How to add headless Squeezebox capabilities to an extender

[routerunner]

This thread is no longer mantained, please visit this thread instead for the new Squeezeslave plugin development and updates.

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All,

I'm very proud to announce that after weeks of painful research, coding, cross compiling and testing, I finally managed to "transform" (not in the physical sense of the term of course) an HD200 and an HD300 to a fully working headless squeezebox client connected to a squeeze server...

Why?

Well, the inspiration came after trying the excellent "SageTV Slimplayer" plugin. Despite the plugin did work very well, my requirements were a little bit different, for instance I didn't like the idea of switching my TV on to listen music, also the limitation of one extender at time was a big no-no for me. I currently have 5 extenders in my household and all of them are connected to a separate sound processor and in one instance the extender is hooked up to a Yamaha sound projector which in turns is connected to a video projector, so if I want to listen music in the lounge with the fireplace on, the last thing I want is to turn on the video projector as well. The ideal solution for me would be a Logitech Duet with one Squeeze Remote or some other software solution (Smartphone/iPad/Android), but that would mean buying five of them for a job that an extender is perfectly capable of (wireless connection included).

How is started?

One day I discovered this Open Source project:

http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/SqueezeSlave

Basically is a headless squeezebox software client which runs on different platforms, including Linux, and can be easily cross-compiled for MIPS, and support both OSS and ALSA sound architectures, ABSOLUTELY PERFECT!!!!

So I started with downloading the sources and cross-compiling for the HD200/HD300 which are both MIPS(LE) architectures. I was then able to ftp the executable on both the unit, but then I realized that on both the platform the Linux kernel was compiled without OSS or ALSA support. I'm a software engineer myself with a good experience of device driver development so after huge research and lots of information found in various community forums (thanks god they exists) I decided to take the plunge and developed the required kernel modules to provide the OSS interface the squeezeslave player is requiring, and it WORKS!!!!. So all the 5 extenders can now be simultaneously connected and synced with the squeeze server and no setup is required on the sage server side.

What next?

Well, still lots of things to do. For instance the HD300 has a rewritable filesystem which the HD200 hasn't so at the moment the kernel modules and the squezzeslave application gets ftp'd after the extender is powered up and stays in the ramdisk and this is something I will keep as it is, because I don't want to modify the existing flash partition at all. Also, the SageTV application, at the moment, coexist with the running squeezeslave, which is OK as long as you are not playing a video and playing a music track which will be eventually mixed in , so what would be ideal is a mutual exclusion system which I'm investigating the feasibility at the moment; however when SageTV is powered off (by means of the red button on the remote) the squeezeslave application will be still fully available and the audio will be broadcast simultaneously on both the stereo RCA pairs and the SP/DIF, but I'm also working on the possibility to add the HDMI audio output as well, but it will be hard.

Finally, the upload mechanism is currently very basic, but it works fine for my personal needs and ideally would be better doing it via a SageTV plugin, but I need to learn about Java programming first (I'm a deep C programmer ) and also it will depend on how much this project will capture the interest of the sage community.

And in the meantime?

Very soon I'll make a package for installing the required software along with the instructions, so if you're interested...stay tuned

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by routerunner

So I started with downloading the sources and cross-compiling for the HD200/HD300 which are both MIPS(LE) architectures. I was then able to ftp the executable on both the unit, but then I realized that on both the platform the Linux kernel was compiled without OSS or ALSA support. I'm a software engineer myself with a good experience of device driver development so after huge research and lots of information found in various community forums (thanks god they exists) I decided to take the plunge and developed the required kernel modules to provide the OSS interface the squeezeslave player is requiring, and it WORKS!!!!. So all the 5 extenders can now be simultaneously connected and synced with the squeeze server and no setup is required on the sage server side.

As somebody who wrote *nix device drivers a long time ago I can say this is very impressive and just another example showing that real programmers write to the metal I wonder what other nifty apps can be run on the HD300?

There are many people here who can help you with Java and plugin development so feel frre to post questions.

[scanner95]

Man, this is exactly what I was hoping is possible, since I have both HD200 and SB3 in my living room! This is really cool! Once I had a hope Sage and Slim devices merge and this will come out naturally, but they got purchased each by a different vendor... Logitech "still" did not kill Slim; not going to expand on Google...
Great job!

[stanger89]

Cool! I'd been hoping to get a SB Receiver for my HT, only to find that you can't get them (standalone) anymore. I've got a spare HD200, so this would work perfect for that.

[Wirenut]

Totally friggin awesome! I'm interested.

[cncb]

Careful - all this talk about "extra" HD200s and HD300s might make some people cry .

[briands]

Count me interested. The talent in this community amazes yet again.

