Squeeze Control for Android (support thread)

[bwaldron]

I think the most relevant place would be the Current Playlist. I can put something on the tablet layout, probably right next to the Current Playlist title; eg. Current Playlist (23/500). However I don't think I can fit it on the phone layout.

Yes, I realized when asking that screen real estate is tight there, especially now with the audio info option. Easier for me to ask for than you to find room for it. I'll trust your design sense (even next to a shorter progress bar would work for me).

There's no drop down for the now playing in tablet mode. I always figured that since Current Playlist is right next to Now Playing, you could just access the info there. I can see how it would be useful when you have Now Playing fullscreen in tablet portrait. Instead of the drop down, I'm thinking of a button in the top right of the track info area to open a popup menu.

Well...there is my "duh" moment I was so used to using the Now Playing dropdown in phone mode to access the current track details, I never even realized that the info was also available in Current Playlist. I knew I was missing something! But yes, it is missing in fullscreen and could be useful there.

 

[wayne@angrygoat]

Yes, I realized when asking that screen real estate is tight there, especially now with the audio info option. Easier for me to ask for than you to find room for it. I'll trust your design
sense (even next to a shorter progress bar would work for me)

I decided to put it after the Now Playing text; eg. Now Playing 1/24
It reads better that way and there's more space than Current Playlist.

I just published the update with that change and the button in the now playing screens for a context menu.

I normally won't publish another update so soon after the last one, but I fixed a semi serious, app crashing bug.

 

[bwaldron]

Good stuff. Thanks!

 

[Aaron Caskey]

Hi, quick question. I want to download songs to the SD card rather than into the Music directory on the (rather small) internal storage. That doesn't seem possible... Is it?

 

[wayne@angrygoat]

It's not possible, because Squeeze Control uses Android's built-in download system and that system only allows download to the primary storage, which in most phones these days is the internal storage.

 

[tschan1]

Hi there,

first of all: great work, I really enjoy the app. But I have two questions.

Firstly: There seems to be unintended behaviour of the app in conjunction with the Spicefly Sugarcube plugin for LMS. If I enter the Sugarcube settings in Squeeze Control the current playlist is automatically replaced with a track chosen by Sugarcube. It seems as if the app automatically clicks on "Replace Next Track" in the settings menu without me actually clicking it. Is there something I can do to stop this behaviour? I'm using LMS 7.7.3 btw.

Secondly: Could you add an option that makes the plus icon besides a track in the library browsing mode only add this specific track? I know this can be achieved by setting the "Play Other Songs in Album" setting for the player to only add the selected track, but I actually want to play the whole album if I tap on a track. I would just prefer to be able to easily add single tracks to the playlist without having to hold the plus icon and chose "add to playlist".

Thanks!

 

[wayne@angrygoat]

Firstly: There seems to be unintended behaviour of the app in conjunction with the Spicefly Sugarcube plugin for LMS. If I enter the Sugarcube settings in Squeeze Control the current playlist is automatically replaced with a track chosen by Sugarcube. It seems as if the app automatically clicks on "Replace Next Track" in the settings menu without me actually clicking it. Is there something I can do to stop this behaviour? I'm using LMS 7.7.3 btw.

Ok, I see what the problem is. It's a bit of a confluence of the somewhat strange way Sugarcube defined a couple of the menu items and a quirk of Android. Both the Replace Next Track and Start Auto Mix are defined as multiple choice items even though there is only one choice. This was probably done because the SqueezePlay interface doesn't have provisions for a button that just triggers an action but will not change the menu.

In Android I interpreted multiple choice items as drop downs. Android has a quirk where if you programmatically set a drop down to a item it will act exactly like if the user selected the item, and there's no definitive way to tell if the selection event was triggered by the user or by the program. So when I build the menu for the Sugarcube settings page and I set the initial value of all the drop downs, both Replace Next Track and Start Auto Mix are automatically triggered.

I guess maybe I can interpret multiple choice items with a single choice as a button. I'll fix it in the next update.

Secondly: Could you add an option that makes the plus icon besides a track in the library browsing mode only add this specific track? I know this can be achieved by setting the "Play Other Songs in Album" setting for the player to only add the selected track, but I actually want to play the whole album if I tap on a track. I would just prefer to be able to easily add single tracks to the playlist without having to hold the plus icon and chose "add to playlist".

You're the first person to ask for this, I'll see what I can do.

 

[Aaron Caskey]

I have a couple of "Would be nice" feature requests.

1. Is it possible to have the screen dim (maybe with an overlay or something) when the current player is off? I use squeeze control as the main interface to my work player, and it would just be nice to have a visual representation that the player is off.

2. I have a pebble, with music boss and the abilty to control squeeze control with my wrist is awesome, however I can't change the volume. Music boss allows you to use tasker to call arbitrary intents when you change the volume with the pebble. Is there a way to expose volume up and down in Squeeze control so I could set this up?


Thanks for the awesome app!

 

[tschan1]

Great! Thank you very much!

 

[wayne@angrygoat]

1. Is it possible to have the screen dim (maybe with an overlay or something) when the current player is off? I use squeeze control as the main interface to my work player, and it would just be nice to have a visual representation that the player is off.

I don't think anything that affects to whole screen is appropriate, since you can still interact with the menus and edit the playlist of a player that's turned off. The only thing that turning off a player does is turn off the audio outputs of hardware players. Maybe I can change the color of the player name to red.

2. I have a pebble, with music boss and the abilty to control squeeze control with my wrist is awesome, however I can't change the volume. Music boss allows you to use tasker to call arbitrary intents when you change the volume with the pebble. Is there a way to expose volume up and down in Squeeze control so I could set this up?

