Re: xAP to Squeezebox without Squeezecenter

[Kevin Hawkins <yahoogroupskh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Paul,

I'll leave Edward to pickup the main part of the question and  whether
the display protocol  for direct access to the SqueeezeBox players is
documented...  what you're really asking for though is another
standalone application rather than an enhancement of the plugin.

.. a couple of comments

The plugin is written in Perl , which is the core code for SqueezeCentre
and hence runs on the SC PC and uses API calls to SC to handle the
communication with attached players. Hence a lot of the code is actually
implemented within SqueezeCentre itself, not just the plugin.

SqueezeCentre also acts as player discovery and handler for multiple
players.  As you get into the sophisticated display message queuing that
the xAP plugin offers this would take a whole lot of work to implement
as a standalone application and could also conflict with SqueezeCentre's
handling of the players should it also be running. This could be
particularly problematic if the players use a TCP socket connection as
one or other application might monopolise the player.

It would be a lot of work to create such an application and it would
have co-existance issues with SC. Likely a lot more work /  energy than
having your PC running 24/7 ;-)

SqueezeCentre is actually a fairly light application in terms of CPU
resource and does run on some fairly low power embedded devices like NAS
drives  (Netgear, Synergy, Infrant etc). Linux versions too of course.
Past comments indicate that large libraries and many simultaneous
players do cause issues for SC on NAS hardware but mainly due to limited
memory issues I think.  Recent builds might have improved this.

Just to also mention Roku (Pinnacle) SoundBridge players as they are
similar to SqueezeBox players but have more inbuilt intelligence in the
players.  SqueezeBox players are relatively dumb devices that are owned
and driven by SqueezeCentre.    Roku offer similar display capabilities
and have inbuilt smarts to attach directly to music libraries, Rhapsody,
internet radio etc. So your server is then simply a music library via
UPnP (Windows Media ).  Because of this you could do as you describe and
drive the display of the Roku units with a direct network connection.
There is a fairly basic xAP message display application for Roku that
does this , as well as a HomeSeer plugin.  The xAP application lacks
message prioritisation and queuing however.

Here I have two low power Atom based  PC's that I run my HA core apps on
24/7 - one running WHS with  Cortex, CQC and a xAP hub, and one with
HomeSeer, HouseBot, SlimServer and a xAP hub.   Most normal people won't
have so many different HA apps and so could be served by just the one
machine.   Personally I deliberately didn't place SlimServer on the
WHS/Cortex PC because from past experience while indexing it takes CPU
resource but once the library is built it's much easier to cohabit
with.  My reasoning was to leave the Cortex  PC as uncluttered and hence
responsive as possible but I really don't know if it would have been an
issue.  Is there a chance you could move SlimServer to 24/7 availability
on a lower power platform ?   I'm not saying it will be fine to put it
on the Cortex PC but that could be something to try and see.   Maybe you
already have a suitable NAS platform even ?

One other thought ..  does the Cortex SqueezeCentre plugin support
message display directly or does it (I suspect) use SC too ?

K




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