[iPeng] iPhone/iTouch as RemoteControl for your HiFi

[pippin]

If you are using SqueezeCenter (aka SlimServer) as a music Library and Streaming Server, have a look at iPeng (www.penguinlovesmusic.com).
It's a web skin that gives the UI a iPhone like look & feel and looks rather cool.
You can browse and play songs, you've got album artwork, internet radio and a nice alarm clock.

Some Impressions:

more at http://penguinlovesmusic.de/?page_id=7
http://penguinlovesmusic.de/wp-content/uploads/playing-1-sm.pnghttp://penguinlovesmusic.de/wp-content/uploads/playlist-view-sm.png
http://penguinlovesmusic.de/wp-content/uploads/080116_albums_view.pnghttp://penguinlovesmusic.de/wp-content/uploads/080129-alarm.png

[aberas]

Installed & trying...
This is SO cool!!

Thanks, bro!

[pippin]

Installed & trying...
This is SO cool!!

Thanks, bro!
Did you succeed? Like it?

[aberas]

Yes, I've got no problem making it work.
And, even though it I have to start the java remote control applet manually (yet, at least), it is very nice and complete.

Very very pleased.

Thanks

[pippin]

Yes, I've got no problem making it work.
And, even though it I have to start the java remote control applet manually (yet, at least), it is very nice and complete.

You mean start SqueezeSlave or SoftSqueeze on the server PC/Mac? That's a good idea, will try to implement that.

[pippin]

now has a cool webclip, too (0.3.4).

[F 5]

How we can install in the iPhone ? :confused:

[pippin]

How we can install in the iPhone ? :confused:

What? The webclip? It's like a bookmark for your start screen. You need 1.1.3
You go to whatever screen you want to bookmark (e.g. "Home") and then press the "+" at the bottom browser control bar.

Or do you mean iPeng? That's a webapp, so you just point your safari to the right IP-Adress. There's an installation instruction for iPeng on
http://penguinlovesmusic.de/?page_id=12

If you want a native app, you've got to be a bit more patient, working on it (though this is rather huge). But then this would be the wrong forum for it, wouldn't it (webapps)?

[pippin]

Latest version now also has support for LastFM. So if you're used to MobileScrobbler on the iPhone/iTouch you can now use it on your HiFi, too.

[pippin]

There's a new version of iPeng that brings a lot more functionality with it!

see also: http://penguinlovesmusic.de/?p=183

What has changed?

Configurable toolbars: There was lots of feedback of the kind: “Can’t I get a Search button, New Music button, whatever button on the toolbar?” Now iPeng let’s you configure these yourself, comes with a variety of additional buttons, allows plugins to register their own buttons plus allows you to define your own by means of a simple xml file logic. So anything that can be reached in iPeng through the CLI, JavaScript or a URL can be put on a toolbar button!

Just to give a small example: the “Player control” toolbar that would mimic the NowPlaying screen toolbar:

http://penguinlovesmusic.de/wp-content/uploads/080414-playing-toolbar.png

Toolbars can be context specific, so a plugin could offer commands, that only make sense within the context of the plugin. One example for this are the “home” screen commands (Internet Radio, Alarm, Sleep) that get you directly to the respective page on the home screen but are not available from other screens.

NowPlaying screen: Another part that has been completely reworked, is the “NowPlaying” screen. Most of this will go unnoticed, but some features are quite prominent:

The Swipe: Former versions of iPeng had a little button in the top right corner of the NowPlaying screen to switch between the cover art view and the playlist view. Now, there’s a page indicator instead that shows you where you are since it’s no longer only two pages that can be used on NowPlaying screen:

http://penguinlovesmusic.de/wp-content/uploads/080414-nowplaying-topbar-04.png

Now, theoretically you can click on each of the dots to go directly to one of those pages, and actually that’s what you will have to do when using iPeng on a PC or a Mac, on iPhone iTouch, however, there’s a more elegant way: just swpie the page to the left or the right to change back and forth like browsing through a book. A feature not seen before on iPhone webapps.

The Plugin Screen: What made this necessary, was the plugin screen. You reach it with a right swipe and it is a way to let plugins add NowPlaying specific commands and information. If it’s information, it will be shown in another (fourth) page. And the best thing is, these pages get updated depending on context, so they can be used to show track specific information.

An example, that comes with iPeng is the SongInfo Command. It shows the SongInfo details presented by the other skins upon clicking a track.

Other examples that come with iPeng 0.4 but require external plugins are Biography (shows the Bio of the artist for the current track), Album Info (same for Album Info) and MusicIP (creates a MusicIP mix based on the current track).

The Landscape Mode: Another feature tried out in the experimental versions of iPeng 0.3x that now comes with 0.4 is the landscape mode. While browsing an album view (that is: one that has cover art), just turn your iPhone to the side and it will re-load the page with big artwork in a landscape layout.

Note: This is somewhat of a gimmick, it will take much longer to load than the standard scree due to the large artwork. Also, the album view will have to be loaded to switch, so moving your iPhone while the screen still loads or while you are on another scree will not result in the desired effect.

http://penguinlovesmusic.de/wp-content/uploads/080304-landscape1.png

Other Changes

Apart from this there is a load of other changes:

* The Start screen now aggregates Internet Radio and MusicServices into one Menu Item. This is something I did for Coolio who just wouldn’t learn the difference and always try to look up station in the wrong menu first
* If you use CustomBrowse it does the same to Music Library and Browse more and shows CustomBrowse on the Main Page instead.
* RandomPlay is now supported
* The Browse Pages now do not cut filenames by themselves but use iPhone’s browser feature for this, so you will no longer end up with filenames that were cut short even though there was still space left in the row.
* BrowsePages use AjaxUpdate to load the next page so you will not end up seeing an empty load page while waiting for the next page to show up but stay on the current page.
* Numerous details improvements and bug fixes.

