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HSTouch Designer - Music API compatibility?

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    HSTouch Designer - Music API compatibility?

    First off great plugin. This has been great for my customers as it gives a multi-purpose plugin ( especially on HomeTroller Zees with 5 plugins support ) and control for many different devices under one roof
    !!!!

    Anyway. I am currently using HSTouch Designer for all my screens via tablets and phones. The Music API doesn't recognize the MediaController's Devices as a "Music Interface " to select. From my understanding from posting in other forum groups for HSTouch Designer, that the plugin must use the HSTouch Music API for it to show up in terms of seeing the MediaServer contents and use with their default Music templates.

    I have successfully added my Windows Media Player Server and Player and have full control via my HomeSeer Troller via my WMP on my HTPC.. I have been able to make a decent Media Player Screen in HSTouch Design by simply using the different devices created via MediaController for the WMP controls/status. I am able to display all info, Album art, track info, etc. I have integrated the controls for all the control MediaController Device gives me. No issues there...

    My gap is being able to see the file servers files like you can via the plugins player under Manage Plugins in HS3, Any way of doing this?

    Am I correct to understand this plugin will only play the playlist created via the Plugin Config v/s being able to browse and play that particular file from WMP Server?

    Thanks and would appreciate any comments/feedback. I can give more detail if needed.

    #2
    Originally posted by KeyMix View Post
    First off great plugin. This has been great for my customers as it gives a multi-purpose plugin ( especially on HomeTroller Zees with 5 plugins support ) and control for many different devices under one roof
    !!!!

    Anyway. I am currently using HSTouch Designer for all my screens via tablets and phones. The Music API doesn't recognize the MediaController's Devices as a "Music Interface " to select. From my understanding from posting in other forum groups for HSTouch Designer, that the plugin must use the HSTouch Music API for it to show up in terms of seeing the MediaServer contents and use with their default Music templates.

    I have successfully added my Windows Media Player Server and Player and have full control via my HomeSeer Troller via my WMP on my HTPC.. I have been able to make a decent Media Player Screen in HSTouch Design by simply using the different devices created via MediaController for the WMP controls/status. I am able to display all info, Album art, track info, etc. I have integrated the controls for all the control MediaController Device gives me. No issues there...

    My gap is being able to see the file servers files like you can via the plugins player under Manage Plugins in HS3, Any way of doing this?

    Am I correct to understand this plugin will only play the playlist created via the Plugin Config v/s being able to browse and play that particular file from WMP Server?

    Thanks and would appreciate any comments/feedback. I can give more detail if needed.
    Unfortunately the music API never got completed for HS3. We spend a lot of effort in the earlier days to define and test the API but it never got to the point where it was all doing what it should and they guy who coded it, left a long time ago and I don't think any effort was spent in the last few years, as in zero.

    So, the API's basic functions work, a few of us PI authors implemented it, but as far as I can tell, no-one really pushed it to completion and I see a lot of inefficiencies (it can be activated on my Sonos PI) so I recommend everyone NOT to use it. For the MediaController, I never spend the effort to make it work as I wanted to see it work proper first on the Sonos PI. Do some searching but a few users used html iFrames (??) to embed the player control navigation panels into HST screens.

    Dirk

    Comment


      #3
      Originally posted by dcorsus View Post
      Unfortunately the music API never got completed for HS3. We spend a lot of effort in the earlier days to define and test the API but it never got to the point where it was all doing what it should and they guy who coded it, left a long time ago and I don't think any effort was spent in the last few years, as in zero.

      So, the API's basic functions work, a few of us PI authors implemented it, but as far as I can tell, no-one really pushed it to completion and I see a lot of inefficiencies (it can be activated on my Sonos PI) so I recommend everyone NOT to use it. For the MediaController, I never spend the effort to make it work as I wanted to see it work proper first on the Sonos PI. Do some searching but a few users used html iFrames (??) to embed the player control navigation panels into HST screens.

      Dirk
      Argh .... Thanks for the background. I have everything from a device control standpoint working. It was just the file browsing part that I was attempting to get in HSTouch.

      Can you confirm the question on the way MediaController will play files only from a playlist created from the Config screens Player Browser? And it will not play single files from the media Server ( WMP in my case)? Or is this the part that I can search fro and use the HTML Iframes? If I could min get the same view to be able to build the playlist I would have it basically 100% on what I need.

      Also, I noticed that while I save the playlist, the playlist will be blank after maybe a reboot of the Zee S2, or if the plugin was disabled. Is this expected?

      Thanks for a great plugin and your support via these forums!!!

      Comment


        #4
        Originally posted by KeyMix View Post
        Argh .... Thanks for the background. I have everything from a device control standpoint working. It was just the file browsing part that I was attempting to get in HSTouch.

