Roku Developer Program

[hebertj0194]

I have been able to get the springboard.py running in the OSX environment. mymusic channel appears on the Roku.

But once I go into the channel, it hangs at retrieving, never gets past that. I don't know if it is a problem with how I am defining the location of my media. I have all of my media contained on an external drive. /Volumes/Free Agent Storage/. I have tried being more specific in the file location but it did not work. Any tips? Hammerpocket, help?

Thanks

[el_wubo]

Did you start the server?

You can either:
* click "Start Server" in springboard
* or execute 'python rss_server.py'

Also, did you go through the troubleshooting steps in the readme related to verifying that your server is running and accessible locally via a browser? If it's accessible locally (instructions in the readme) then you may have a firewall keeping the Roku from getting to the port on your server computer... or the ip address of your server may be incorrect.

[hebertj0194]

"el.wubo" wrote:
Did you start the server?

You can either:
* click "Start Server" in springboard
* or execute 'python rss_server.py'

Also, did you go through the troubleshooting steps in the readme related to verifying that your server is running and accessible locally via a browser? If it's accessible locally (instructions in the readme) then you may have a firewall keeping the Roku from getting to the port on your server computer... or the ip address of your server may be incorrect.

I did the start server where it goes to the next window and has the stop server button. It also goes to the mymusic channel on the roku. I exit out and go back in and it sits at retrieving.

I just did the local browser and it goes to A Personal Music Feed. But from there, it shows nothing, No Articles. Does that mean I have a filepath problem?

[el_wubo]

Yes, it's probably your music path.

* make sure its right
* no quotes around the path
* watch the server output in the terminal window for more clues

You'll see a list of all your artist/album folders at the feed url when it's working.

[hebertj0194]

Ended up being the path. I guess I was typing something wrong and it just wouldn't go...finally I copy and pasted the link from the info tab and it worked.

I have a problem with the videos. It may be the way I encode them. I have been using handbrake, always have. I have been encoding them with Apple TV preset, because I have an apple tv. Videos play, no audio. Wonder if this is a channel mixing problem.

How come when you go to play music, you can't stop it? Something being worked on? Apologies if I missed that in reading.

Also, album art? Another issue trying to resolve? Just curious, sorry if it has already been addressed, I will go back and read if it has.

Thanks for your help thus far tonight.

[hebertj0194]

"hebertj0194" wrote:
Ended up being the path. I guess I was typing something wrong and it just wouldn't go...finally I copy and pasted the link from the info tab and it worked.

I have a problem with the videos. It may be the way I encode them. I have been using handbrake, always have. I have been encoding them with Apple TV preset, because I have an apple tv. Videos play, no audio. Wonder if this is a channel mixing problem.

How come when you go to play music, you can't stop it? Something being worked on? Apologies if I missed that in reading.

Also, album art? Another issue trying to resolve? Just curious, sorry if it has already been addressed, I will go back and read if it has.

Thanks for your help thus far tonight.

As far as audio goes, removing the second channel when encoding does the trick. Crap, I have a lot of re-encoding to do. Anyone know of a way to remove audio tracks without re-encoding the whole thing?

[hammerpocket]

"hebertj0194" wrote:
hammerpocket?

Sorry, hebertj0194, I didn't look at this thread all day. Glad to see you've got it sorted with OS X. BTW, there's no need to open Terminal if you don't want to. If you right-click on springboard.py you can choose Open with...>Python Launcher to start it. (Double-clicking defaults to opening in the IDLE Python development environment, in which case you can go to Run>Run Module to get it going.)

EDIT: One further testing, the following appears to not be an issue.
Another note to future testers on Mac OS X: I'll test to confirm, but it appears that if you designate your iTunes music folder as your media path, the server cannot access the media when iTunes is running. (Roku client hangs on "retrieving...".)

[renojim]

"el.wubo" wrote:

"renojim" wrote:
el.wubo,

I changed the "screen.SetListStyle" from flat-episodic to flat-category and the side poster art now displays.

Very cool. I hadn't tested that layout. I like it a lot better than flat-episodic. I've changed it to be the default. Thanks renojim.

Have you tried the arced-square type? I think I like that even better because the square shape is more appropriate for album art. There's probably a way to get the other types to display the proper aspect ratio, but with the arced-square it's already there.

"el.wubo" wrote:

If you want to tackle something else as you're learning: The client currently isn't very helpful when it can't connect to the server. It would be good if it displayed a helpful error message of some kind instead of the permanent "Loading" screen. The decision point is the rss.Parse line in datamodel.

I will look into it. I'm sure I'll have some questions for you (especially since I'm clueless when it comes to Python). Would you prefer I ask them here or via PM? I'm currently experimenting with a feature I'd like - the ability to resume a video where you left off instead of starting from the beginning all the time, like how the Netflix channel offers. The client side looks pretty easy, but the server side may be tougher mostly because of my ignorance of Python, but also because I can't decide on the best way to keep track of where the user stopped the video.

-JT

[el_wubo]

"hebertj0194" wrote:
Also, album art? Another issue trying to resolve? Just curious, sorry if it has already been addressed, I will go back and read if it has.

Album art will be displayed in the channel if the server can find a JPEG (ending in jpg or jpeg) in the same directory as the audio files for the album. Does this fit the iTunes model? Does it store album art in the folder or some other predictable place that we can access?

[el_wubo]

"hammerpocket" wrote:

Sorry, hebertj0194, I didn't look at this thread all day. Glad to see you've got it sorted with OS X. BTW, there's no need to open Terminal if you don't want to. If you right-click on springboard.py you can choose Open with...>Python Launcher to start it. (Double-clicking defaults to opening in the IDLE Python development environment, in which case you can go to Run>Run Module to get it going.)

Another note to future testers on Mac OS X: I'll test to confirm, but it appears that if you designate your iTunes music folder as your media path, the server cannot access the media when iTunes is running. (Roku client hangs on "retrieving...".)

I'd like to include a document in the documentation folder for future OSX'ers. Would you be willing to document what you did and what issues you ran into that others could benefit from? You can email it to me if you prefer.