Topic: In General: thumbs up!

Overall:

Definitely a step in the right direction.  I found it immediately useful and I cannot wait to see the finished version.

Pluses:

* The night screen is greatly improved with the large font and the list of active alarms.

* I like the implementation for the complicated (as opposed to the simple) alarm.

* I like the multiple sources of music!  Definitely going the right way here.  Is there an interface or API for a developer to add more sources (like Pandora, when available, or Rockbox compiled for the Chumby?)?   How can I add more stations to Radio Free Chumby (I'm not sure what the philosophy of Radio Free Chumby was).

Surprises:

* A pleasant surprise was that all my alarms were migrated -- including the Easter Egg alarm!  Please keep the alarm1.mp3 egg -- or make it so we can specify it (perhaps by URL like file://mnt/usb1/alarm1.mp3 )

* I was surprised Music -- MP3s from the USB has fewer controls than the previous version.  I would like to be able to choose to randomize the entire selection as well as see the song name, like before.

* The Music -- MP3s from the USB only sees one USB as a source.  It would be nice to see and use ALL possible MP3s, including if a hub was added.

* Click on touch... i thought this was handy, until I tried setting things in the control panel when my spouse was trying to sleep (almost lost my Chumby there).  So, the usefulness of click on touch depends on the user.

Difficulties:

* I cannot seem to choose a station with SHOUTcast.  Scrolling was not easy, and clicking on the Tune In button did not play anything (could it be the station wasn't broadcasting then? I chose the WBUR entry and indeed, the Music shows it as the Current selection, but there was no audio.
[EDIT:  upon closer inspection, some streams worked but not all]

Recommendations:

* A scheduler for night mode and wake from night mode, as mentioned previously.

* If you are in the control panel subscreen, have the top button return to the control panel, but revert any changes made on the current screen.

Re: In General: thumbs up!

You can submit internet radio stations to us to add to the server for Radio Free Chumby - we need the link either to a PLS, or the actual MP3 stream.  The idea is to have a place to list stations that aren't in other directories, or simply ones that we happen to like.

What you called "MP3s from USB" is entirely new (but unfinished) - you may be talking about the iPod support, which no longer shows up unless an iPod is actually mounted.  It's been redone art-wise, but has the same functionality as before.

Re: In General: thumbs up!

I agree with wayn3w. It definitely is a step in the right direction. There are certainly a few things that could be added to make the Radio feature more useful
*First of all, it is so difficult to scroll thru the stations in shoutcast. It will be better to categorize/group them as pop, rock, etc so navigation will be much easy. Also, it shows only 100 stations??
*Include a "Favorites" section where frequently used stations can be added, so we dont have to navigate thru the list over and over again
*Ability to play asx,wma,ra streams as well. Is that being worked on?
*Mediafly is cool. It only shows a few areas of interest, not all.
*It will be good to have the alarm set to a radio station/music from USB
*USB music files dont show up though it plays fine

Re: In General: thumbs up!

muks wrote:

First of all, it is so difficult to scroll thru the stations in shoutcast. It will be better to categorize/group them as pop, rock, etc so navigation will be much easy. Also, it shows only 100 stations??

We seem to be having memory problems showing even that many.  I think we can get up to 500.

The genres in Shoutcast are currently a disaster, because they're freeform text provided by the stations - they're not meaningfully categorized, and there are almost as many genres as stations - stuff like "Ambient Chill Psy Pop", as opposed to "Ambient Trance Techno Chill", etc.

Include a "Favorites" section where frequently used stations can be added, so we dont have to navigate thru the list over and over again

I'll pass that on to product management.

Ability to play asx,wma,ra streams as well. Is that being worked on?

No, not currently on the list - these are all patent encumbered, thus requiring licensing (some from *Microsoft*) and not only increasing the cost (passed on to *you*), but very likely meaning we've have to close the source for more components, since these companies typically won't license for GPL-compatible players.

Mediafly is cool. It only shows a few areas of interest, not all.

Again, this feed is passed on from the upstream source. My understanding is that you'll be able to configure this stuff more to your liking on their site at some point.

It will be good to have the alarm set to a radio station/music from USB

We're working on it.

USB music files dont show up though it plays fine

That area is unfinished.

Re: In General: thumbs up!

Duane wrote:

You can submit internet radio stations to us to add to the server

where can we submit shoutcast stations?

i'd like to have this one added:  http://tspigot.net:8000

Re: In General: thumbs up!

four2oh wrote:

where can we submit shoutcast stations?

i'd like to have this one added:  http://tspigot.net:8000

Do you think those guys can handle the load?

Re: In General: thumbs up!

Can you please add the foll stations:
WNYC:http://wnycfm.streamguys.com
WHYY:http://207.245.67.204:80/

Re: In General: thumbs up!

For Radio Free Chumby, may I nominate WERS-- a great college station with excellent programming?

http://www.wers.org/wers.asx  (It's streaming MP3).

Re: In General: thumbs up!

Duane wrote:
four2oh wrote:

where can we submit shoutcast stations?

i'd like to have this one added:  http://tspigot.net:8000

Do you think those guys can handle the load?

Not sure, i will inquire... 

but it would also be nice to include a user-input field for custom (small pipe) shoutcast streams (ie. if i setup a non-published personal stream from my pc at home, so i can listen to my tunes at work)

Re: In General: thumbs up!

four2oh wrote:
Duane wrote:
four2oh wrote:

where can we submit shoutcast stations?

i'd like to have this one added:  http://tspigot.net:8000

Do you think those guys can handle the load?

