Remote MPD management?

Ok, so I've decided on a geeky project for the break between semesters. My parents were enamored with the idea of having a digital jukebox for all of their music. I suggested the squeezebox from slim devices, but they weren't digging the $300 purchase price. So, I took an old celeron 466MHz computer w/ 380MB RAM and a 60GB harddrive or something, and installed Ubuntu on it, put a great big Rhythmbox icon on the desktop, grabbed the old ATI remtote wonder I had laying around, and hooked it to the TV with a DVI-HDMI cable. It works fairly well, although because it's a CRT TV, the picture is overscanned, so I had to make a bunch of extra panels so that things would maximize properly. Plus, even though I have a wireless keyboard and mouse, it's a real pain in the butt squinting at the TV from the couch to search for artists or make playlists.

what I'm wanting to do is implement MPD so that the music is going whenever the thing is turned on, because if the power goes out or my mother shuts the thing off ("mom, it's supposed to be like the radio, you just switch the receiver to it when you want music" "oh, ok..." *shuts computer off*) often things don't get restarted, and it's a pain to dig out the remote for the TV, select the correct input, blah blah blah. Also, if I can get a web interface for MPD, then any of the other computers on the network (gotta punch a network drop to the thing, too... $20 in wall boxes and connectors beats a new wifi card... hmmm,) can edit playlists, change the playlist, tune internet radio, whatever. Plus, encoding stuff on this computer in anything but FLAC takes an eon, but that's more an issue with getting a network connection and sharing going on.

What I'm thinking of doing is using Sonata for use with the remote on the TV when needed, and then something like Ampache or Jinzora for the remote bits over the network. Thoughts? Anyone ever done this?

 

I did this with Sonata using an older PC hooked up to my stereo. I controlled my music remotely with my notebooks using Sonata. There are some Windows MPD clients which can do the same, but they are generally undeveloped and lacking features. I never experimented with Web clients, as all of my Linux projects are halted for the foreseeable future (must use Windows). Using Sonata worked really well and I've yet to see any of this functionality ported to Windows. It was one of the best things about my *nix setups.

 

do you mean to say that sonata can hook into the box running MPD over the network? that would be kinda cool.

the reason I'm looking to use a web-based client is so that my parents can edit playlists and such, being that this project is technically for them. I use Linux for all of my personal use, and Windows will barely run on the computer I'll be using (win2k used to be on there, and it CRAWLED,) but my parents aren't what you'd call "power users", so I want a box that, as long as its on, it'll play music and you can edit the playlists and change tracks once I get them a bookmark set up.

anyway, should be fun.

 

Yes, Sonata, (and all MPD clients for that matter) can control another computer's MPD daemon. You just specify the computer's address in the MPD client (ip address). If you were running MPD on a local machine, you'd have to setup your client to "localhost," meaning your machine. You can switch between all computers on a network with one computer and one client. It's good stuff.

If your parents are running Windows, simple clients written for Windows may be easier than a web-based client. Here's a good list of clients: http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Clients

 

awesome, thanks dude! makes it a lot simpler than having to set up a LAMP server - which I have no idea how to do...