Release 0.29alpha1 is up on http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/rioplay/.

Not a whole bunch has changed from the user's perspective, except for the playlists (in the sense of the playlist of songs the Rio is going to play, not playlists stored on the server). The global playlist is now separated from the input sources, meaning you can enqueue both Rio/JRec served MP3s and Shoutcast streams into the playlist. This also means for instance that you could enqueue all songs by "Artist X" and then go back through the menus and enqueue all songs by "Artist Y" as well.

In addition, this release includes experimental FLAC support. Warning: this FLAC support is based on a version of libflac which has been hacked to fix a libflac bug. This causes it to be a noncompliant FLAC decoder, however it seems to work fine with every FLAC file I've tried. There will be an official fix for this bug in the next release of FLAC which we will then pick up for RioPlay so it can be a true compliant FLAC player. In order to play back FLAC files, you need JReceiver 0.2.3 and jrec_serv.war from this url: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jreceiver_user/files/. Then in the Rio driver settings, check the box for "Native FLAC support". Also don't forget to restart JReceiver after changing this setting.

This version has been tagged as "alpha" because of the non-compliant FLAC support and because I haven't done lots of extensive testing, however I think it's at least as stable as 0.28 was. Please let me know if you discover any problems.

Oh, and Random playback is now supported with 2 caveats: first is that I discovered that I forgot to add support for the Random panel button, so you must use the remote. The second is that pushing Random randomizes the Rio's playlist and currently there is no way to get back to a non randomized state. Pressing Random again will just re-randomize the playlist.

Just tried this last night with the latest copy of JReceiver. Unfortunately, any menu I go to seems to go to an empty artist menu. I'm not trying any FLAC files, just regular MP3s. I rebooted the receiver with the standard Rio software to double check that the server was OK, and it was fine. Any ideas? I really like the idea of separating the running playlist from the server though.

..I've had this problem w/ the w2k implementation of dhcpd; not sure why; using a different (3rd-party) dhcp server fixed the problem for me..
-m

Unfortunately, any menu I go to seems to go to an empty artist menu.

I'm not really sure what you mean by this. Can you tell me exactly what buttons you pressed and what was displayed on the screen each time?

Sure, lemme get it running.. Okay, reexported NFS and restarted JReceiver. Booted up the Rio and got the Rioplay splash screen. (Nice logo, BTW). I hit Menu, up pops "Audio Receiver" menu, push center button on Rio to select "Select Music". Source, "Rio Server", Another menu, Artist, Album, Title, Genre. Selecting any of these menu items brings a menu titled "Select Artist" with only one selection, "Play All". Any button press (including select) brings me back to the splash screen.

Edit: Oh, I'm running with JRec 0.2.3 and dhcpd on Linux. My current setup works great with the original client.

I'm seeing the same behavior. I was originally trying to get it to work with jreceiver and saw the same results as well. My current setup is Win2K, DELL Audio Reciever, armgr.exe, and HPNA. Any ideas?

Guys,

i saw this same exact behavior when using rioplay/dhcpd client that's in windows 2000 adv server.. switching to the dhcpd client that's part of the w2k internet connection sharing fixed the problem for me...

...So something's wierd w/ the info that it's using from some dhcp clients..
-mark

I tried using another DHCP server (udhcpd), but that won't even boot up, with rioplay, rrr, or the original client. I see with arpwatch that the receiver defaults to 169.254.103.208, it doesn't get the lease.

Unfortunately, my dhcp server is a different machine than my JRec server. I tweeked the dhcpd daemon as much as I could to coax the clients into thinking it the DHCP lease came from the same machine as JRec, but to no avail. To put the DHCP server on the same JRec server would require a kernel recompile and reboot, neither of which I really want to do as of yet. (Or use udhcpd, which doesn't seem to work at all for me).

If this matters much, Reza's rrr has similar behavior, so I'd probably attribute its issue to the dhcp stuff as well. It initializes the LCD, but thats it. No button presses do anything.

I tweeked the dhcpd daemon as much as I could to coax the clients into thinking it the DHCP lease came from the same machine as JRec, but to no avail.

It really shouldn't matter where the DHCP lease comes from. On my network here I've used the DHCP server built into my Linksys router as well as a DHCP server on my Linux box (which is a different machine from the music server) and never had a problem with either.

The only idea I can come up with now is that the DHCP server isn't telling the Receiver the correct addresses for the gateway or the DNS server. As long as your Receiver and server are on the same network the gateway shouldn't matter. As for the DNS server, everything is done with IP addresses inside the Rio however RioPlay does do a "gethostbyname" on the IP address returned from JReceiver. I don't know if that causes a DNS lookup or if the resolver is smart enough to recognize it as an IP address and just return it.

Do you have other devices on your network using DHCP?

Bingo! It appears the DNS server wasn't being properly set. Once I set them, the albums and such came up properly. Thanks!

I'm having similar problems - can you tell me what did you set for DNS and where?

Well, I'm on linux and running dhcpd so I added the following lines to
my /etc/dhcpd.conf:

option routers 192.168.1.1;

option domain-name-servers 192.168.1.100;

I'm running a dns cache on 192.168.1.100, and I'm behind a firewall/router at 192.168.1.1 (hence the 192.168.x.x addresses). Similar options exist in udhcpd (another dhcp server I didn't have as much luck with) and I'm sure other dhcp servers.

If the it gets to the Initalizing ... screen, then it's not a dhcp problem and it did manage to load up some stuff. The bug is one that I can't reproduce, but finally came up with a work-around. I found that the only place I could store configuration information was the "Favourites" stored on the server (if you're using the windows server). The latest version should work if you are using the windows server -- otherwise, (and this sounds dumb), revert to the original ARF file that came with the receiver, and save anything in the Favourites. Then RRR should work. If you're using linux, you need to add a text file to your webserver with this line in it

1:foo=bar

that is gotten when you go to the /favorites/all url on the server. I'm still trying to track it down, but that's solved the problem for most people.

Reza

Very nice interface, thanks. How do I change what Shoutcast streams are listed?

I finally found a post here that discusses this and got it working. Thanks.

Also, is there some specific documentation or thread that discusses some of the configuration options for RipPlay?

Any thoughts about adding a web interface to contron the box?