Okay, a major release of Hijack tonight, v161.

New in this release:

• Added XMKD, XRMD commands to kftpd, for Win2K clients
• Added REST command to kftpd, allowing it to resume interrupted transfers in either direction
• Added "Range" support to khttpd, allowing it to do partial downloads of static files, e.g. for "seeking" in WinAmp
• Added workaround for bug in player software, whereby if Tuner is set to AM, and player is removed for use elsewhere, the player will eventually recover instead of running schitzoid forever..
• Converted "NextSrc" to use Rio codes, instead of Kenwood codes, so that it will still work if the Kenwood codes are disabled in config.ini
• Added "[hijack] ir_debug=1" for config.ini, to help debug IR/button issues
• Fixed "knob doesn't work after reboot" issue
• Fixed HTTP "%xx" translation problems
• Added "SERIAL" command, which can be used to inject serial port commands into the player, such as feeding it a playlist FID:

  
      echo "SERIAL #100" >/proc/empeg_notify

  or

  
      http://your.empeg./proc/empeg_notify?SERIAL%20%23100

• Other small bugfixes
  

The playlist and tune streaming still seems to work, but has not been fixed for two-drive players yet. Someday soon..

Enjoy!

Added "Range" support to khttpd, allowing it to do partial downloads of static files, e.g. for "seeking" in WinAmp

This is something I don't know how to do with my app. Do you have any ideas on how to get this to work on my webserver, or could you point me to something that might give me info I need to implement this? I'm not sure what the right question is to ask here, because I'm not quite sure how and where this is fixed.

http://your.empeg./proc/empeg_notify?SERIAL%20%23100

I tried your example here (and a couple variations of it) but it didn't work for me. Just shows me info on what's currently playing on the unit. I might not be using it correctly or understand what it's supposed to do.

This is something I don't know how to do with my app. Do you have any ideas on how to get this to work on my webserver, or could you point me to something that might give me info I need to implement this? I'm not sure what the right question is to ask here, because I'm not quite sure how and where this is fixed.

When a webclient (in this case Winamp) requests a file from a webserver (in this case serving mp3's) it can tell it a range of bytes of the file to transfer.. This lets winamp seek to a specific place in the file (IE, the user dragging the seek bar) and start from there. Without this, the server would just send the whole file again. It can also be used to resume file transfers if something goes wrong.

I tried your example here (and a couple variations of it) but it didn't work for me. Just shows me info on what's currently playing on the unit. I might not be using it correctly or understand what it's supposed to do.

I'm not getting anything.. I can connect to the serial port and send commands, but only once did I even see serial commands initiated through the URL show up.. Even then, # commands don't seem to work for me.

Edit: now that I posted, the serial commands are working again.. but # command is not.. even through the serial port nothing happens..

This lets winamp seek to a specific place in the file (IE, the user dragging the seek bar) and start from there. Without this, the server would just send the whole file again

Well, my app is currently restarting the song when you try to seek, and I'd like to fix that, but I don't know how. That's really what I was asking. In Winamp, I seek to a point in the middle of a song served by Hijack, works great. I try to do this with a song coming from my server, it doesn't work so great. I don't know where this is fixed.

Well, my app is currently restarting the song when you try to seek, and I'd like to fix that, but I don't know how. That's really what I was asking. In Winamp, I seek to a point in the middle of a song served by Hijack, works great. I try to do this with a song coming from my server, it doesn't work so great. I don't know where this is fixed.

One of the header fields given by the client for HTTP 1.1 is:

Content-Range: bytes=<start>-[end]

Edit: For more information about server side stuff, check section 14.16 in RFC2616.
Edit: here's some information about client side: http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.35

Here is the reference I found on the subject of "Range" transfers via HTTP:

http://www.vbip.com/winsock/winsock_http_08_01.asp

Okay, v161 broke IR translations .. oops.

v162 fixes them again, and adds ERROR messages on the serial port for bad translations, plus a Popup ERROR alert as well.

Cheers

-ml

This example:

http://your.empeg./proc/empeg_notify?SERIAL=%23100

sends "%23100\n" to the serial port "input". The %23 is just a '#' character, so it really sends '#100\n', which should (after a few seconds) cause the player to restart at the root level playlist.

The rest of the URL just returns current player status.

You could replace /proc/empeg_notify with /dev/null to send the command but receive no output back.

-ml

Oh yea, the '#100' syntax appears to be broken in beta7, so you may have to wait for a newer beta to use it.. forgot about that..

Mark, great stuff as usual!!!

I love the ability to browse with http://player.IP.address/drive0/fids/101?.html!

It seems to act strangely on my system though...

