SqueezePlay OS for Joggler

Post by **pete** » Thu Oct 04, 2012 1:39 pm

Personally (my opinion only) it could be just an issue relating to the number of RW's on the flash rom. Even more so on the USB sticks as they are not meant to run an OS.

Over the last few months I have learned to hot swap the Joggler flash chip; its really easy and would allow you to install a newer flash chip for very little costs.

Looking at the OpenPeak motherboard in general; it was constructed to last for a long time. Actually better than the Chumby motherboards.

Fishy · Post by **Fishy** » Thu Oct 04, 2012 10:25 pm

Update - shut down SqPOS Joggler and moved it to dining room where I want it to live.
Fired it up and it stuck on the O2 screen again as last time.
In desperation opened it up and rebuilt it with newly flashed stick (as before) in situ.
It is now once again up and running, scanning, etc.
Weird - cannot work out why it will not work if physically moved from room where built to another room (both rooms still on same network).
Either way I seem to have beaten it at it's own game this time !!!

mashton · Post by **mashton** » Fri Oct 05, 2012 12:00 pm

So then, no one else getting degrading performance after a few months use?

I will try an internal USB installation and if that doesn't give me any improvement then I will probably have to give up on my 18 month long Joggler experiment.

Such a shame, since the functionality of the system is second to none. Non functional requirements are important too though...

Post by **roobarb!** » Fri Oct 05, 2012 12:05 pm

mashton wrote:So then, no one else getting degrading performance after a few months use?

I will try an internal USB installation and if that doesn't give me any improvement then I will probably have to give up on my 18 month long Joggler experiment.

Such a shame, since the functionality of the system is second to none. Non functional requirements are important too though...

Definitely try it on a stick just in the side, rather than internally mounted, at least to begin with. I promise that if you don't, you'll get frustrated opening up the Joggler every five minutes. I have no idea why, but putting the stick inside is almost a guarantee that it'll go wrong.

mashton · Post by **mashton** » Fri Oct 05, 2012 12:18 pm

oops, I have the thing open right now

we'll see what we see...

thanks for the advice though

mashton · Post by **mashton** » Fri Oct 05, 2012 12:28 pm

yep sure enough it boots from the side, but not from inside.

trying another stick.

mashton · Post by **mashton** » Fri Oct 05, 2012 12:48 pm

OK, progress, then stuck:

I have it booting from internal USB, can select a language and it seems to be given an IP from my router DHCP fine. BUT, it can't connect to mysqueezebox.com.

Do I need an LMS on the network whilst getting setup? Or somethign else?

mashton · Post by **mashton** » Fri Oct 05, 2012 1:27 pm

Sorted now, I hope. Just got as far as installing LMS, plugins, mounting the NAS cifs share and rebooting. Will do a scan and then try and performance test it.

Fingers crossed.

mashton · Post by **mashton** » Fri Oct 05, 2012 2:01 pm

Glenn2 wrote:Just to say thanks to all of you, not just for helping me fix these issues, but for creating the system in the first place. Truly great work!

One little tip, which is handy particularly when playing BBC stations. Once you have LMS, iPlayer, PlayWMA and PlayReal installed, go into the file types settings and disable FLAC streaming for anything other than FLAC files.

There's no point having the server transcode, e.g., WMA to FLAC, and then having Squeezeplay decode the FLAC to the native PCM format (which all digital audio ends up as before the hardware can play it).

All transcoding must decompress to PCM before encoding to the new format, even if it's only one module doing it. There is no decrease in quality as FLAC is lossless, but it all takes CPU cycles.

So for WMA this is LMS (WMA-->PCM, PCM-->FLAC) ---> Squeezeplay (FLAC-->PCM).
But if you have LMS (WMA-->PCM) --> Squeezeplay, the streams start to play instantly rather than after a few seconds and it all feels much more responsive.

If you are feeding other squeezeboxes via wifi, you will be using a bit of extra wifi bandwidth for the stream but it made no difference in my system, and I feed an external Squeezebox Classic as well as the internal Squeezeplay client.

Seeing as I am in tinker mode (see multiple posts above!), I would like to do this, to get the BBC streams to play instantly.

I ahve LMS and the Triode iPlayer plugin setup and working. How do I go about installing PlayWMA and PlayReal (do I need this latter one?) I presume it is an apt-get command or similar? On my multi joggler setup (one with LMS and one remote, without) onwhihc do I need to install PlayWMA (and PlayReal) ?

