SD player UI development

[seeteeyou]

Interesting stuff for 10 RMB and up?

http://bbs.ilichee.cc
https://github.com/Lichee-Pi
https://github.com/Zepan/ilichee
https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=548671148384
https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=566862065090
https://www.cnx-software.com/2018/08/17 ... nux-board/
https://www.banggood.com/LicheePi-Zero- ... 37966.html
https://www.banggood.com/Lichee-Pi-Nano ... 39789.html

[randytsuch]

Busy posting at tirna right now lol.

After telling John that IR was too much work, I made an IR receiver for a different project of mine.
It was actually not that hard, took a IR receiver, an arduino and the right code.

I decoded all of the relevant key pushes on the remote, there are only 6 that do anything.
They decode to NEC, which is a widely used standard in the IR world from what I can tell.
I have the actual codes at home, and will post next time I'm home and I remember.

BTW, I also made an ESP with a transistor and a couple of diodes, and the right sw.
The sw I used responds to http commands, so you do something like this on your browser
192.168.1.100/irTVpon
and the esp decodes this (if its at ip address 192.168.1.100), and turns my tv on

This works with my TV, stereo and DVD player fine, haven't actually tried to send commands to the SDP but since I've been successful with these other devices I'm pretty confident it would work with the SDP too.

I documented much of the project here
https://sites.google.com/view/randyhomeassistant/ir

[jkeny]

Great work, Randy- I've been busy on other stuff
Last I looked Fran was having trouble decoding the electrical signals from the SDP key depresses so I didn't think any more progress would be made on this - full respect for pushing through.

So, if I'm reading you correctly, you are close to having a working remote control using http commands from a browser via an ESP card?

[randytsuch]

Hi John
Yes, I pretty much have one now.

I'd just have to put the ESP hardware together, and tweak my ir transmit code for the SDP NEC codes.

I made one transmitter, but its now residing by my TV, so I'd need to build a 2nd one.
But that part is easy, just would take a few mins.

I thought key presses would be easier, but since I spent some time figuring out IR, this came along for the ride lol.

Randy

[jkeny]

Look forward to your ongoing reports & maybe this can spur us to work on a useful GUI
So maybe we could start simple - copy the SD card libraries & contents into a folder & use a music library management app that can navigate this collection of songs & transmit the control commands for the SD player that keep the SD card navigation in synch with the app navigation - BUT wasn't there an issue with the file list order on the SD card or is this only when we transmit files to the SD card?

Later we could use a music library app that was not just a copy of the SD card contents but rather the full library (on disk or network) & adding songs to the playlist would transmit these files to the SD card (see above issue with fie sequences)

The other method I can think of is when a file is selected on the app for playing it then gets transmitted to the SD card & starts to play there but there may well be too much delay in this

Any other thoughts, anybody?

[randytsuch]

Let me throw one more thing out there.

I have a fairly complicated home automation system that I've been upgrading recently.

I'm using Node Red add capability here, and its pretty easy to get NR running on a pi.

I have NR interfacing with Alexa, so I can ask Alexa to do things, and via NR, it interfaces with my HA setup. With this scheme, I can control anything I can access over my network. My cable box for instance. I can now issue alexa commands to control my tv. Nerdy cool lol.

NR is pretty powerful, but I'm a real novice so only do basic stuff with it. It would be really easy though to get NR to control the SDP. I don't know about controlling a music library though. And alexa might have a tough time if the musics too loud :)

[jkeny]

Randy, I have to catch up with you on all this technology - Node Red for instance
What would probably be ideal would be using hard wired ethernet to transfer a file to SDP rather than WiFi - probably an acceptably small delay but I'm not sure this is feasible with what we have ?

[randytsuch]

Node red is a kind of a graphical programming language.

Seems to be popular in IOT applications now.

Only reason I'm suggesting it is because I'm using it now, but not sure if its really suitable, versus something like python.
But I don't really understand python lol.

To me, ethernet vs wifi is the transfer medium, over rf or over copper. I think after that (the physical layer), the protocol and how you handle it is the same. So I guess I don't really see a difference. Are you worried about transfer speeds? I just got a new, fast router :)

But I think we're back to how to get the files into the SD card. And I'm not sure how best to do that.

[jkeny]

Yea, I was thinking of the last option I suggested - transferring the file selected for playing to the SDP
I can't remember the timing now but I was impressed by the transfer speed over Flashair & it may not be a problem in practice if one file at a time is being selected & played but if a playlist is selected for play a 10 second delay between each track may be an issue over longer term usage?

[randytsuch]

After thinking some more, node red probably not appropriate for that.

I think something that looks like a file manager would be good, or if we could add it as an option to windows file manager.

So you right click the song you want, and select play to send and play.