Sources?

[DaveStLou]

I'm running Volumio version 3. What items are being scanned for inclusion as "Sources" in the selection list?

Currently I see Favorites (but I'm having trouble in v3 getting that to populate - I'm still learning) and my Pandora stations but I don't see my playlists.

[bpwwer]

3 hours ago, DaveStLou said:

I'm running Volumio version 3. What items are being scanned for inclusion as "Sources" in the selection list?

Currently I see Favorites (but I'm having trouble in v3 getting that to populate - I'm still learning) and my Pandora stations but I don't see my playlists.

Playlists, favorites, Pandora stations and Spotify stations.  I probably didn't test with anything other than Pandora and Spotify so it's possible the others are broken.  It should be possible to add other sources as well, but the interface we have to work with, doesn't really handle large lists that well. I'm not sure I'd like to try and add all albums or artists to the list for example.  

I haven't played with webradio, but maybe the favorites or my web radio selections from there would be OK.

[DaveStLou]

On 1/22/2022 at 12:13 PM, bpwwer said:

Playlists, favorites, Pandora stations and Spotify stations.  I probably didn't test with anything other than Pandora and Spotify so it's possible the others are broken.  It should be possible to add other sources as well, but the interface we have to work with, doesn't really handle large lists that well. I'm not sure I'd like to try and add all albums or artists to the list for example.  

I haven't played with webradio, but maybe the favorites or my web radio selections from there would be OK.

Rather than add webradio favorites, I found that I can create a playlist of a station. That works better since I might not want all of them to show up in the node sever. Same thing with Artists, or Genre - just make a playlist if I really want to use that in the node server.

I wish I could make a playlist of a Pandora Station like I do the Web Radio. That way I can limit the stations to only the ones I want in the node server. The Volumio Pandora plugin doesn't support that currently though.

Does the node server check for changes in Pandora stations on a regular basis or does that occur only on restart? What I'm running into is when I add or remove Pandora stations, it messes up programs that refer to that as a source - basically it's a moving target. I'm trying to figure out how to manage that better.

 

[bpwwer]

2 hours ago, DaveStLou said:

Rather than add webradio favorites, I found that I can create a playlist of a station. That works better since I might not want all of them to show up in the node sever. Same thing with Artists, or Genre - just make a playlist if I really want to use that in the node server.

I wish I could make a playlist of a Pandora Station like I do the Web Radio. That way I can limit the stations to only the ones I want in the node server. The Volumio Pandora plugin doesn't support that currently though.

Does the node server check for changes in Pandora stations on a regular basis or does that occur only on restart? What I'm running into is when I add or remove Pandora stations, it messes up programs that refer to that as a source - basically it's a moving target. I'm trying to figure out how to manage that better.

 

We use Pandora almost exclusively and the support seems pretty good, but not perfect.  I've also played around with Spotify but haven't switched over yet to see how it works for long periods.  My wife will it playing for most of the day some days. 

The node server only checks on startup.  It queries for the stations and then builds the definitions for the ISY based on that.  Because those station lists are dynamic and the ISY really isn't, we have to take a snapshot and live with it.  In order for the ISY to present the source list, it has to have a mapping of source names to numbers.  The ISY uses the number in the programs.  So if you change list and change the mapping, the number no longer points to the same source, and programs are broken.   There's really not much the node server can do about that. 

[DaveStLou]

22 hours ago, bpwwer said:

We use Pandora almost exclusively and the support seems pretty good, but not perfect.  I've also played around with Spotify but haven't switched over yet to see how it works for long periods.  My wife will it playing for most of the day some days.

Same here. Pandora is on almost all the time and the Pandora plugin is the reason I started using Volumio. I don't have the audio directly connected to my Raspberry Pi. Instead I'm sending it out to all my Chromecast audio via mpd2chromecast I installed on it. Has a few quirks but it works 99% of the time.