Plugin: Squeezeslave v2

[routerunner]

FEATURES

Full Mutual Exclusion

This approach also improves user experience as no precious memory is taking away from SageTV as it was in Squeezeslave version 1.0.x, therefore the extender can now operate faster and in two distinctive modes: SageTV and Squeezeslave. How?, After enabling the extender in the Squeezeslave plugin configuration page:

• Press the power button to go into STAND BY and after 30 seconds your extender will be a Squeezeslave player.
• Press the POWER/HOME button again and your extender will be running SageTV as before.

Please note that the Squeezeslave software is uploaded, when required, on the extender and is running from a RAMDisk, therefore absolutely nothing is changed/modified/flashed on your extender.


Separate Volume Control

The volume level in SageTV mode and in Squeezeslave player mode are separate and controlled by their respective SageTV/Logitech Media server interfaces and applies to Analogue, S/P-DIF, and HDMI (STX-HD100 excluded) output and doesn't require any change to your current SageTV audio setting. The separate volume control is particularly important as you might want to listen music at a different volume level than watching TV and maybe using different audio processing.


Pure Digital Audio Output

The volume level is controlled by using the extender's high quality DAC instead of the default software interpolation method which inevitably alters the original sound wave, therefore the pure digital audio output method guarantees a clean pure digital output sound where nothing is added and nothing is taken away.


Remote Control

The Squeezeserver software (now ‘Logitech Media Server’) requires a UI to browse through artists and albums, select playlists and so on. Many people do this through the web interface, or through a third party app like iPeng for iPhone/iPad. However, once you have selected which tracks to play, it can be a bit inconvenient to turn on your iPhone/go to your PC just to skip a track or change the volume. Squeezeslave solves these problems! From now on, once you have cued up a playlist, you can use your SageTV remote control to play/pause/skip/scan all of your tracks. As the attached image shows, you can now use different remotes to do pretty much everything you could do with an original squeezebox remote. Just select the album/playlist and you’re ready to go!

A second new feature is ‘playlist select’. If you create up to 9 playlists and name them 1-9, then you can use the number buttons on the remote to load and play that playlist on squeezeslave. So, you could create playlists based on genres, favourite artists, or radio stations, or for different family members, and cue them up in Squeezeslave at the touch of a button. What’s more, pressing the 0 button loads your entire library as a playlist (handy when used in combination with the shuffle button).


Wake-On-LAN

The Squeezeslave player is able to send the WOL packet from any supported extender to the network interface where your SageTV server is attached on. The "Magic Packet" is send automatically every time the Squeezeslave player is entering into SageTV mode by means of the "Power/Home" button or manually by pressing the "Sleep" button which is particularly useful in case you want to wake up your LMS server and keep staying in Squeezeslave mode (Not available in TRIAL mode).


Unlimited Free Trial

You have the chance of trying everything about the Squeezeslave player including the remote control functionality on any of your extenders for as long as you like. The only real difference between trial and licensed mode is the maximum number of seconds (60) you can listen to any song before the playback stops automatically.

The trial mode is an opportunity to existing single license users to experiment with multiple room synchronization and to new potential users to have a better understanding and appreciation of the system and how can dramatically improve your music listening experience by using your current investments.

After installing the new release, you will see all your available extenders listed in the plugin configuration page whereby any unlicensed extender will clearly have the "TRIAL MODE" added to the name.

Regarding synchronization please be aware that, unless rare circumstances, PC based Squeeze players like SoftSqueeze & SqueezePlay will not sync properly when used in conjunction with any original Squeezebox player and the Squeezeslave player, conversely the Squeezeslave player will seemingly integrate with any existing original Squeezebox player in your network. This is apparently a well known and documented issue which is due to the lack of PC based sound cards to generate consistent and accurate time stamp which is required by the Logitech Media Server to keep all the players in perfect sync.


License

This software is not completely free. The main reason of this decision is because I want to help this small local charity which will seriously benefit from donation to this project, also it will give me a serious and valid commitment to continue to work on this plugin. The license have a fixed price and is tight to the extender's MAC address, also any extender that uses a wireless interface will have two MAC addresses (Wired & Wireless), therefore you must provide the MAC address of the interface you are currently using with SageTV V7 server. In case you're planning to use both interfaces by switching between them as required you need to purchase two licences.

Please take your time to evaluate the software, but if you will find the player enjoyable and useful, then please license your extenders by visiting this eBay link and completing the PayPal payment.

