|
|
CouchMan
Music Management and Playback System
Copyright 2009 Pete Nesbitt
CouchMan isn't just a Music Player.
it Searches your Music
it Lists your Music
it Plays your Music
...from any web browser!
Developed as a Music Server, CouchMan can send audio to its local speakers as well as playing music out the speakers of other networked computers. Sit on the couch and control your music from a laptop, or load up hours of music to play all throughout your home.
The project originated as an attempt to create a music box for my livingroom. It was okay but using ssh or a local keyboard with display on my TV, it was not too slick but it worked. That was when it got a facelift and a whole new structure. I added the databse and web server which changed everything making it fast and easy for anyone using just a browser. I thought I was done with it. Then a friend commented how it would be nice to hear the same music in my computer room. More than just a few days later, CouchMan was streaming music to all my computers. It is intended to provide a simple-to-use solution for managing, searching and playing music throughout your home or office.
How it works:
Basically it is a handful of shell scripts interacting with a MySQL database which holds all the information about your music. The scripts all sit in the cgi-bin area and will build db queries or display results in the users web browser using simple html forms. There is also a script to gather the music file information for MySQL.
Like my other projects, CouchMan takes a minimalist approach. It uses only MPlayer, Apache, MySQL and PulseAudio in the backend and the rest is cgi-based shell scripts. Despite everything I read on Google saying it couold not be done, it parses POST data from webforms using only bash, no php or perl required. This task may be more difficult in situations with less predictive POST strings.
CouchMan supports mp3 and flac file types. It currently requires a '.mp3' or '.flac' file extention but I will fix that.
A few Screenshots
Docs: (from tarball)
CouchMan is licensed under the GPL and is freely availble. See the file COPYING (included with the CouchMan package) or the GNU web site for details.
Feel free to contact me regarding any aspect of this project.
Download: Latest CouchMan (rc1 138K) or go to the Downloads Directory.
You will need Apache, MySQL, and PulseAudio which are included in most current Linux distributions, as well as MPlayer which if not in your distro, you can get it from MPlayerHQ or as an rpm from RPMFusion via their yum repository.
Important:
-This is a very young project. Although it's believed to be a stable release, it has not yet had extensive testing.
-There has not yet been an acid test of the Install Doc.
-I wanted to get the code up in case someone is interested in trying it. If you do please let me know what issues you run into so I can correct the docs or fix the issues.
See the TODO document (in the tarball) for more information on bugs, fixes and future features.
|
|
|
|
