where do I get started, and what tools will I need.

  • Registered: 2008-03-05
  • Posts: 119

Re: Need some advise and direction about writing my own widget

Very very cool project.

You might try posting in the Software forum (http://forum.chumby.com/viewforum.php?id=7), since what you're describing shouldn't be a widget. Widgets can only play music via Flash, which works but isn't as reliable as the BTPlay program on the Chumby. And I'm not sure if the Flash/Widget interface would even be able to play local music files.

See this thread for a discussion of these issues: http://forum.chumby.com/viewtopic.php?id=3984

So that means your program will most likely live on a thumb drive attached to the back of your Chumby, so leave enough room for that in the mounting.

You'll need to learn how to make a startup script so your program will run when the Chumby turns on. See this article: http://wiki.chumby.com/mediawiki/index.php/Debugchumby

For example if your program is named Jukebox.swf, your debugchumby file might contain the lines:

stop_control_panel
chumbyflashplayer.x -i /mnt/usb/Jukebox.swf

And you'll want to get very familiar with BTPlay. SSH into your Chumby and type "btplay" to see a list of commands. Here's how to stream a radio station:

btplay [stream url]

For example, btplay http://goodradio.org/stream/wfmu will stream the radio station WFMU. If you want your jukebox to play lots of college radio stations, you can use that format (http://goodradio.org/stream/[station name]), you can see the list of stations at goodradio.org.

For playing local MP3s I'm not sure if you'd want to create PLS files on the fly, or use BTPlay's built-in functions to build playlists.

Anyway, that's my possibly less than $.02. I hope you keep the forum updated with this project.