Please note that 100% of the license fee will be donated to the SCWAD (Swindon Children Without A Diagnosis or with rare disorders) charity.


PREREQUISITE

Before proceeding to the installation you must be sure you have the necessary prerequisite this software has been certified for:

• OS: All 32/64bit version of Windows XP/Vista/7, Linux, MacOS
• Squeeze Center (Logitech Media Server): v7.4+
• SageTV: v7.1.9+
• MediaMVP: mvp.bin (2008-04-29) (latest official)
• STX-HD100: 20100212-0 (latest official)
• STP-HD200: 20100909-0 (latest official)
• STP-HD300: 20110506-0 (latest beta, plus older version as well, please see post #7)

IMPORTANT

In case your extender has to meet the above prerequisite and therefore needs the firmware to be upgraded AND you have already installed the Squeezeslave plugin, then please make sure you're following this procedure:

1. Disable the Squezeslave plugin
2. Perform a hard power cycle of the extender
3. Upgrade the firmware in stand alone mode as specified by SageTV
4. Enable the Squeezeslave plugin

The above procedure will guarantee a successful firmware upgrade.


INSTALLATION

This is a SageTV V7 plugin so the installation is just the same as every other plugin, however please follow these simple steps for a successful experience:

• Switch the extender/s OFF.
• Find and install the "Squeezeslave" plugin from "General" tab.
• You will be prompted to restart SageTV server, select "Restart, Later".
• Copy the "license.txt" file into "<SageTV Installation directory>/plugins/squeezeslaveplayer/" (Not necessary in trial mode)
• Restart the SageTV server.
• Switch the extender/s ON.
• Wait until all the extender/s are up and running with the SageTV UI.
• Go to the Squeezeslave plugin configuration page.
• You should see a list of all the extender/s you have the license for. (Displays TRIAL MODE when not licensed)
• Individually enable the extender you wish to load the Squeezeslave player into. In case you are enabling the player for a MediaMVP you might need to configure the FTP server port, so please look at the "TROUBLESHOOTING" section as well.
• That's it! Just soft power off the extender/s, wait about 30 seconds and you now have a fleet of Squeezeslave players joining your existing squeeze network.

Also, there could be some extra steps you have to do depending upon the OS you're currently running SageTV on:

Windows

This plugin now requires an FTP and a NFS server running on your SageTV server machine. Both servers are included in Squeezeslave v2 and will be running automatically as appropriate. The servers executable are located in:

<SageTV installation dir>/plugins/squeezeslaveplayer/

Linux/MacOS

Both these operating system have usually an FTP & NFS server installed already, so please follow the instruction below:

• FTP

Add a new user with the following credentials:

Username: squeezeslaveplayer
Password: squeezeslaveplayer
Home: <SageTV Installation directory>/plugins/squeezeslaveplayer/
Rights: Read Only

• NFS

Linux

1. Add "/opt/sagetv/server/plugins/squeezeslaveplayer * ro,sync,no_subtree_check)" in "/etc/exports"
2. Restart the NFS server.

MacOS

1. Add "/SageTV-install-dir/plugins/squeezeslaveplayer -ro -mapall=nobody" in "/etc/exports"
2. Restart the NFS server.

TROUBLESHOOTING

In case you are experiencing any issue, please make sure you have done the following first:

• If your Windows Firewall is turned ON you need to manually add the "FreeFTP.exe" and "FreeNFS.exe" servers to the Home/Work(Private) network Firewall setting and giving them full unconditional access.
• The MediaMVP requires an FTP server running, the default port number (49152) is the first port available after IANA reserved list, however there is the possibility that other services might use that port as well, so please try another port as the valid port range is clearly stated in the plugin configuration page.
• Make sure that the 'Logitech Media Server' Web server's "Password protection" is set to "No password protection" and the "Block Incoming Connections" is set to "Do not block", because a bug in the LMS prevents to switch playlist via remote control otherwise. The two settings are in "Settings > Advanced Tab > Security drop down list".

Every modification done on the Windows Firewall settings or in the FTP port number must be followed by disabling the plugin and re-enabling the plugin procedure. Restarting the SageTV server is not required, but has the same effect.


KNOWN ISSUES

1. The Squeezeslave player currently support any audio bit-rate, 44.1KHz sample rate, stereo which covers 99.9% of the cases. In the very rare circumstance (typically an Internet radio) a media source has a different sample rate (i.e. 32KHz) then you'll get the so called "Chipmunks" audio output. However, there is a workaround available here developed by one of the plugin user which will fix that for the time being.

