UPnP software for DS

sommerfee · Post by **sommerfee** » 2008-02-17 16:49

What about a thread about software which (not) works with the DS products, Akurate DS and Klimax DS?

Well, this is what I actually know about:

UPnP server which work:
- Twonky Media: http://www.twonkyvision.com
- Simple Center: http://www.simplecenter.com (but only with WAVs, not with FLACs :( )

UPnP server which do not work:
- Synology Multimedia Service: http://www.synology.com (The DS is re-booting if you try to play a song. But on some DiskStations you can install Twonky, which is a little bit tricky, but works fine.)

Furthermore I tried TVersity (http://www.tversity.com) and Fuppes (http://fuppes.ulrich-voelkel.de/), but did not had any luck with these. The server was up and running, and recognized by the control software, but there were no audio files shown for playing. Will try harder within the next days...

I haven't tried the Windows Media Player 11 which also can act as an UPnP server. Anyone?

UPnP control software which work:
- LinnGui (of course)
- Nokia Media Streamer on Nokia 770/N800/N810

Furthermore I tried Canola1 on Nokia 770/N800/N810, but there is no possibility to change the playback device to the DS. This is planned to be possible in Canola2, so we have to wait for that version... (It's currently beta and not supporting UPnP at all.)

And if you need a DHCP server for Windows, here is one: http://tftpd32.jounin.net/tftpd32.html . This is useful if you want to directly connect a PC running Windows XP to the DS device, without router/switch or other network hardware, just using a simple CAT5 crossover cable.

sommerfee · Post by **sommerfee** » 2008-02-17 17:09

Does anybody knows if a Nevo SL will work as control device?

JohnS · Post by **JohnS** » 2008-02-22 11:26

I'm using Twonky and controlling my Klimax DS with Cidero www.cidero.com - it's free, finds Twonky and the DS without any issues. It also works the Kontrol volume.

So far very stable and effective.

Hugo · Post by **Hugo** » 2008-02-22 19:53

John,

I also use Cidero. However, I do have a problem that my DS doesn't get any further songs once my MacBook goes into sleep mode. That is because the DS doesn't get more than one song in the playlist. As soon as one song is over, Cidero stores the next song in the DS.

With the Linn GUI the whole list of selected songs is stoed in the DS.

Does anyone have a solution for this?

audiokaas · Post by **audiokaas** » 2008-02-26 09:29

I've been looking into remores as wel.

Nevo SL should work ( do a search for nevo & rkotemp, for tricks and reports) However playlists are small and it's only b & no WPA2 (to be solved by using proprietary extension unit), SL-70 is coming at $1299 but should work... it better at that price

N800/N810 work but the playlist only transfers 1 at a time, so has to be kept on while listening. and no albumart.

Samsung Q1, great a bit big runs linn gui and the very good cidero. However boot up time is reported as 2.5 minutes, that´s a lot of coffee... Not sure what the boot up time from hibernate and sleep is.

All the small UMPC are nice especially the ASUS r2e one.

I guess we´ll wait for a tablet edition of linux and a port of cidero to linux, and have a price of $400 for a 6inch screen.

No software for the PDA market

Anyway that´s what I found sofar, mind you none of it first hand...

sommerfee · Post by **sommerfee** » 2008-02-26 10:11

audiokaas wrote:N800/N810 work but the playlist only transfers 1 at a time, so has to be kept on while listening.

Unfortunately this is not the only problem, because the Nokia Media Streamer application only transfers 1 track at a time, there is always a small gap between tracks which can be very annoying when listening to some CDs, especially to live CDs.

Let's hope that the long expected Canola2 will do a better job, since the Nokia seems to be the only not-so-expensive control for the DS so far.

and no albumart.

AFAIK the Nokia Media Streamer application shows the album cover.

audiokaas · Post by **audiokaas** » 2008-02-26 10:31

I agree on the usability of the nokia but do you have any idea on canola2's ETA? I understand correctly that you'll wait for Canola2 as the best option?

Oops on the album art :oops:

As an aside do you know:

1 How did the ripStation vs EAC battle end? There seemed to be discussion on this over at Topica but afaik no conclusion in spite of Linn's switch to RipStation...

2 Do you or anybody else have the configuration profile for EAC (cut&paste, maybe in a reply, pretty please)

Moomintroll · Post by **Moomintroll** » 2008-02-26 11:04

Album art on Nokia N800 - this is something to do with the way that Twonky handles PNG files and is reportedly fixed at version 4.4.4. I haven't tried this yet.

