Topic: My Observations on 2.6.51

2.6.51 12/20/2007

I'm really having a great time with Lumpy, my Chumby. I've been keeping some notes as I've played with the most recent build, and other than a freeze that I can no longer reproduce, they are minor problems or enhancement suggestions. I don't know if it's useful to you to batch them altogether like this, but they weren't doing any good sitting on my desktop. Anyway, keep up the awesome work - this is very cool! cool

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PROBLEM: Initial problems with freezes.

I rebooted Lumpy and 2.6.51 appeared to install correctly.

It quickly reconnected to my WiFi AP, and the previous selected channel started playing. I hit the top button to go to the control panel. After about 35 seconds, the control panel locked up: the second hand on the clock button stops moving, unresponsive to screen taps and the top button. Had to power cycle to get the device back.

In trying to reproduce this I noticed that the freeze occurred after 35 seconds of inactivity, and on screens other than the control panel. It definitely happened on the Music Screen, for example.

Did this 4x then no longer had the problem. Device has been working fine for hours now.

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PROBLEM: Screens with up and down arrows such as Music or Change the Channel should show an indication of "more items" or your position in the list. Related - the up and down arrow buttons should appear to be disabled when you you are at the top or bottom of a list. For example, When the list it one end of its scroll, the corresponding arrow should appear disabled.

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PROBLEM: The Music screen lists "Radio Chumby" but when you go to that selection the resulting page title is "radio free chumby".

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ENHANCEMENT: When you tap STOP on the Music Screen, it would be neat if it would change to RESTART.

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ENHANCEMENT: On screens where I can start a stream, I'd also like a stop button to stop streaming. Something like the Play / Stop button on SHOUTcast would be fine.

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ENHANCEMENT: When a stream fails to play, I'd like to see an error message to help me troubleshoot. In this case I was trying to add KCRW Music, http://scfire-chi0l-2.stream.aol.com:80/stream/1045. When I tap Listen I hear a quiet click, and back on the Music screen it shows the stream as playing, but nothing's playing.

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ENHANCEMENT: Down the road it would be great to have the ability to move the insertion point while typing stream URLs. Also cut copy paste would be good, even from pre-defined streams in other areas like Radio Free Chumby.

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ENHANCEMENT: If device is muted on the control panel, there is no way to unmute it on the Music screen. It would be sufficient to for changing the level on the Music screen to override the mute.

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ENHANCEMENT: It would be nice to have a web form to manage My Streams.

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ENHANCEMENT: Where is the data file containing the list of streams from My Streams? We could just write our own web page or SSH in and modify that file directly rather than pestering you for UI enhancements.

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ENHANCEMENT: It would be great to have a way to preview an alarm sound or volume from the "Select the audio" or "Set Quick Alarm" screens.

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ENHANCEMENT: The volume slider on the Clock screen should beep at the new volume setting, so that the user can gauge whether they've got it right.

Re: My Observations on 2.6.51

I like this idea:   "ENHANCEMENT: It would be nice to have a web form to manage My Streams."

Re: My Observations on 2.6.51

Chris D wrote:

ENHANCEMENT: Where is the data file containing the list of streams from My Streams? We could just write our own web page or SSH in and modify that file directly rather than pestering you for UI enhancements.

It's an XML file at /psp/url_streams

Re: My Observations on 2.6.51

Chris D wrote:

2.6.51 12/20/2007

ENHANCEMENT: When a stream fails to play, I'd like to see an error message to help me troubleshoot. In this case I was trying to add KCRW Music, http://scfire-chi0l-2.stream.aol.com:80/stream/1045. When I tap Listen I hear a quiet click, and back on the Music screen it shows the stream as playing, but nothing's playing.

looks like you're trying to stream the RealPlayer stream. I think you want:

http://media.kcrw.com/live/kcrwlive.pls

Re: My Observations on 2.6.51

Thanks for the replies. I'm looking forward to playing with the XML file, and the .PLS stream does work. It seems pretty unlikely that the URL I had tried was pointing to a RealPlayer stream but it wasn't working. Thanks!