Please feel free to post any bug, feedback and feature request here.


Thanks
Eddy

[routerunner]

A new improved version of this plugin is available to download.

Squeezeslave 2.0.2

• Added FTP server port option, to avoid conflicts with existing FTP server. If unsure leave defaults.
• Improved mutual exclusion mechanism, with reduced memory footprint on the extender.
• Improved wireless connectivity.

Squeezeslave player 2.0.1

• Improved mutual exclusion mechanism, by using less CPU.
• Fixed audio static issue on HD200/HD300 and some problematic MP3 playback in particular on HD200 - Important! Please hard power cycle extender after the plugin update.

This is also a preparatory release for supporting the STX-HD100 which is currently working on my test rig and will be available in the next release (2.1.0).

Also, any donation to the charity is very welcome...

Enjoy!
Eddy

[routerunner]

A new improved version of this plugin is available to download.

Squeezeslave player 2.0.2

• Massively reduced the amount of CPU usage. I was never been happy about the constant very high CPU usage (90%-100% affecting all the current releases even prior the plugin version) of the Squeezeslave player and some of you probably noticed that in Squeezeslave mode your extender was running hotter. I spent a lot of time on investigating possible optimisation and after making cross compiling toolchains specifically targeted for each of the supported extenders, changing maths library and some tweaks in the player I managed to reduce the average CPU usage on all the extenders to an amazing 8%. These changes will definitively contribute to increase the extender's life span.
• Ogg Vorbis audio has finally been fixed.

Please don't forget to hard power cycle your extender/s after updating the player.

Eddy

[routerunner]

A new improved version of this plugin is available to download.

Squeezeslave 2.0.3

• Support of servers with multiple NICs
  This support is particular important to those of you that have multiple NICs on the SageTV server, but connected to separate LAN. There is a bug in the SageTV API that prevents returning the correct server IP address in this particular case, therefore I had to write my own discovery mechanism.

Eddy

[routerunner]

A new improved version of this plugin is available to download.

Squeezeslave 2.0.4

• Fix issue of supporting multiple NICs on Linux
  Apparently same version of Java VM are not exactly equivalent on Linux and Windows and maybe on Mac, so code that did work perfectly on Windows didn't on Linux and as a consequence I had to find a different way to perform the same operation on Linux that were still working on Windows and maybe Mac as well.

Regarding the MacOS support, I currently don't have any customer that runs this plugin on MacOS, however I'll be interested to know whether this mechanism works on a Mac, so if you're willing to help please PM me and I'll send you a copy of a small test program that will perform this test and therefore will let me know whether I'm in the right direction or not.

Thanks
Eddy

[routerunner]

A new version of this plugin is available to download.

Squeezeslave 2.1.0

• STX-HD100 Support
  Added the STX-HD100 to the list of supported loadable players.

Squeezeslave player 2.1.0

• STX-HD100 Support
  Finally the Squeezeslave Linux drivers and player for STX-HD100 are available to download. The pause issue is 99.999% resolved and only when you do pause for more than 5 minutes, otherwise it will work as expected.
• STP-HD300 Old Firmware Support
  This release supports previous STP-HD300 firmware as well. In order to know whether your particular firmware is supported or not, please follow this simple procedure:
  1. Login into the unit.
  2. Type "dmesg" without quotes.
  3. Look for a message like "SMP8654F_" followed by a triplet of numbers which represents the on board library version. The minimum supported firmware has a sequence of numbers equal to "3_8_2".
• Pure Digital Audio Output
  This release handles the volume output by using the on board hardware mixer instead of the default software interpolation method which inevitably "alters" the original sound wave. The result is a clean pure digital output sound where nothing is added and nothing is taken away. At the moment, PDAO is only implemented for the STX-HD100, but soon it will be available for the other extenders as well.

IMPORTANT! If you intend to upgrade/downgrade your HD300 firmware, please read post #1 of this thread under the PREREQUISITE section first.

As this release contains drivers and player changes, please make sure you hard power cycle your extender as well.

Eddy

[routerunner]

A new improved version of this plugin is available to download.

