Identify the song that is playing about chromecast-desktop-audio-streamer

[dday4thedeceiver]

Assuming all/most audio players will have some UI element indicating song title, It might be simplest to maintain a catalog of most popular players and their respective elements, and simply read off of those.

Another idea (to make this a bit more flexible) is to have this functionality as a separate project and just implement a simple facility in Sandpiper to read the song title, perhaps by monitoring some text file for changes.

Or the basic functionality could be built in so if this file doesn't exist internal facility could be used. The internal facility could perhaps be user-configurable, removing the need to maintain the catalog.... a list of window class, process and a regexp to extract the song name from the title.

If this is done, a nice extension would be to write the song title (and artist?) to another file so it can be read and used by other programs (for example to announce the title)

[SamDel]

The only time you can send a song title to a device is when you load the stream.
For this application you'll normally start the stream once, and play the same stream for hours.

I didn't find a solution yet to change the title on the device periodically. Restarting the stream for each song will create a drop-out.

[FA-Bubba]

I haven't received any posts since May 7... Has there been no activity, or am I not being copied?

[FA-Bubba]

A new issue:
While the Streamer is active, we'll ask Google a question, and if the answer is a YouTube clip, Google plays it, but the Streamer interrupts it and resumes streaming the music before the YouTube clip has finished.

[FA-Bubba]

I have confirmed that the Streamer casts in stereo -- I finally pulled out an old set of bookshelf speakers that have a 3.5mm input port, and connected them with a Chromecast Audio. Playing a Left/Right Channel clip (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-ToyylwoHE ) confirmed correct stereo separation.

This will enable me to complete my multi-room stereo setup (not withstanding that issue that Google has ceased the Chromecast Audio product -- I have a few, but am now looking for a substitute for the last 4 rooms.)

[SamDel]

By default you get notifications from threads you're participating in. If you want to get notifications of all threads you have to click the watch button on top. You can change your notification settings here.

The application should not interrupt Youtube, it should not start the stream again until the Youtube clip stopped playing (when the statustext the device returns is empty). Can you post the logs?

Thanks for confirming!

[FA-Bubba]

I cleared-out the log since the Streamer has been running a long time. I then asked Google to play a YouTube video; Google presented me with a few selections, and I tapped one. It started to play, then it was abruptly cut off, and Streamer restarted.

Log-2019-06-19-v2-1-4-StreamCutsOffYouTube.TXT

[SamDel]

Thanks. It's a bug. You were playing a group. Then you asked Google to play a Youtube video on an individual device.

The 'Automatically restart ...' option only checked the status of the group before restarting. In this situation the status of the group didn't change, only the status of the individual device changed to 'Youtube'.

In 2.3.1 the 'Automatically restart ...' option also checks the status of all individual devices in a group, before restarting the group. Can you try?

[FA-Bubba]

Thank you... I loaded v 2.3.1, and the sequence worked as expected:
I asked Google to play a video, and it played until it ended (or I told Google to "Stop playing the video"), after a short pause, the audio stream resumed.

Prior to updating the App, I was running v 2.1.4, and had not received any notifications of new versions. Your comment to me above alerted me to install v2.3.1...

I thought I was receiving ALL communications about version updates, but I guess not.

[SamDel]

Great!

For the notifications you should click the 'Watch' button:

[FA-Bubba]

By the way, something I hinted at a few posts ago is that Google officially ceased producing Chromecast Audio devices. This occurred in January, and existing inventories are disappearing, but they can still be found. I really needed the Chromecast Audio device to fulfill my multi-room audio, and have managed to order what I believe are enough devices for my home...

To be clear, Google is still producing the Google Home devices, but I wanted (needed) true separation of left & right channels which Chromecast Audio does quite well.

I am interested to learn if (how) Google will replace that capability...

[FA-Bubba]

Thank you!... I fixed my "Watch" setting, and am now catching-up on all the posts since March!

[FA-Bubba]

FYI, I added a new pair of speakers and a new Chromecast Audio. I connected them, added the Chromecast to my Google Home, Named them and added them to the appropriate Speaker Groups.

At first they were not in sync with the other speakers, which was disappointing. I tried a few things, and it resolved, so ALL speakers are again in sync. In case someone else has a similar experience, here is what I did that resulted in the new additions getting in sync (I'm not sure if any ONE of these would have done it, or if ALL of these actions need to be done):

1. I shut down the Desktop Audio Streamer App.
2. I rebooted my PC
3. I powered-off the new Chromecast Audio device & powered it back up. (This should also update the Firmware, if needed, about a 10-minute process).
4. I restarted the Desktop Audio Streamer.
   -- The new speakers were in sync with all of the other speakers.