[BobbyDing]

That really is awesome!

[routerunner]

Hi All,

as anticipated please find in attachment the software for you all to hopefully enjoy as much as I do.

please read the readme document in zip file part 2 before proceeding.

Please provide your valuable feedback

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

There are many people here who can help you with Java and plugin development so feel frre to post questions.

Thank you very much for the support. I'll definitively do for the phase 2 of the project.

[Fuzzy]

So just to get this straight, you spent hours and hours to be able to use one discontinued product (currently selling used for about $325) to replace another discontinued product (currently selling new for $175)?

[spacecadet]

Sounds to me like he spent hours and hours to use something he already owned (zero dollars).

Nice work routerunner!

[stanger89]

Well I got it working, though I uploaded it by hand because I don't feel like installing an ftp server when I can just wget over HTTP from my unraid box. Though thinking now, I should just update the batch file to use http rather than ftp. It did clobber (take over) the audio when I launched it, but it did work and I could control it from the Squeezecenter Web GUI.

Pretty cool.

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Well I got it working, though I uploaded it by hand because I don't feel like installing an ftp server when I can just wget over HTTP from my unraid box. Though thinking now, I should just update the batch file to use http rather than ftp. It did clobber (take over) the audio when I launched it, but it did work and I could control it from the Squeezecenter Web GUI.

Pretty cool.

Thanks for you feedback, I thought about the HTTP options, but because is Windows only at the moment, I didn't feel the necessity to oblige users to install and configure an Apache web server on windows just for this, the FTP is by far easier to configure, however I'll definitively keep in mind for the plugin version to specify which protocol to use to upload the software which will please both Linux and Windows users.

[ehanekla]

Hi,

wow that works amazingly great! Thank you!

Why don't you put the two files that need to be "wget" by the extender on a public share? Or a dropbox? Then the user wouldn't need to install _any_ kind of server and you could provide your solution as a upload.bat and this telnet thingy only.

Any SageTV Plugin is also hosted on a server as well.

Listening and controlling the HD200 via Android SqueezeCommander right now

Best regards,
Eyk

[mistergq]

So how does this work? Do you have the option of going to sagetv server or connecting to the squeeze server?

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by mistergq

So how does this work? Do you have the option of going to sagetv server or connecting to the squeeze server?

At the moment this is not a SageTV plugin, so there aren't any dependencies from sagetv server per say. You just need to have an FTP server running somewhere to upload the software and a squeeze server running somewhere in your local network.

Saying that, however, I take the opportunity to announce that very very soon I'll post another release which will support FTP/HTTP and SMB protocol to upload the software, the latter in particular should be very welcomed by Windows users as the FTP server will no longer be required because the software will be automatically uploaded from the directory the software is copied into.

[IVB]

Originally Posted by routerunner

At the moment this is not a SageTV plugin, so there aren't any dependencies from sagetv server per say. You just need to have an FTP server running somewhere to upload the software and a squeeze server running somewhere in your local network.

Saying that, however, I take the opportunity to announce that very very soon I'll post another release which will support FTP/HTTP and SMB protocol to upload the software, the latter in particular should be very welcomed by Windows users as the FTP server will no longer be required because the software will be automatically uploaded from the directory the software is copied into.

Now *thats* interesting...

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

So just to get this straight, you spent hours and hours to be able to use one discontinued product (currently selling used for about $325) to replace another discontinued product (currently selling new for $175)?

To be quite honest I didn't expect this kind of feedback

I spent hours and hours as an attempt to protect my investment (discontinued != what I've got is dead), also I've been sick and tired to change hardware ($$$) just because someone decided to introduce a new format and my box was not able to handle it. There are plenty of boxes out there that uses the very same Sigma Design chipset as the HD200/HD300 and perfectly capable of doing exactly what the HD200/HD300 is capable of.

So if in the future I'll feel again the urge to spend hours and hours of my time to make something, I believe, is useful for me and the community I'll not hesitate to do it, because unfortunately money doesn't grow on trees...

[mistergq]

Originally Posted by routerunner

At the moment this is not a SageTV plugin, so there aren't any dependencies from sagetv server per say. You just need to have an FTP server running somewhere to upload the software and a squeeze server running somewhere in your local network.

Saying that, however, I take the opportunity to announce that very very soon I'll post another release which will support FTP/HTTP and SMB protocol to upload the software, the latter in particular should be very welcomed by Windows users as the FTP server will no longer be required because the software will be automatically uploaded from the directory the software is copied into.

I guess I am still confused. I understand its not a plugin. What I don't understand if its an all or nothing addon...meaning that once you update the HD200 or HD300 with your program, is the only option to connect to squeeze server, or can it still connect to the SageTV server?

Thanks