Squeezeslave player 2.2.0

• Squeezeslave Remote
  As announced recently, this release supports the IR remote control. Please read post #8 for more information and download the "Squeezeslave Remote.pdf" in attachment to post #1 for your reference.
• Register Capabilities
  This mechanism, supported since Squeeze Center v7.4, allows a squeeze player to register its capabilities in terms of which file format the player is directly capable of without the trans-coding service from the Squeeze server required. The registering mechanism is important as the Squeezeslave player is perfectly capable of playing PCM, FLAC, MP3, OGG file format directly and therefore able to lift off some load from the server in particular when more than one player is involved. This mechanism requires updating your Squeeze Center (now 'Logitech Media Server') to the minimum version of 7.4.

This is a "Library" plugin and therefore the SageTV UI will not notify the new release available in the main menu.

Please perform the manual update by visiting the Setup > SageTV Plugins > Installed Server Plugins > Library > Squeezeslave Player and install the new version 2.2.0.

Please don't forget to hard power cycle your extender/s after updating the player.


Finally, I would like to hear your feedback about this new exciting functionality and any suggestion you might have is absolutely welcome!

Eddy

[routerunner]

A new version of this plugin is available to download.

Squeezeslave 2.1.1

• HOME button (Part #1)
  The loader is now using custom scripts to run the software on the extenders in order to honor the Power/Home buttons properly.

Squeezeslave player 2.2.1

• Remote Control
  The remote control feature has introduced several major bugs that was causing the extender to crash when pressing random buttons during software startup. Also malfunctions of the playlist feature when the LMS interface is protected by username and password.
• STP-HD300 S/PDIF
  The STP-HD300 only has been plagued with a very particular bug affecting the S/PDIF interface only and caused by watching HDTV with Dolby AC3 stream followed by Squeezeslave mode whereby the audio was muted.
• HOME button (Part #2)
  All the extenders are now responding to the "POWER" and "HOME" button as you would expect. Please be aware that on the STX-HD100 the above buttons behavior is inverted.
• Power on Resume
  The player is now honoring the "Power on Resume" setting you can find in the LMS Web interface under "Settings > Player > Audio". All the listed modes are working as expected, with the only exception of "Pause at power off / Resume at power on" which will restart the song when used during SageTV/Squeezeslave mode switching.

This release supports the FREE UNLIMITED TRIAL mode, please see post #1 of this thread for details.

As this release contains drivers and player changes, please make sure you hard power cycle your extender as well.

Eddy

[routerunner]

A new version of this plugin is available to download.

Squeezeslave 2.1.2

• Wake-On-LAN
  Allow the WOL packet to be sent to the network interface where the SageTV server is currently attached on.

Squeezeslave player 2.2.2

• Pure Digital Audio Output
  This release adds the Pure Digital Audio Output mechanism to the MediaMVP only.
• Wake-On-LAN
  Add support to WOL packet that will be automatically sent from the MediaMVP/STX-HD100/STP-HD200/STP-HD300 every time the Squeezeslave player is powering into SageTV mode via "Power/Home" button. Also you can manually send the WOL packet by pressing the "Sleep" button on your remote control in case you want to wake up your LMS server and keep staying in Squeezeslave mode (see updated remote control document).

Eddy

[routerunner]

As anticipated, the standalone version of the Squeezeslave player, which doesn't require SageTV any more, is available HERE in the download section.

Enjoy!
Eddy

[routerunner]

Halloween is a very exciting time of the year for kids and a good opportunity to help the children of the Charity I'm sponsoring.

For a very limited period of time, you can purchase the Squeezeslave license at 20% off (currently £6.13).

Offer ends Thursday 1st November 2012 @ 23:59 GMT

Thanks
Eddy

[routerunner]

In case you missed, I did post a poll regarding the HDMI support on the Squeezeslave player HERE.

Please let me know your preferences.

Eddy

[routerunner]

A new version of this plugin is available to download.

Squeezeslave player 2.3.0

• Trial Mode
  The playback time-out in trial mode has been extended to 60 seconds.
• Pure Digital Audio Output
  The Pure Digital Audio Output mechanism is now supported on all the SageTV extenders.
• HDMI Audio Output
  The HDMI audio output is now available on the STP-HD200 and STP-HD300 only, also any of your current HDMI settings are unaffected.

This is a "Library" plugin update and unfortunately the SageTV UI will NOT notify the new release available as it normally happens with the other plugin types, so your update options are:

• Manual: visit the Setup > SageTV Plugins > Installed Server Plugins > Library > Squeezeslave Player.
• Automatic: uninstall the main Squeezeslave plugin and install it again.

Also, please don't forget to hard power cycle your extender/s after updating the player.

The standalone version of the player will not be upgraded to version 2.3.0 until further notice.


Eddy