I have noticed that the Nokia shows artwork if the file is a jpeg.

'Troll

sommerfee · Post by **sommerfee** » 2008-02-26 18:24

audiokaas wrote:I agree on the usability of the nokia but do you have any idea on canola2's ETA?

Q1 2008. A first beta version with UPnP support included is AFAIK scheduled for end of next month.

I understand correctly that you'll wait for Canola2 as the best option?

Yes, at least the best regarding money/value ratio.

teatime · Post by **teatime** » 2008-02-27 01:02

audiokaas wrote:a port of cidero to linux

Cidero is a Java app. It already works on Linux. Quite well too, I use it. Only downside I've found is that it's a bit slow at resynching with the media server when you add albums to the server. I haven't played much with the settings yet, it's probably solvable. Restarting Cidero is one workaround that isn't too annoying. I would have preferred a manual way to tell Cidero to resynch, but unless I'm blind there is none.

Cidero also supports "internet radio", which are just mp3 streams, but the Akurate DS refuses to play along and keeps silent when I try that. Has anyone succeeded?

As media server I use Mediatomb (http://mediatomb.cc/) on another Linux machine. It works great, and also supports on-the-fly transcoding (which I haven't tried yet).

Pediatrik · Post by **Pediatrik** » 2008-03-10 13:54

Sommerfee, have you tested the Canola 2 Beta yet? Would be nice to know if it is possible to transfer more than one track at a time with the new version...

http://openbossa.indt.org.br/canola/

sommerfee · Post by **sommerfee** » 2008-03-10 14:28

AFAIK there is no Canola2 beta out yet which supports UPnP. See also:

http://openbossa.indt.org.br/canola/about.html :

"Canola Future:
...
The second update:Show me the features! coming in March
...
+ Upnp (Using Brisa)"

Pediatrik · Post by **Pediatrik** » 2008-03-10 14:52

Excuse my lack of knowledge, but is UPnP-support the key for streaming more than one song at a time? I thought that Cidero supported UPnP and it still only streams one track at a time. Have I missed something?

sommerfee · Post by **sommerfee** » 2008-03-10 15:06

Pediatrik wrote:Excuse my lack of knowledge, but is UPnP-support the key for streaming more than one song at a time?

No, but UPnP support is the key for streaming music to the DS in general. So at the moment Canola2 only supports streaming zero songs at a time, with one exception of course - John Cages 4'33".

Pediatrik · Post by **Pediatrik** » 2008-03-10 21:48

I've had an e-mail conversation with Joerg, the creator of iPeng (iPod Touch skin for SqueezeCenter/Slimserver). According to him LINN use a different way of controlling the DS that he still hasn't figured out and which is the explanation why the skin is for SqueezeCenter, not TwonkyMedia.

He gave me the permission to post his answer on this forum, to see if someone have more details to report that might explain things:

I had the discussion about Linn before and my main problem is, I still
don't fully understand what Linn actually does. The issue is this:

TwonkyMedia (I actually use that, too) is a server that let's a
streaming device browse your music library while SqueezeCenter let's you
actually control the Streaming Client through the server.

TwonkyMedia is a UPnP server and UPnP actually does have a concept
called a control point that would aloow you to manage a PLAYER from a
3rd device and I suspect this is what Linn is doing, but from what I see
I suspect they do have a proprietary application to control their PLAYER
from a wireless device which in tun gets it's data from TwonkyMedia, so
you can't really control TwonkyMedia with the mobile device.

This, in turn, means it is not an issue of the server but the client.
The actual reason I switched to SqueezeCenter (I used Twonky earlier)
was that with the players I found there was no documented way to remote
control them while for SqueezeCenter there is.

If any of this is wrong, and Linn has found a way to make TwonkyMedia
control the player I would be happy to develop a Twonky skin, too, since
that one is much faster than SqueezeCenter but from what I've seen you
can only browse the datatbase and play single tracks (that would be
through the iPod, then), not control the streaming client and thus the
player.

So, sorry for the negative answer for the time being, if you find
anything of what I wrote wrong, please let me know, I find it difficult
to get detailed information about what Linn actually do with their systems.

Anyone? :?:

Music Lover · Post by **Music Lover** » 2008-03-10 23:08

Why not send this to Linn HelpDesk to get a comment?
And if needed, ask a Linn technisian to discuss with Joerg.

But please explain the issue?
If you use Linn GUI, everything works doesn't it?

audiokaas · Post by **audiokaas** » 2008-03-11 09:25

I went to a demo last week and listened to the DS's.