I always thought that it was stupid for android to not have built-in volume intents. I'll listen for these two intents in the next update:

com.angrygoat.android.sqzctrl.MEDIA_VOLUME_UP

com.angrygoat.android.sqzctrl.MEDIA_VOLUME_DOWN

 

[Aaron Caskey]

I don't think anything that affects to whole screen is appropriate, since you can still interact with the menus and edit the playlist of a player that's turned off. The only thing that turning off a player does is turn off the audio outputs of hardware players. Maybe I can change the color of the player name to red.

Oh, I forgot to say that this would be only in "Dock View." The player could turn on and the screen could undim (it's a word!) when the screen was touched. But this is just something that I think would be nice to have for people who primarily use the app as a "now playing" screen and is completely unimportant.

I always thought that it was stupid for android to not have built-in volume intents. I'll listen for these two intents in the next update:

com.angrygoat.android.sqzctrl.MEDIA_VOLUME_UP

com.angrygoat.android.sqzctrl.MEDIA_VOLUME_DOWN

Thank you!

 

[bwaldron]

I'm having problems with the download to device function lately. Sometimes it works perfectly; other times it will just stop downloading in the middle of a batch (and can't be restarted). I haven't found any pattern to the problem, except perhaps that it happens more often when I have a longer (multiple album) download queue. (Android 4.4 on a Motorola Droid Maxx.)

 

[wayne@angrygoat]

I'm having problems with the download to device function lately. Sometimes it works perfectly; other times it will just stop downloading in the middle of a batch (and can't be restarted). I haven't found any pattern to the problem, except perhaps that it happens more often when I have a longer (multiple album) download queue. (Android 4.4 on a Motorola Droid Maxx.)

I've found that the downloading function of the server can be a little unstable. Some songs seem to crash the server when I try to download them especially if I use transcoding. It could be that the server needed a library rescan, but I haven't really looked into.

Having said that, I have reworked the downloading code for the next update which should make it more reliable when going from one download to the next, but it won't do anything for the actual downloading process since it's the Android system itself that does that.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

[bwaldron]

I've found that the downloading function of the server can be a little unstable. Some songs seem to crash the server when I try to download them especially if I use transcoding. It could be that the server needed a library rescan, but I haven't really looked into.

I should have pointed out that I download only mp3 files with no transcoding.

Having said that, I have reworked the downloading code for the next update which should make it more reliable when going from one download to the next, but it won't do anything for the actual downloading process since it's the Android system itself that does that.

Yeah, I know you use the Android service rather than rolling your own, and understand that the problem may lie there.

Thanks as always.

 

[wayne@angrygoat]

Oh, I forgot to say that this would be only in "Dock View." The player could turn on and the screen could undim (it's a word!) when the screen was touched. But this is just something that I think would be nice to have for people who primarily use the app as a "now playing" screen and is completely unimportant.

Just published the update. It changes the player name to red when it's off. I still don't like a full screen indication since even in Dock View you could still interact with the player, the up/down, left/right flick gestures still work.

The update also listens for those volume intents. I've tried them with Music Boss and Tasker.

BTW, thanks for pointing me to Music Boss, it fixes some annoyances I've had with the Pebble's music controls. Also I've never had a reason to use Tasker before and I still don't have to much use for it, but looking at it have gotten me to consider writing a plugin for it at some point.

 

[bwaldron]

After updating to 1.4.1 I was able to successfully complete a download job that previously hung -- that's a good sign. Thanks for the new option to create a playlist from the download -- it's useful.

 

[tschan1]

Just published the update. It changes the player name to red when it's off. I still don't like a full screen indication since even in Dock View you could still interact with the player, the up/down, left/right flick gestures still work.

Brilliant update, thank you very much!

 

[Aaron Caskey]

The update also listens for those volume intents. I've tried them with Music Boss and Tasker.

I've just set this up myself, now I can magically control the volume of the kitchen player while doing the dishes.

It makes me feel like Gandalf!

BTW, thanks for pointing me to Music Boss, it fixes some annoyances I've had with the Pebble's music controls. Also I've never had a reason to use Tasker before and I still don't have to much use for it, but looking at it have gotten me to consider writing a plugin for it at some point.

I'm still not completely sold on Tasker, it seems a bit flaky. I've set up some tasks to auto lock my phone when my pebble is not connected and to disable the keyguard when it is connected, but it's a crap shoot as to whether this works. The volume control seems pretty responsive though.

 

[spiff x]

Hi,

I've just bought SB player (and v. excited about using it), but I'm not having much luck connecting SB Player to my SSOTS server - i'm running SS 7.4 - i'm guessing that's not supported??? if not, what's the minimum i need to upgrade to (rather scary prospect....)

thanks!

Spiff

 

[wayne@angrygoat]

Hi,

I've just bought SB player (and v. excited about using it), but I'm not having much luck connecting SB Player to my SSOTS server - i'm running SS 7.4 - i'm guessing that's not supported??? if not, what's the minimum i need to upgrade to (rather scary prospect....)

thanks!

Spiff

The minimum version that I've tested SB Player with is 7.7, though I'm surprised that it didn't work with 7.4. The SlimProto communication protocol that it uses to talk to the server with hasn't really changed much since 7.4.

The only thing I can think of is that SB Player identifies itself to the server as a SqueezePlay software player and that software may not have existed when 7.4 came out.

Your best bet for a minimum version below 7.7 is a version that came out after audio playback function was added to SqueezePlay. I would say 7.6 is a safe bet, but 7.5.4 maybe ok too.