Clicking on "Play" opens the playlist, instead of playing it, unless there are no more nested lists. So, if I'm at "Artist" level, and click on "Play", then it opens that artist's subfolder, which contains albums. But when I'm at "Album" level, and click on "Play", then it actually plays the album. Clicking on a track also plays the track as expected, BTW.

Another strange thing I get, is that only half of the artist names show up in the playlists. I've attached a screenshot of that one.

And lastly, the other strange thing I'm seeing, is actually within WinAmp. When albums are streamed to WinAmp, all of the songs have the correct name in the playlist window, but, as soon as a song starts to play, the HTTP address of the empeg flashes by quickly, and then the name changes to a 4 digit code. My guess is that it's somehow reverting back to the code that shows up on the unit, but I'm not positive.

Details...
empeg MK2, 2.0b7, hijack 161
WinXP system, running IE6

Hi.

As noted in other threads, Hijack will not play from nested playlists, because I don't want to do recursion within the kernel (would run out of memory very quickly). This is by design, and is unlikely to be fixed anytime soon. Sorry.

I dunno why some of your artists don't show.. how about you look at the tag files (the /drive0/fids/*1 files) and make sure the "blank" ones actually have the "artist" information filled in.

I'm not sure what WinAmp wants for data, but I'm feeding titles to it. Perhaps your MP3's are missing ID3 tags? I don't use WinAmp, but if you can figure out what it wants that is missing, I'll fix it.

Cheers

Hmmmm... Looks like I'm not the only one running into the WinAmp issue. I just found this thread...

How to get Winamp to show id3 info when streaming from the empeg via http

Not sure why this was in "Off Topic"...

Does anyone else experience this behavior with hijack? I’ve had this for a few versions and it hasn’t fixed itself so here is a bug report.

After the player starts up, if you crank the volume knob down/up it is very slow in response. I can literally turn the knob down, let go, and watch the volume go down slowly for 3-4 seconds. After all of the “queued up” buttons finish, everything is normal.

This happens whether in car or home mode and with “Restore DC/Car Visuals” enabled or disabled. The behavior goes away when I install the unmodified kernel on the hijack website.

I usually listen at 0db at home and -40db in the car. I have a home docking station so the empeg doesn’t know the difference. I guess the empeg will remember my settings when the tuner id is implemented in software (any word on that?), but for now I am adjusting the volume every time I’m in the car. With the current versions of hijack I can’t turn down the volume fast enough before it’s really loud.

Tom

Well I started that thread and its not stricly a Empeg issue - I suspect its more a Winamp issue, hence the Offtopic nature.

I did intend to stick a quick post with a link to that thread here but I got distracted.

I'm not sure what the Winamp problem is and as Mark doesn't run winamp [no non-Linux OS's for the kernel king :-)) ], so its pointless [and wasteful of his time] to ask him to sort out a problem not related as far as we know to his streaming hack for hijack.

The only comment I'd make is that Winamp may expect the id3 tag up front in the file - I think the rio Receiver outputs the ID3 tag at the very start in the mp3 file [i.e. it makes a mp3 tag, then tacks it on the front of the mp3 stream].
This way winamp has a tag as soon as the file starts.
thats just my surmise though and I may be wrong.

My only question to Mark would be, how difficult/costly [time & kernel memory wise] would it be for Hijack to take the http request for the *0 file, open the adjacent *1 file and using the [text] info in the *1 file make a valid ID3V2 MP3 Tag and whack it on the front of the mp3 file as its streamed to to the requesting app?
This might keep Winamp happy - but thats merely a suggestion not a request.

In reply to:

---

Another strange thing I get, is that only half of the artist names show up in the playlists. I've attached a screenshot of that one.

---

I get that too, and I know what the cause is - Mark was right when he said look at the Playlist properties in Emplode.

The playlists with no filled in fields *OTHER THAN* Playlist name show up blank. If you fill in some other fields [such as artist, source etc ] (& resync your player) then this information will be shown along with the title
when only the playlist title is filled in you get a blank line in the HTML playlist table.

Not sure if this is a bug or by design - Mark care to comment?

That would be, err, by design.

This shouldn't be needed.. hijack already inserts m3u tags with the track duration and title on them. I wonder what else it wants?

-ml

Hijack will not play from nested playlists, because I don't want to do recursion within the kernel

Cool, no problem.

I dunno why some of your artists don't show.. how about you look at the tag files (the /drive0/fids/*1 files) and make sure the "blank" ones actually have the "artist" information filled in.

