Is there anyway to automatically assign PIN numbers to all the tracks? This would be nice because I could print out a song list so my passengers could find the songs they want and play them easily. Ive looked in the FAQ with no avail.

You should probably ask Roger for some type of scripting support for emplode. I'm almost certain no one else has asked him about features that could be handled by scripting... Hehe..

Bruno

The PIN feature is rarely used. Printing out a list of PINs, although that would work, is contrary to the player's design.

It's meant to be easy to locate songs without PINs or a lookup sheet. You can scroll through the playlists, you can do alphanumeric searches, etc.

I have never had the desire to use PINs for song lookups. I can punch in a search-by-title much faster than it would take someone to dig out a huge printout and locate a song. Have you even tried doing this?

Er, your passengers can find the tracks they want and play them easily. Hand them the remote and the manual and point them at the "search" button.

Look I fully understand the and appreciate the search functions, but still especially for like DJ work it would be nice to have this feature

Your question says "passengers". I chose my reply with this in mind. If you want this feature for DJ work, that's a different thing entirely.

The answer is no -- there is no way (currently) to accomplish this.

What level of ease-of-use do you want for this? It could be as easy to implement (but slightly harder to use) as a shell script that auto-numbers the stuff on the player.

Alternatively, someone could cook up something easy to use, that would require more effort to implement. It's not that difficult -- the synchronisation protocol is public, and there's plenty of information around.

But, no, this feature will not be implemented in this form in emplode. It's a PITA, frankly. Like I've said many times, the correct way for me to implement this kind of functionality is by scripting. This will hopefully happen after v2.0-final.

ahhh, this does seem like a good idea,

do something like, run a script that goes through the player songs, and starts assigning PINS to them, starting at 0001 and incrementing, then it would make a easily readable format that you could print out and have for an easy reference of all the songs on the player.

or it could be something in the emplode software itself, where everything it downloads it automatically assigns a PIN number to the track, simply incrementing the number (an option that could be turned off if people don't want it)

I like the search button, but it's hard to remember what all the songs start with, and if the ID3 is filled out or not (yes yes I know, I gotta do that, but with 18.5 gigs of mp3's on it at the moment, it's hard to find the time)

I'm perfectly happy with the current system, but I could see where this would come in handy for people.

god I love my empeg (wanted it since before the Mk1 was even shipping, couldn't afford it until SB slashed the prices )

one quick edit: the reason a lookup sheet would be good for passengers, is because my passengers don't know every song that I have on the player, so they could look through them, and play one they wanted. it could also allow you to listen to songs that you forgot about, scrolling through the list looking for one song, and you see one that you haven't heard in years, ahhhhh nostalgia.

Actually the pin feature is what my wife likes most, if only that she cant remember (or care to IMO) figure out which letters go with which number. And after writing this months insurance check id say id rather have her punch in a pin rather than lookin down to find the N for Hanson.
And a side note, I gota watch for flying fists if i ever mention "why dont ya just make another playlist" again.
I can't wait for soup menus on the player!

Really, now. Wouldn't it be better to make a list of the Artists you have and possibly the albums? Even if you don't have them in that order, I think it would be more helpful than a list of 3000 songs with numbers next to them. I think the PIN feature is great for a small number of songs that you like to play often.

Plus, with your idea, what happens if you add, or even more importantly, remove tracks from your player? I can easily see someone going through more than 9999 tracks on their players in a lifetime (is that the highest PIN you can have?).

Anyway, this partly goes back to how you have your player organized. I've had SIX other people in my car before, and a simple turn of the knob as they look through the list of artists is sufficient for them.

But that's just me.....

In reply to:

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I've had SIX other people in my car before, and a simple turn of the knob as they look through the list of artists is sufficient for them.

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I'm impressed - what kind of car is that? Even if I could get six more in my car (well, I could, but not legally on the road), I doubt if more than two of them could reach the knob!

I gave this request some thought. I think it would be child's play for someone like Tony or anyone else to whip up a program that can print up "pin" numbers for *all* the tracks. Here is how... We know for example, a song named "A Tisket, A Tasket" would correspond to 2847538... in the title search. It would be a trivial matter (i think) for a program to go through and print a list of all the titles, and the minimum numbers necessary to access and play that song. Some songs will require less numbers in the "pin" and some more.