Bill Livingstone of Linn did it and he said that they (Linn) are planning a separate part of the Linn website to the DS control software. The intention being that it will be an open source kind of a thing. Were anybody can use and modify the software.

Sounds great to me, whether and when this will virtualize I don't know...

That's all I know, just thought it promising

Pediatrik · Post by **Pediatrik** » 2008-03-11 19:42

Music Lover wrote:Why not send this to Linn HelpDesk to get a comment?

Good idea! And if LINN are planning on going open source with GUI, I guess it will only be a matter of time before it improves!

Music Lover wrote:But please explain the issue?
If you use Linn GUI, everything works doesn't it?

Yeah, it works, but that is about it! LINN GUI is one of the most ugly pieces of software I've laid my eyes on this side of the millenium! It looks like it's been designed in Russia during the 80's... I do not want to control the DS via my laptop and the Samsung Q1 is too big and expensive. The Nokia N810 is better, but only streams one track at a time, creating annoying gaps between tracks on some CD:s. An iPOD Touch, on the other hand, is reasonably priced, small, lightweight and beautiful to look at. The Skin Joerg made for SqueezeCenter is lightyears ahead of LINN GUI when it comes to design and functions. If he could create one for TwonkyMedia and DS, I would be first in line to get it!

Patrik · Post by **Patrik** » 2008-03-12 10:52

Pediatrik wrote: If he could create one for TwonkyMedia and DS, I would be first in line to get it!

Then I would be second in line :D

DigitalSources · Post by **DigitalSources** » 2008-03-14 23:09

One bad example of a UPnP Controller software is

Rudeo play & control.

It doesn't display the time information at all, only finds the Klimax DS every once in a while and - most ugly - stops after each song. You have to press the "next song" button often and that is annoying. Also the help as described in the faq doesn't solve this issue in my setup.

So, I would recommend that you don't spend the 20 USD for this software.

Enjoy listening,
Andreas.

sommerfee · Post by **sommerfee** » 2008-03-16 12:40

Linn has released a new version of LinnGUI:

Modified: 27th February 2008
Version: 1.2-0.9

http://www.linn.co.uk/ds_software

sommerfee · Post by **sommerfee** » 2008-03-24 21:58

Better understanding of the background after easter:

sommerfee wrote: Unfortunately this is not the only problem, because the Nokia Media Streamer application only transfers 1 track at a time, there is always a small gap between tracks which can be very annoying when listening to some CDs, especially to live CDs.

Let's hope that the long expected Canola2 will do a better job, since the Nokia seems to be the only not-so-expensive control for the DS so far.

The problem is that there are two standardized ways to get rid of the gap:

1. The Control Point application can not only tell the current track to the DS, but the next one, too. This feature called "SetNextAVTransportURI" is exactly for this purpose, the docs say: "This action allows a device to `prefetch' the data to be played next, in order to provide a seamless transition between resources."

2. The Control Point can trigger the play of a playlist. (Twonky Media is generating and offering playlists for every album automatically.)

Unfortunately the Linn DS isn't offering one of these methods. :( Neither the optional service action called "SetNextAVTransportURI" is implemented in the DS, nor it can handle the M3U playlists offered by TwonkyMedia. :(

So an application with does not use the proprietary and not (yet) documented set of the Linn playlist functions, has no chance to play the tracks without annoying gap between the tracks.

Nicke · Post by **Nicke** » 2008-03-26 22:50

Hi! I sent a question about the software roadmap for the DS to Linn and got the following response... (unfortunately no indication of timeframes):

Thank you for your email to the helpline regarding the exciting new Klimax DS.

You are correct that the IPhone is one of the interfaces that is being worked on outside Linn, by third party developers. The Linn DS range use open UPnP so any UPnP control point will be able to control the Klimax DS. The extended functions on the Linn GUI are currently being developed and will continue to be expanded with new releases available to download. The Linn roadmap for the DS includes MAC support, Windows Mobile 6, etc.

/Niclas

sommerfee · Post by **sommerfee** » 2008-04-06 14:46

Did everyone succeed in installing a free DHCP server software on Windows ?

I tried three of them yesterday and while two of them reacted to the DHCP request of the DS (the third one was crashing after switching the DS on), the DS wasn't satisfied and still blinking... :(

sommerfee · Post by **sommerfee** » 2008-04-21 21:07

There are new versions of LinnConfig (1.1-0.9)and LinnGUI (1.2-0.10):

http://www.linn.co.uk/ds_software

UPnP software for DS

UPnP software for DS

remote

Re: remote

Re: remote

Annoying gap between tracks