Control Amarok from Android Phone

[abhiroopb]

Hi,

I installed the app and ran it fine.

When I launch VLC it launches fine. Whenever I launch the amarok app it gives me the following message:

"The application Tesla (process tesla.app) has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again."

[SeanHodges]

I can reproduce this when I'm not playing any music in Amarok when I connect. I think it is trying to pull the song information and crashing because the player is stopped.

I'll see if I can get a fix available by tomorrow, in the meantime a work-around is to ensure Amarok is playing before connecting to your PC from Tesla.

[abhiroopb]

Yup that fixed it fine! Works great. Really useful to be able to control my player from the phone.

A few comments/suggestions:

1. The volume control does not seem to do anything. As I suggested before it may be useful to integrate it with the main volume control (and not Amarok specific) as I usually keep amarok maxed out and I manually adjust the main volume.

2. The cover art and album information looks great on the phone. But I notice that it occasionally switches back to the "Demo" album (and blank cover art and then switches back to the Currently playing song.

3. Still randomly crashes (a lot!).

4. Would be useful if I could see the songs in the current playlist or search the database generally (I noticed that the playlist button is non-functional at this point).

But otherwise this is an immensely useful app! Well done!

[SeanHodges]

1. The volume control does not seem to do anything. As I suggested before it may be useful to integrate it with the main volume control (and not Amarok specific) as I usually keep amarok maxed out and I manually adjust the main volume.

Strange, it seems to work for me (within Amarok). I'll take a look at this as well.

I agree a master volume control would be a good addition. I think there will be people who want a master volume and others who will only want it to affect their player.

I can see 2 ways this could be done - either have 2 volume controls on the app, or have a preference setting that switches the behaviour of the existing volume control. I'm leaning to the latter option, what do you think?

2. The cover art and album information looks great on the phone. But I notice that it occasionally switches back to the "Demo" album (and blank cover art and then switches back to the Currently playing song.

3. Still randomly crashes (a lot!).

I think these are both related to the Amarok 1.4 song retrieval bug you discovered earlier. I will look for a fix that stops the crashing, and hopefully resolves the blanking song info panel bug.

I'd be interested to know if you experience the force-closing with VLC as well, if so I might be on the wrong track.

4. Would be useful if I could see the songs in the current playlist or search the database generally (I noticed that the playlist button is non-functional at this point).

I hope this can be implemented fairly soon. It's going to need a bit of careful planning because most players don't expose their music collection database. I think it will need to be a simple playlist to start with, and then gradually add a collection browser feature to each media player configuration as ways to create them are discovered.

But otherwise this is an immensely useful app! Well done!

Thanks!

[abhiroopb]

Strange, it seems to work for me (within Amarok). I'll take a look at this as well.

I agree a master volume control would be a good addition. I think there will be people who want a master volume and others who will only want it to affect their player.

I can see 2 ways this could be done - either have 2 volume controls on the app, or have a preference setting that switches the behaviour of the existing volume control. I'm leaning to the latter option, what do you think?

Not sure why it isn't working. Tried it a number of times...

I agree with the latter option. Otherwise it would get confusing. In fact having two is probably confusing anyway. Not sure how to get around it though. I assume you prefer having the application control the volume? Have you had a look at gmote? The app is similar in many ways, but it is more useful to PLAY music, than to CONTROL it, as it does not let you control the app itself.

I guess if you label it "Master Volume" and "Application Volume" it would be clear enough.

I think these are both related to the Amarok 1.4 song retrieval bug you discovered earlier. I will look for a fix that stops the crashing, and hopefully resolves the blanking song info panel bug.

I'd be interested to know if you experience the force-closing with VLC as well, if so I might be on the wrong track.

I have not (as far as I recall) had a similar problem with VLC...seems to be related to Amarok. When I have a bit more time (later this week), I'll try it out on Rhythmbox and Banshee as well

I hope this can be implemented fairly soon. It's going to need a bit of careful planning because most players don't expose their music collection database. I think it will need to be a simple playlist to start with, and then gradually add a collection browser feature to each media player configuration as ways to create them are discovered.

I totally understand. Have you had a look at "amarok-remote"? It's not as slick as your app, actually its web based and you need to have something running on your computer as well. It seemed good in the beginning but it was far too buggy. But this allows you to search the currently playing playlist.

I am also using MySQL and NOT the default (which I believe is SQLite). Could this be causing any problems?

Thanks!

You're most welcome.

May I ask which competition this is for? Are you working on your own?

[abhiroopb]

UPDATE: Just restarted my computer (by extension Amarok), my HTC (and by extension Tesla).

First test:
The volume control worked fine.
The album information (and cover) did not show up.
The play button and the seek buttons worked.
The app crashed after about 30s.

Second test:
Ditto the first, but this time album art was available
App crashed again after about 20s.

VLC works fine (with or without anything playing). But, there is a slight problem with the VLC volume control. VLC allows the volume to go up to 200%, so, I like to keep mine at about 150%...anyway Tesla only allows the volume to be set between 0% - 100%.

The only other feature I would suggest is the ability to fast forward and rewind (especially useful in VLC).

Thanks

[abhiroopb]

Update 2: Slight aesthetic quirk...If you pause the song in Amarok, the Play/Pause icon in Tesla does not change. But pressing the button works like normal...not really a major problem.

Another feature that might be useful is either a widget or some form of notification in the Androids notification bar.

[SeanHodges]

I believe I have fixed the force closing in Amarok 1.4, at least it doesn't seem to crash for me anymore. I've rolled a 0.6 release for you to try out:

http://bit.ly/tesla0-6

VLC works fine (with or without anything playing). But, there is a slight problem with the VLC volume control. VLC allows the volume to go up to 200%, so, I like to keep mine at about 150%...anyway Tesla only allows the volume to be set between 0% - 100%.

The only other feature I would suggest is the ability to fast forward and rewind (especially useful in VLC).

You raised a good point on the VLC volume, I've increased the threshold to 200% in the latest release. I've also added support for film title retrieval when using VLC. Let me know if you find any problems with the changes.

Slight aesthetic quirk...If you pause the song in Amarok, the Play/Pause icon in Tesla does not change. But pressing the button works like normal...not really a major problem.

I thought someone would notice this sooner or later I have some code for handling the play/pause button in players that provide their playing status, but it proved to be a bit unstable (particularly in Amarok). I've turned it off for now, because as you say, it's not a major problem. But I do intend to re-visit the code at some point.

Another feature that might be useful is either a widget or some form of notification in the Androids notification bar.

Definitely, I think I'll look into the possibilities of widget/notification support once I've got the main application stable and working; but it's a good feature to keep in scope.

[abhiroopb]

The 0.6 update seems to have fixed the crashing problem. Also the volume for VLC and the filename update has been fixed.

Thanks for the update. Keep me posted on new developments please!

[SeanHodges]

Great!

Also in response to your question on which competition this is for; it's for the Android Developer Challenge ("ADC2"), and yes, right now I'm working on my own. (though the project is open-source, and I'm happy to accept contributions)

I'll be sure to post up any developments. Adding master volume control support and a seek bar are definitely planned for a near release, though my focus for the next couple of days will be on stability and UI clean-up to prepare for my competition submission.