Easy solution? Not perfect, I admit that, but I think it would work for acurasquirrel.

Calvin

I'll get right on it..

Ok.. here goes my first attempt. Documentation is in the zip file. This is a perl program that uses an attached perl module (MP3Info). Just extract into your perl directory (c:\perl\ or whatever) and it should work.. Tested on a WinXP machine, if it works on a Linux box, lemme know..

Edit: oops.. no docs in the zip file, check the perl script for a simple usage (perl empegdir.pl [start directory, defaults to current directory). It's still a little rough right now, but works for most stuff..

I agree that the PIN is probably rarely used, partly because there is no automated way to use it. If I used it I would probably do something like three digits for the artist and two for the track.

But, considering it is rarely used, wouldn't it be nice for "search by title" to be the first search option rather than pin. Pretty much every passenger I've shown how to build a playlist by searching has subsequently wiped it out at least once by hitting menu three times instead of search three times.

But, considering it is rarely used, wouldn't it be nice for "search by title" to be the first search option rather than pin.

If Search By Title were first, then the PIN option would be useless because it's not first. The point of PIN was to make it the fastest possible entry.

Athough I wonder...

Does holding down the "Search" button on the Rio remote do anything at the moment?

What if holding down the "Search" button went straight to "Search By Title"? Would that make you happy? I think it would make me happy.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Nope, it doesn't do anything. I'd be happy with that.... as i HATE having to go through all the search options... i'm lazy. =]

i HATE having to go through all the search options...

Yeah, all two of them.

Yeah, all two of them

its serious stuff man, i was hospitalized for weeks with a huge thumb splint, now i have years of physical therapy to look forward to.

//matt

I take it noone is interested in the script? ah well.. needed the perl practice..

A long press for direct jump to Search by Title would be sweet! As I don't use PIN's (yet) I would definitely support this a change in function, but I understand the need for pins and would probably be unhappy to loose that functionality.

...now if we could configure the order that the search button pulls up options....

"Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." - Ferris

I take it noone is interested in the script? ah well.. needed the perl practice..

Sorry, I didn't mean to distract from the main topic. I'm sure the script is fantastic, and I would use it if I used PINs. There's a "perl" topic for the RioCar.Org site, why don't you submit it as a news article there?

I'm impressed - what kind of car is that? Even if I could get six more in my car (well, I could, but not legally on the road), I doubt if more than two of them could reach the knob!

Hehe, the beauties of the Minivan-owning empegger For a while I was proud to be the only one, but then someone went and bought a Honda Odyssey (which is what I drive).

Anyway, no, they couldn't reach the knob, but even the people in the back could read the screen!

Tony, please lobby again for this function also.

What if holding down the "Search" button went straight to "Search By Title"? Would that make you happy? I think it would make me happy.


It sure would make me happy because I've never used (and never will use) the PIN search option.
Best option in my book would be :
press once : search by title, press twice : search by artist.

The rest doesn't really matter.

Second that! My usual ways of deciding what to listen to are (in order of preference):

• Whole playlist, random, least often played
• Select album by searching on Artist
• Select track by name
  

The other options just seem unnecessary to me.

Hey, isn't this what Hijack is for? Map long title to the necessary number of short searches.

Mark posted (in another thread) a way to do that with Hijack. Here it is repeated, from an e-mail on the alpha mailing list:

[ir_translate]
; Longpress of SEARCH == Search-by-artist:
20df0e.L=20df0e,20df0e,20df0e,ffffff

But it's going to be a moot point shortly, I think.

Yeah, apparently the new beta is nigh... Mark's hijack page has a Hijack patch for the new beta...

Greetings!

I am glad to see that Mark is on the alpha team.

But of course. The more cool stuff he squeezes into the kernel, the less requests the Empeg developers have to handle. You scratch my back...

When you get to look at the kernel source code patches for the next beta, you'll see that Mark fixed a bug or two in there, and they credit him.

Good deal. If I fix a bug can I join the alpha team?

FYI, I would love the direct PIN search function, so while many of you have no use for it, I am one person who does have a use for it. Unfortunately I am not on the development team, so perhaps this is a moot post..

-John M