Remote 2.3 breaks TouchRemote

Just to stop you from writing e-mails on this :)

I’m aware of the problem and working on it.
Unfortunately, they’ve added some strict checks on FairPlay support, so it would take some time.

Those who haven’t yet updated to 2.3 should stay on 2.2 for now.

App ideas

Guys, I’m considering to write an iOS app (for training purposes), but I have no idea what to write.

If there’s something you’re really missing on your iPhone/iPad, I’ll be glad to hear it. Your wishes may come true… eventually ;)

Update to resolve issues with Remote 2.2

In Remote 2.2 they slightly changed a protocol, so there were album art blinks on play/pause, and a huge delay before showing album tracks from now playing screen.

Version 0.2.8.2 addresses these issues and is recommended for all iOS5 and Remote 2.2 users.

And one more observation:
If you still get crashes on foobar startup, make sure you don’t have “downloaded from internet” policy on dlls of the plugin. Seems that .NET Framework 4.0 is more strict about loading assemblies from untrusted sources.

The recommended solution is to remove manually copied files from \foobar2000\components folder and use built-in plugin installer: click Install on Components page in foobar preferences, and specify downloaded zip archive (you don’t need to unpack it).

New TouchRemote 0.2.8

Hey, guys!
Here’s a small update of TouchRemote.

First of all, you need to get .NET Framework 4 and VC++ 2010 runtime installed (if you don’t have one yet). .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 is no longer supported by TouchRemote – this is mostly because of new foobar SDK targets VS2010, and it supports only .NET 4 for C++.

This update delivers a few changes:
1. Service name is autogenerated now, so you shouldn’t have issues with multiple instances of foobar in the same network.
2. Display name is now shown correctly in the iPad version of Remote.
3. Fixed issue with preferences page hangs with latest builds of foobar.
4. Added an option to stop playback instead of pausing it. People with WASAPI would be happy now.
5. Fixed issue with WMA built-in artwork.
6. Some UI changes.

That’s it.

What’d you say if foobar support AirPlay?

Just tried AirFoil, but didn’t like it: quality seems to be not so good when playing locally, sound disappears sometimes (buffering issue?), and unable to use WASAPI output ’cause it crashes AirFoil.

So I’m considering whether to make a streaming solution for foobar with ability to control it from local UI or TouchRemote.

And what do you think?

Cheers!


I’m off to celebrate my 25-th birthday. Don’t even expect I’ll be answering your emails for a few days… ;)

TouchRemote FAQ

Just added a FAQ page for TouchRemote.
Possibly maintaining it would be easier than replying a lot of similar emails and comments :)

Minor update to support Remote v2

Apple just changed protocol a bit, so a new version of Remote failed to work with the plugin.

Fortunately there’s only a few changes, so I’ve managed to patch existing dll without recompilation. But it was rather tricky ;)
Here’s a patched version: foo_touchremote 0.1.2.1.

P.S. Navigating from Artists view seems crashing foobar. Don’t know whether it is my specific library or a common problem. Anyway, I’m unable to do anything with that :(
All the other features (Albums, Playlists, Search) seem working ok.

Update: As it was noticed, Remote 2.1 doesn’t crash foobar when browsing artists anymore.
Also I’ve just found out that download link here wasn’t the same as on the plugin page, so somebody might be confused. Now both links are in sync.

Long time no see

Hi everybody.

I’ve posted nothing here for a long time. With all that moving and job changing stuff I actually had no time and stamina left for my hobbies.

But I’m sure you’re more interested in the plugins here and not in my private life :) Some news for you:
1. foo_w7shell isn’t going to be updated in the nearest future. It works rather fine and doesn’t need a lot of attention.
2. foo_touchremote is NOT dead. The work on it was just resumed :)

And the most significant thing: my view on touchremote project has completely changed. The primary motivation factor was my backup HDD went to the better place (R.I.P.), so I’ve lost a major part of the project’s source code :( And I’m just too lazy to write it all in C++ once again.
So the project is going to be rewritten from scratch in C#. It wouldn’t generally target only foobar2000 (foo_touchremote.dll will be only a layer to bridge with foobar’s media library), but also could be plugged into any player. When the core components are ready, I’m going to make a binding to the Windows Media Player as well.
And since it is a managed code, it’s not only for Windows – Linux guys could also port it to use with Banshee (or other player which could understand Mono-based plugins). Since there’s no Bonjour for Linux platform, there would be a way to switch to another mDNS implementations (most likely it would be zeroconf project).

But don’t expect it soon as the work has just started.

That’s all I wanted to say for now :)

Sorting, sorting, more sorting

Just to make things clear.

All future releases of foo_touchremote will use the following sort rules:
1. Inside single album view songs are ordered by song number. Songs without song number would come before the others in alphabetical order.
2. In all other places (search results, all albums view, all tracks) songs are ordered alphabetically despite song number, album and other fields.
That’s all. It is what Remote expects from server.

The only question is how to treat non-letter characters (numbers, special symbols) when sorting. Should they prepend latin letters or come after them (like iTunes does)?
And what to do with non-latin letters? The options are to use navigation letters and let all non-latin characters appear as ‘#’, or just keep it as is without any letters at all.

Wanna to hear what you think of all that things.