Now that there has been a release of the integrated build, for people who want something that JustWorks™, I thought I'd talk about the core Ryde Player application in more detail and what is coming down the pipeline next. For people who haven't been following the original thread (viewtopic.php?f=130&t=6628) the core application of the Ryde Receiver is the Ryde Player which provides interactive on screen menus to configure the tuner and playback the stream. The Ryde Player has been intentionally kept separate from the build and integration code so that it can be more easily integrated into other projects in the future or used standalone by someone who is comfortable with the pi and writing the config file manually.
I the main menu the top 4 options should be fairly self explanatory, the lower 3 options are debug options (and will be moved to a separate debug menu at some point) and are for dealing with problems and crashes. There are also 2 debug options in the config file.
- Menu item "Restart LongMynd" should be used if you are stuck on the "LongMynd not loaded" screen, this can happen if your MiniTiouner becomes disconnected.
- Menu item "Abort VLC" is for recovering from a crashed VLC and kernel opps and should be tried first if VLC has frozen and you are unsure why. This option is only a quick and dirty recovery and you should consider restarting the player soon after using it to fully recover. I hope to get this working automatically in the future.#18 #19
- Menu item "Force VLC" is for if VLC is frozen and you haven't had a kernel oops, if you use this when you have had an oops it will lock up the player completely. If you have a VLC freeze and this option recovers it I would like to know what was going on when it froze so I can automate the fix.
- Config option "autoplay" was used during development to get the signal transitions working properly, if you turn this off you will have to "Force VLC" every time the signal changes
- Config option "disableHardwareCodec" does as the name suggest and forces the video to be decoded in software. We have found that the software decoder is more robust and able to decode a wider range of signals (notably the QO-100 beacon) that the hardware decoder struggles with. The software decoder is obviously more CPU heavy and causes the pi to use more power and produce more heat. This option might be useful if you are willing to sacrifice some signals in exchange for lower power, heat and the potential to be able to run on older slower hardware.
- Fix for users with a FTS-4335 tune. I'm working on this but its a bit slow as I don't have the test hardware.#37
- GPIO buttons and status indicator. This is done in dev, its being tested at the moment before being pushed out.#1 #2
- Frequency Bands. The ability to specify a set of IFs in the config file and pick from the list when tuning. Configuring this from the menu is a different issue and will come later.#4
- Presets/Favourites. The ability to specify a set of signals in the config file and select them quickly using the user interface.#5
- On Screen Display(OSD) Core. This is just the core structure and state machine and doesn't include all of the signal parameter overlay displays. #10 and some of #11 / #12
- Bug fixes.
- Whatever looks useful and interesting on the issues list.
Thanks to all beta testers who have been really helpful with getting it stable enough to publish and particularly to Dave for help specifying the project, initial debugging and particularly for doing all be integration and build system. My dev hardware is much less elegant and complete than Dave's:
- rydeDevHardare.jpg (232.36 KiB) Viewed 1960 times
Tim, MW0RUD