Wow, cool... I didn't know you could pull up the ID3 tag info like that... Anyway, I just double checked a couple of those artists, and the ID3 info is all there. I've been pretty anal about making sure all of that info is always filled in, and as far as I know, there isn't a song on my player that doesn't have the ID3 info. ok... some of them have the incorrect year or genra...

Hmmmm... now that I think about it, I know that all of the songs have all of the ID3 info filled in, but I'm not sure about the playlists themselves... Maybe the artists I'm having trouble with are pre-emplode 2.0beta synchs or something... I need to investigate further...

Damn, you have to be fast to keep up with some of these threads!

Well I started that thread and its not stricly a Empeg issue - I suspect its more a Winamp issue, hence the Offtopic nature.

Oh... Yeah... Duh. I guess that does kinda make sense So, yeah, it does pretty much look like a winamp issue. Oh well. Hmmm... I'm curious though, do any other streaming players exhibit this behaviour...?

look at the Playlist properties in Emplode...

Yeah... That's kinda what I just figured out...

*sigh* Not looking forward to moding the details of all of those artists...

After the player starts up, if you crank the volume knob down/up it is very slow in response. I can literally turn the knob down, let go, and watch the volume go down slowly for 3-4 seconds. After all of the “queued up” buttons finish, everything is normal.

I had this happen the other day, actually. I tried to reproduce it with no luck, so I just chalked it up to a stray gamma ray or something.

*sniff sniff* smells like a bug...

The playlists with no filled in fields *OTHER THAN* Playlist name show up blank. If you fill in some other fields [such as artist, source etc ] (& resync your player) then this information will be shown along with the title
when only the playlist title is filled in you get a blank line in the HTML playlist table.

OK... I did a little more research on this... In my case, none of the artist info is filled in on any playlists, only on songs. I guess this is a byproduct of me already having the directory structure in place on my computer, and just doing the drag and drop thing in emplode. If you take a look at that screen shot I attached earlier, and you'll notice the "Artist" column is completely blank. It's actaually the "Title" column that shows the artists, albiet only half of them.

So, I tried filling in the artist info for one of my playlists, and sure enough, the title shows up fine now. So, the real question now is...

Is there an automated way of filling in this info...? I have a ton of artists, and it's gonna suck doing this by hand...

My comment relates to the HTML Playlist that gets sent out.
not the m3u files you get if you click on the 'play' link of a playlist.

The html 'table' you create for the root playlist (and playlist containg playlists) has a all blank table row entry [**including the Playlist name**], whenever the fields from the playlist are missing [i.e. even if the playlist name is present its not shown in the html table if all the other fields are missing from the playlist properties].

This sounds like a bug in the html table output routine.

Hmm, how do I use the playlist function.

Do I simply create a playlist in Winamp and FTP it over??

TommyE

Install Hijack V160 or later,
then point your web browser at your empeg using a url like:

http://192.168.1.43/drive0/fids/101?.html
where you raplace the 192.168.1.43 with your empegs IP address/machine name.

then follow the blinking lights - you'll get a clickable HTML table of playlist, if you click the first link on each row it sends a Winamp m3u playlist file to your PC, which winamp should then fire up and start playing the playlist.

clicking on the next link will produce another html table like the first showing all the songs for this playlist.

Try it its easy,

> Install Hijack V160 or later, then point your web browser
> at your empeg using a url like:
> http://192.168.1.43/drive0/fids/101?.html
> where you raplace the 192.168.1.43 with your empegs IP
> address/machine name.

What he said.

And if you get tired of typing that (am sure we'll all bookmark it) or telling your co-workers how to reach your empeg, put an HTML file in the root directory containing something like this:


<html>
<head>
<title>empeg 30GB Playlist</title>
</head>
<FRAMESET>
<FRAME SRC="/drive0/fids/101?.html">
</FRAMESET>
</html>


...and if you named it, say, PLAY.HTM, all you'd have to enter is this:

http://<empeg IP address or HOSTS alias>/PLAY.HTM

Not particularly clever, but handy. One could also just use a META-REDIRECT set to 0 seconds.

Great, Thanks for the help. Both of you, I have it working now.

TommyE

I can see that the knob might be less response immediately after startup, because the player is doing a lot of disk reading at that point.

And the "knob twist debounce" logic in Hijack DOES add a slight delay to all knob rotations, and this could be magnified if the player is really busy with the drive, I suppose.

-ml

Mmm.. I don't see this happening, ever, on v162.

Can you supply more info, like the offending tag files themselves?


Thanks

Could you include symbolic button names on the khttpd ?button= interface? Or is it a hassle .... ?

>Could you include symbolic button names on the
>khttpd ?button= interface?

Sure.. I just noticed this morning that I'd forgotton to do it there. It's in for v163.

Cheers