        Can you confirm the question on the way MediaController will play files only from a playlist created from the Config screens Player Browser? And it will not play single files from the media Server ( WMP in my case)? Or is this the part that I can search fro and use the HTML Iframes? If I could min get the same view to be able to build the playlist I would have it basically 100% on what I need.

        Also, I noticed that while I save the playlist, the playlist will be blank after maybe a reboot of the Zee S2, or if the plugin was disabled. Is this expected?

        Thanks for a great plugin and your support via these forums!!!
        whatever content and whatever navigation a DLNA media server provides, you should be able to navigate. So WMP is definitely capable of having you pick single tracks and add them to the PI's queue. I seem to recall that playing playlists might not always be possible because the PI does not try to look inside a playlist and figure out what info it has (very different between apple and windows for example). So if you select say a WMP made playlist and you try to play it on say a Sony DLNA player, it all depends on the player's capabilities to process the playlist format.

        I'm sure that after booting the PI, the queue and/or selected saved queue (pi playlist) is gone but you should be able to retrieve them provided you saved them (or was this all functions that existed in the HS2 days and I never got to fixing them in HS3).

        Dirk

        Comment


          #5
          Originally posted by dcorsus View Post
          whatever content and whatever navigation a DLNA media server provides, you should be able to navigate. So WMP is definitely capable of having you pick single tracks and add them to the PI's queue. I seem to recall that playing playlists might not always be possible because the PI does not try to look inside a playlist and figure out what info it has (very different between apple and windows for example). So if you select say a WMP made playlist and you try to play it on say a Sony DLNA player, it all depends on the player's capabilities to process the playlist format.

          I'm sure that after booting the PI, the queue and/or selected saved queue (pi playlist) is gone but you should be able to retrieve them provided you saved them (or was this all functions that existed in the HS2 days and I never got to fixing them in HS3).

          Dirk
          I'll do some experimenting and let you know in terms of the playlists. Just to clarify, I am building the playlist from Manage Plugin>>MediaController >> WPM player and saving the playlist on the HomeTroller Zee. I definitely already tried to add the playlist on the WMP Server to the Hometroller but you are correct, its doesn't recognize what's inside that playlist. This is why I was assuming your plugin had to only play songs added to the MediaController playlist saved directly to the Hometroller. Didn't realize that if I was running HS3 from Windows that it would work more natively if I understand you correctly.


          Right now I'm trying to figure out how to add to the HSTouch screens that would emulate what you have in the Manage Plugin>>MediaController >> WPM player to be able to "build " the que from within HSTouch v/s going thru the config.

          Can you access your plugin via script calls? I assume that is how you are displaying the WMP Server's content. Maybe I can use that approach to give the data to a global variable....Thinking out loud here.. ?

          Thanks for your feedback..

          Comment


            #6
            Originally posted by KeyMix View Post
            I'll do some experimenting and let you know in terms of the playlists. Just to clarify, I am building the playlist from Manage Plugin>>MediaController >> WPM player and saving the playlist on the HomeTroller Zee. I definitely already tried to add the playlist on the WMP Server to the Hometroller but you are correct, its doesn't recognize what's inside that playlist. This is why I was assuming your plugin had to only play songs added to the MediaController playlist saved directly to the Hometroller. Didn't realize that if I was running HS3 from Windows that it would work more natively if I understand you correctly.


            Right now I'm trying to figure out how to add to the HSTouch screens that would emulate what you have in the Manage Plugin>>MediaController >> WPM player to be able to "build " the que from within HSTouch v/s going thru the config.

            Can you access your plugin via script calls? I assume that is how you are displaying the WMP Server's content. Maybe I can use that approach to give the data to a global variable....Thinking out loud here.. ?

            Thanks for your feedback..
            Just a small clarification, where you run the PI is really irrelevant, what is relevant is what the player's capabilities are. So you might be able to send a playlist to a player but there are at least 2 conditions:
            a/ the player need to be able to "understand" the format of the playlist
            b/ the playlist content points to a list of tracks (or media) and if that media cannot be accessed by the player, then it still won't work. Example: say you made a WMP playlist on computer A with tracks on computer A. The PI discovered the published content on computer A, but you decided to tell the WMP on Computer B to play that playlist. Computer B won't be able to access to content on computer A directly, so it won't work. If the content was stored say on NAS1 and both computer A and B have access to NAS1, it could work.

            To use some of the functions that you see in my player control screen, you need to be proficient with HTML. You would use the URL you see on top of your browser and use that with HSTouch. Obviously that would cause the whole page to show up so you would use an iFrame to pick out say only the navigation pane. I've never done it, but know of at least one user that did it (https://forums.homeseer.com/showthre...ghlight=iframe) albeit for my Sonos PI but the player screens are fairly similar.

            Hope that helps,

            Dirk

            Comment

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