Have fun!

[fxxxagent]

coooool!
thanks
Thanks for this script!

[dallasnights]

Can someone tell me how to use this maybe some instructions please

thanks all great work!

[pippin]

Can someone tell me how to use this maybe some instructions please

thanks all great work!

What do you want to know?
There's plenty of info on www.penguinlovesmusic.com

Installation:
http://penguinlovesmusic.de/?page_id=12

Usage:
http://penguinlovesmusic.de/?page_id=4

The basic idea is: You install the server (called SqueezeCenter), add a player (either a software player on your PC/Mac or a hardware player from SlimDevices or Pinnacle on your stereo and then you can browse your music database and control these players using your iPhone/iTouch.
You can also control several players and even synch them or stream to mp3, so you can use anything that can play an mp3-stream as a player (although you will not have full functionality then, eg no volume control).

Anything else you need to know?

[pippin]

Hello friends of Coolio. Here's a new update of iPeng, only one month after 0.4 that makes lots of use of the new architecture introduces with 0.4.

The version number 0.4.5 is to reflect the level of change to 0.4. While the latter was a technology update bringing the switch to the plugin distribution, the configurable toolbar and the plugin screen for NowPlaying, 0.4.5 is a feature upate. and a such it offers plenty of new functionality that justifies more than a ".0.1" version step.

So what's new?


iPeng now has a special NowPlaying plugin called "MultiPlayer" control. It's got a quite unique feature since it allows you to control all of your players in one place. For SqueezeCenter users with many players this control alone will justify the use of iPeng ;-) If you already use iPeng and own several players, this update is a must.
MultiPlayer shows all your players in a list and let's you directly

select a player by clicking the player name. The player will become active (that is, all other NowPlaying controls will act on that player) without reloading the page.
Change volume, skip, play/pause, power on/off
And, sync and un-sync players. The logic is, you select the "sync" icon to the lower right of a player that you want to ADD TO ANOTHER PLAYER (that is, it will then play the same playlist as the other player), then it will let you select other players. You will see how it works ;-) To un-sync a player from a set, just click the "un-sync" icon.

iPeng's NowPlaying screen now has a "Favorites" icon that let's you add (or remove) the current track or stream (for internet radio or music services) to your list of Favorites
A few other NowPlaying plugins, some of the are redundant to allow for different arrangements (for example, you can put "Favorites" and "Song Info" on the same line - saves space:

Player select - a dropdown that let's you select the current player
Lyrics support (requires Lyrics plugin)

The "Extras" Menu now features a "(Re) Scan Library" item that let's you add tracks to your library or do a full rescan. Useful if you don't want to fire up the full web skin after adding tracks.
Also in "Extras": Lyrics support again (Lyrics plugin required).

As usual: have fun!

[hoo]

Who can help me how to set default squeeze player to play music?

[pippin]

Who can help me how to set default squeeze player to play music?

I've seen your previous post.
Did you now succeed in installing SqueezeCenter?
What OS are you on? OSX? Windows?
Which player do you want to use. SqueezeCenter comes with "SoftSqueeze" which is a Java player and should be activated by default. You can find it on SC's Main menu (that is, when you access SC through localhost:9000 in the machine where the server is installed) under "Extras".
Actually you don't have to do that on the machine where the server is installed, you can use any machine that has a Java SE VM installed.
After you start the player, you can control it with iPeng.
If you need further help, please be more specific about what causes problems.

[hoo]

yes, finally i succeed with soft squeeze player, but generally this program sucks as hell, it is very slow and totally crap program for ipod touch.

[pippin]

Wait a moment...
You made SoftSqueeze work on iPod touch????

Or are you talking about iPeng? It's a webapp so it will never be as fast as a native app. Also, caching helps, so after doing things the first time, it should speed up a bit. Also a faster server helps-
I agree - if you load a list with 50 cover arts or so it will not be too fast but that's mainly a iPod touch issue; it's much faster with those jiggy fullscreen browsers, yet they don't have all the functionality.

If you want faster, you will have to wait for the native version.

[pippin]

iPeng for iPhone 2.0 / 3G is there!

So, after a busy weekend doing some final fixes here’s the first version of iPeng for iPhone 2.0 / 3G (and iTouch 2.0, of course).

It finally will be a completely rewritten plugin, but for now, only some of the new stuff is ready, but it is already fully compatible to iPhone 2.0.
What’s new?

All of the current changes are on the NowPlaying screen (where they were needed most):

Smooth Scrolling:

* The different pages on the NowPlaying screen now can be scrolled in and out like the Pages of the Springboard.
* You don’t need to do “two finger scrolling” to move around content pages or the playlist. We’ve all waited for this, haven’t we

Seamless Volume and “Elased Time” controls

* In former iPeng versions, you could click on the volume bar to select a volume. This was a bit inexact. Now you can drag the volume handle.
* While dragging, the current volume will permanently alter, so you can hear whether it’s what you want
* An extra overlay will show the current volume level, in case you like it VERY exact.
* For “Elapsed Time” this will show the time into the track. But no, no immediate update here, of course, your track stays on until you release the handle

And last but not least: Drag’n'Drop reordering of the Playlist

* No more clicking between tracks to change their order.
* Just touch and hold a track for more than 1.5s and it will be “elevated”. Now you can drag it along the list and drop it into the place where you want it to be.
* COOL!

So. Have fun. And wait for more to come ;-)