Thanks for the support

)

Fishy · Post by **Fishy** » Fri Oct 05, 2012 2:17 pm

Open up LMS via a web browser (IP of Joggler:9000, eg 192.168.1.22:9000).
Click on settings (bottom RHS)
Plug-ins tab
Think PlayWMA and PlayReal are non-recommended 3rd party plug-ins which you can only get to by ticking the relevant tick box near bottom of list (after recommended 3rd party's)

Glenn2 - understand what you are saying; could you please provide more details of how to turn off FLAC streaming, ie idiot guide.

mashton · Post by **mashton** » Fri Oct 05, 2012 6:02 pm

Yep, I got this sorted:

1. Go to Settings ... PlugIns and check the box at the bottom for "Show all 3rd Party Plugins"
2. Turn on PlayWMA and PlayREAL
3. Apply settings and let the LMS restart
4. Go to Settings ... Advanced and select File Types from the drop down list.
5. Go through each of the File Formats and Set FLAC to Disabled for all of them, except for FLAC.
6. Apply settings

BBC iPlayer links now play immediately upon finishing buffering.

Happy face.

jollyjoggler · Post by **jollyjoggler** » Tue Oct 09, 2012 11:14 pm

What is the maximum audio sample rate I can use with the Squeezeplay OS and an external usb soundcard?

-------------------
edit:
just found this thread describing what i am looking for

http://www.jogglerwiki.com/forum/viewto ... ?f=2&t=740

alcoheca · Post by **alcoheca** » Fri Oct 12, 2012 10:19 am

roobarb! wrote:
roobarb! wrote:Have you had any luck with the drivers?
Bingo! Had to compile usb_modeswitch as well as the drivers, but I have a working WNDA3200 in the place of the original RT2770F. The onboard antennae are certainly picking up the local networks too, although I am still running with the screen hanging off at the moment.

The stick itself is a bit longer than the original, but it still fits - will probably need a little adjustment that foam pad at the top. Hang on... everyone likes a picture...

wnda3200.jpg
Tada!

Sorry I didn't get any reply notificiations again.

Well done! Can you share the drivers? I'll take a look at this on the weekend.

Post by **roobarb!** » Fri Oct 12, 2012 11:16 pm

alcoheca wrote:
roobarb! wrote:
roobarb! wrote:Have you had any luck with the drivers?
Bingo! Had to compile usb_modeswitch as well as the drivers, but I have a working WNDA3200 in the place of the original RT2770F. The onboard antennae are certainly picking up the local networks too, although I am still running with the screen hanging off at the moment.

The stick itself is a bit longer than the original, but it still fits - will probably need a little adjustment that foam pad at the top. Hang on... everyone likes a picture...

wnda3200.jpg
Tada!

Sorry I didn't get any reply notificiations again.

Well done! Can you share the drivers? I'll take a look at this on the weekend.

I had a rethink and ended up recompiling the kernel with the drivers enabled, so you can grab it from

http://birdslikewires.co.uk/download/joggler/kernel

Just fetch the latest one. You'd likely need to recompile the EMGD modules though, so you'll need build-essential packages installed too. I'll have to find time to roll out a new release sometime!

Post by **roobarb!** » Thu Oct 18, 2012 2:07 pm

For those folks wondering if there are any updates on their way, the answer is yes. I've just finished tweaking the base operating system to support the WNDA3200 2.4/5GHz 802.11abgn wireless card (cheap on eBay!) and I'll be switching to ext4 for the next release (without journal) as it should be more robust against power outages.

As for SqueezePlay itself, the main thing I want in is the SMB configuration option for people running LMS on their Jogglers. Please do post if there's something else you think should be added. I won't be able to support every request, but if you don't ask, you don't get!

Post by **BuZz** » Thu Oct 18, 2012 3:15 pm

im not sure ext4 without journal will be that robust - I have found it worse as no journal to replay - but why not ext4 with journal, but set FSCKFIX=yes in /etc/default/rcS which will be default on my next releases. that way the fs will do a check if needed without user interaction on boot?

Post by **BuZz** » Thu Oct 18, 2012 3:16 pm

btw if you think there are any kernel options I should have in my distros for hardware support please feel free to send me any config options. thanks.

Post by **roobarb!** » Fri Oct 19, 2012 12:02 am

BuZz wrote:im not sure ext4 without journal will be that robust - I have found it worse as no journal to replay - but why not ext4 with journal, but set FSCKFIX=yes in /etc/default/rcS which will be default on my next releases. that way the fs will do a check if needed without user interaction on boot?

Interesting.. Okay, I'll have a play with that and see how I get on. I was going for it as barriers are on by default in ext4. And it's newer. But that doesn't always mean better!

Post by **roobarb!** » Fri Oct 19, 2012 7:31 pm

Progress!

Post by **BuZz** » Fri Oct 19, 2012 10:35 pm

nice!

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