Not sure, i will inquire... 

but it would also be nice to include a user-input field for custom (small pipe) shoutcast streams (ie. if i setup a non-published personal stream from my pc at home, so i can listen to my tunes at work)

Ok, i setup a relay for this great radio stream on a 10MB pipe, so plenty of bandwidth now to serve up at least 1000+ listeners (currently limiting to 256 until i see it reach that level)

please add the following relay of tspigot.net's DJBooth radio stream to Chumby Radio:

http://dank.four2oh.net:8000

(on a geek note: DJBooth is a dj bot in a text-based multi-player game (MUD) with calls to an icecast server, that picks songs from 50K+ tunes based on genre tags for the current show playing, or controlled via live users)

Re: In General: thumbs up!

four2oh wrote:
four2oh wrote:
Duane wrote:

Do you think those guys can handle the load?

Not sure, i will inquire... 

but it would also be nice to include a user-input field for custom (small pipe) shoutcast streams (ie. if i setup a non-published personal stream from my pc at home, so i can listen to my tunes at work)

Ok, i setup a relay for this great radio stream on a 10MB pipe, so plenty of bandwidth now to serve up at least 1000+ listeners (currently limiting to 256 until i see it reach that level)

please add the following relay of tspigot.net's DJBooth radio stream to Chumby Radio:

http://dank.four2oh.net:8000

(on a geek note: DJBooth is a dj bot in a text-based multi-player game (MUD) with calls to an icecast server, that picks songs from 50K+ tunes based on genre tags for the current show playing, or controlled via live users)

tspigot.net got back to me, they are on a 100MB pipe, with plenty of room to grow!

Re: In General: thumbs up!

Tspigot has been added
WERS has been added

WNYC and WHYY have not been added due to quality issues - we're investigating.

I will put together a new thread for people to suggest stations.

Re: In General: thumbs up!

Thanks for the quick response. There are alternate streams available on WHYY and WNYC websites. I just noticed that the shoutcast page doesn't have the scroll bar anymore. It is very difficult yo page thru the stations now

Re: In General: thumbs up!

I love that the music keeps on streaming even after leaving the control panel, very nice.  It looks like there are two ways to stop the music, press mute on the control panel, or go to music and press stop.  Does mute stop the stream, or just the audio?  If "stop" is the way to stop the streaming, is there an easy way to restart the stream without digging through the lists?  If not, I'd second the request for "favorites."

Another feature that would be nice is bookmarking a place in a stream.  I'd be great to listen to the archived "This American Life" episodes and be able to pause and restart where I left off. 

Thanks!

Re: In General: thumbs up!

Hitting mute just turns off the speakers - the device is still streaming the audio data.

In general, it's best to actually stop the streams, since you're using their bandwidth, which, unlike "real" over-the-air radio costs them money.

The ability to restart a stream in the middle isn't really possible given that we're using streaming protocols, and most of the stations are live streams.

We're looking into the "favorites" possibility - it probably won't be in this version of the Control Panel, but might make it into a future one in some form.  There would be some technical and contractual issues that need to be addressed.

Re: In General: thumbs up!

Not sure where to post my question or how to start a new forum to ask, so I hope this is ok here...I am new to chumby (I love it!).   I have no idea how to do any programing or anything that has to do with creating widgets, but I am having fun reading and learning new things.  I would like to have some names to add to "My chums" but I don't have any friends who have chumby yet.  Is there a anyone who can add me to there chums friends and send me some things that they create so I can see what great things I am missing!  Thanks for your time and help! 
My chumby.com user name is Jremsen.

Re: In General: thumbs up!

I've only had my Chumby a couple of weeks and only dipped my toe into the Beta Control Panel for the first time yesterday, but for what it's worth here's my twopenn'orth

In general, it's brilliant - I'm really pleased that some of the functionality I thought I was going to have to hack about with to get working is now available in the CP.

Add another vote for ShoutCast favourites - it's a shame to find a station you like, but not being able to bookmark it for future use

In My Streams -Do Live365 streams not work because you have to log in or something? I can't get any of the ones I have tried to work.

Custom alarms - could playing music from one source or another be included in the list of Actions?

My Music - are there any plans to expand this functionality to play from network disks? I know it's possible to mount an SMB share (as explained in this thread - http://forum.chumby.com/viewtopic.php?id=735), so it seems like the logical next step to be able to play media files that are contained on those shares.

Re: In General: thumbs up!

navi wrote:

I love that the music keeps on streaming even after leaving the control panel, very nice.  It looks like there are two ways to stop the music, press mute on the control panel, or go to music and press stop.  Does mute stop the stream, or just the audio?  If "stop" is the way to stop the streaming, is there an easy way to restart the stream without digging through the lists?  If not, I'd second the request for "favorites."

Another feature that would be nice is bookmarking a place in a stream.  I'd be great to listen to the archived "This American Life" episodes and be able to pause and restart where I left off. 

Thanks!

Does anyone know what the stream for even the current episode of "This American Life" would be? I tried setting it up through firefly, but it doesn't seem to work. I could add the mp3 for each week, but that would be tedious and I wanted to set this up as an alarm for Sunday morning.