6 (edited by boeke 2007-12-20 19:33:20)

Re: My Observations on 2.6.51

This is the first time I have played with the Beta Control Panel and I must say that it looks VERY promising!  Nice work, Team Chumby!

Two problems I have encountered. thus far:

1)  Many, many, many screen freeze-ups.  More than the 4 that the OP mentioned.  This happens about 5 minutes after a reboot.  Screen-Tap and Top-Click do nothing.  This occurred mainly while I was fiddling around with the various music options, but it also happened once while doing NOTHING.  (Hit reboot - went to the bathroom - came back to a frozen digital clock.)

2)  I can't get my local NPR station to work on My Streams.  I tried all three of the following with no joy:

* http://riosal.ic.llnwd.net/stream/riosal_kjzz_lo as MP3
* http://kjzz.org:8080/livestream/connect.pls as PLS
* http://kjzz.org:8080/livestream/connect.m3u as M3U

Note that the MP3 (pls) channel DOES work with Winamp on my PC.

PS - I've been streaming a Shoutcast channel for >5 minutes now without a freeze.  Is there hope?

Thanks for making Chumby even better!

Re: My Observations on 2.6.51

I'm pretty sure that there are a limited number of sample rates and sizes that are accepted. Look around for comments on btplay and some of its parameters. Hopefully good news for you, this is working for me: http://kjzz.org:8080/livestream/connect_high.pls. Gotta love Take Five.

Re: My Observations on 2.6.51

Chris D wrote:

I'm pretty sure that there are a limited number of sample rates and sizes that are accepted. Look around for comments on btplay and some of its parameters. Hopefully good news for you, this is working for me: http://kjzz.org:8080/livestream/connect_high.pls. Gotta love Take Five.

Well OF COURSE I didn't try the high quality stream!  Why would THAT work when the low quality one doesn't?!?

Yep...  It works for me, too.   smile

Thanks!  Glad you enjoy the tunes!

Re: My Observations on 2.6.51

Duane wrote:
Chris D wrote:

ENHANCEMENT: Where is the data file containing the list of streams from My Streams? We could just write our own web page or SSH in and modify that file directly rather than pestering you for UI enhancements.

It's an XML file at /psp/url_streams

Question -- I'm a newbie to XML and was wondering what the id attribute I see in my My Streams file refers to and where it's generated from:


<streams>

<stream url="http://www.somafm.com/groovesalad.pls" id="b3e6bae7-f181-bc94-a89d-aa1d5d02cbb9" mimetype="audio/x-scpls" name="Groove Salad" />

<stream url="http://www.somafm.com/secretagent.pls" id="0a3f77e7-ce61-1daa-04d1-2a602b4dd45a" mimetype="audio/x-scpls" name="Secret Agent" />

</streams>

Re: My Observations on 2.6.51

The Control Panel manufactures a Globally Unique Identifier (GUID) for each stream that you enter - it's created by computing an MD5 hash of the current time in milliseconds from the epoch and the chumby's GUID, then formatted as a GUID.  The purpose is to allow syncing and merging sometime in the future.

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Re: My Observations on 2.6.51

thanks for the info, Duane. I'm able to manually edit the XML and everything is working fine without the ID. Guess it's time to make a playlist now!

Re: My Observations on 2.6.51

Duane wrote:

The Control Panel manufactures a Globally Unique Identifier (GUID) for each stream that you enter - it's created by computing an MD5 hash of the current time in milliseconds from the epoch and the chumby's GUID, then formatted as a GUID.  The purpose is to allow syncing and merging sometime in the future.

Hmmm. Any chance this could be used to download and sync podcasts at some point? Sure would be swell if it could automatically download a subscribed to podcast and then copy it to either an attached iPod or a USB memory stick.