Please report bugs/feedback here
ATdomo :: An Audiotron controller for Windows Copyright © Brent Aliverti, 2004
DESCRIPTION: After reviewing the other apps available for controlling the Audiotron, I decided to have a crack at writing my own. ATdomo (short for Audiotron majordomo), is written in Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0, an app that is getting a bit long in the tooth, but I know it so well, it seemed to be the logical choice. I'm a product designer for Microsoft so I've tried to give it a professional feel without going too overboard. USAGE: Typical shareware. If you find yourself using it a lot, it would be cool to get a couple bucks. Anywhere from $5 to $15 would be nice...whatever you feel like. I can email you PayPal account info if you like. If you don't feel like paying, that's cool too, but think about it. At the very least, if you like it, let me know. Cheers! DOWNLOAD: ATdomo_setup.zip (ver 0.9.5) (1,589KB, Zipped) GETTING STARTED: * On first install, the application will present the configuration screen. When you press OK, it will validate your settings. If there is a problem with your settings, it will notify you. * Once the app is configured, make sure your Audiotron is ON and in "Stop" mode (no music is playing). Then do one of the following: - If you don't already have a TOC file, choose "Get TOC and Lists" - If you already have a TOC file, choose "Get Lists Only" * After retrieving lists, ATdomo should be all ready to go. This is still an early testing phase, so if you find bugs, please let me know. HISTORY: 0.9.5 (2 August 2004) Bug Fixes: * Added more graceful handling of unexpected file paths. Now when a bad file path is encountered, it will present a message box with information and some suggestions instead of just crashing. New Features: * On the Config screen, you can now enter a list of preferred genres. These genres will be presented first in the genre list without having to scroll, giving you quicker access to your favorite genres. * Added item to Queue menu allowing you to "Queue All Genres". This will queue all tracks that have a genre tag. It's the closest I can come to the "Play Titles > All" Feature that you can do from the Audiotron front panel. 0.9.4 (31 July 2004) Bug Fixes: * Previously, I was expecting to always be able to find entries from the Album list in the TOC itself, and so I had no code to deal with an error of an Album NOT being found. But this can easily happen if the user is using multiple music shares. My app is really designed for a single-share setup. If the user has multiple shares, and ATdomo cannot reconcile items in the Album list against the TOC (because those items are from another share and would use a different TOC), then I display Artist info as "unknown". 0.9.3 (31 July 2004) Fixed the following bugs: * One last hardcoded path bug fixed. A lot of people were hitting this since it prevented correct retrieval of the TOC from the Audiotron and subsequently resulted in an error when building the "Artist : Album" list. * As a result of the above bug, there are now separate fields on the config page for "Music share" and "File save location". * Fixed Now Playing and Next Playing info to check to see if Artist and Album fields are available before trying to display them. * Fixed a couple minor bugs when clearing the queue. 0.9.2 (29 July 2004) Fixed the following bugs: * Can now work with TOC files that have CrLf (carriage return, linefeed) line breaks, as well as TOC files that use Lf only. * Better ability to handle missing entries in TOC file that are a result of tagged files with key missing information (missing artist, for instance). 0.9.1 (26 July 2004) Fixed the following bugs: * Some file operations were hard-coded to "E:" drive. * Keyboard tab order on configuration screen was incorrect. * File share on config screen required a trailing slash. * Usernames and passwords that contain any of these characters will not work currently: "(space)<>#%{}|\^~[]`;/?:@=&$" Improvements: * Song Title file is built from TOC now rather than using AT's version. 0.9.0 (25 July 2004) Initial alpha release KNOWN ISSUES: * Attempting to read in files that don't exist results in creation of the file with 0-byte length (VB bug). * My files are too-well tagged. I need to create a more haphazard collection of test files that have missing tags to make sure that ATdomo handles TOC entries for these well. * ATdomo is currently authored to work with situations that have one music share. If you are using multiple music shares, some parts of ATdomo might not work properly. This is because I utilize a TOC for doing lookups, and TOCs are per-share. But I also use ATs native lists, and those are a composite of the contents of multiple share contents. If you get crashing bugs because of this, let me know. Even if I don't fully handle the situation, I don't want to crash because of it. I may add multi-share support as a future work item. KEY FEATURES: * Easy install and configuration (that's the goal, at least) * Very easy, intuitive, and fast queue creation * Convenient A-Z list for quick list navigation * Lists (except for current queue) are maintained locally * Use Ctrl-click to Queue multiple items at once * Save Queue as .m3u playlist (paths only). * Correct alphabetizing of "The ..." for Artists and Albums * Various Artists albums will fall at end of Album list (when correctly configured. See Tips section.) * Clean and inviting display and user interface * Fairly small footprint compared to other AT controllers WORK ITEMS AND FUTURE FEATURES: * Ability to resize * Improve management of current queue display (add paging and/or incremental display of queue and loading of queue on idle) * Automatically update song info when a new song starts * Ability to display contents of playlists prior to adding them to the queue. * Snappier appearance for Repeat and Random checkboxes. NOTES: * It takes a while to pull the TOC from the Audiotron (a few minutes for my 6000 item file). If you are streaming music at the same time you are retrieving the TOC and lists, it will greatly increase the transfer time. If you are using a TOC-creation tool that creates a properly formatted TOC file, let me know if ATdomo works well with it. You will still need to download the other Lists, just not the TOC. TIPS: * If you choose to save ATdomo's list files in your music share, make sure you have given yourself read/write permission for the share (not just the Audiotron). If you don't want to do that, you can also use the local file path that corresponds to the share. * When displaying songs from an Album, I just present them in the order they fall in the TOC file. The Audiotron creates a TOC that is sorted alphabetically by the filename and is case-insensitive. Some third-party TOC creation apps don't create a 100% properly formatted TOC list in that the order is not alphabetized by file name. If you care about having the songs in Album view listed in proper track order, I suggest the following: - Name your files in such a way that, when sorted alphabetically, they appear in the proper track order for the album. This means making sure that the filename contains the track number (with leading zeros) before the track name. Example: David Sylvian Gone to Earth 01 Taking the Veil.mp3 02 Laughter and Forgetting.mp3 ... - For maximum compatability with other devices, make sure your files from albums also contain track numbers in the tags. * To create the Artist:Album list, I retrieve the AT's native Album list. I then find each album and get the Artist name for the first track of the album. * To properly set the Artist info for Various Artists albums to "v/a : ", I look for one of two things: - If the Artist info for the first track of the album begins with "various" (case insensitive) -or- - If the first three characters of the Album title are "v/a". * If you save the Queue to a playlist file name that is already in the Audiotron's index, that new playlist will be instantly accessible by the Audiotron. * Although I create my own Artist : Album list in order to make a more useful view, there are a couple caveats: 1 When finding the right Artist to match with the album, I simply take the first Artist in the TOC with a match for the album title. This could cause some problems if you have one or more albums with the same title. 2 When sending the play command to the Audiotron, I tell it to play the album, ignoring the Artist info. This will end up playing ALL tracks with that Album title, even if they are from different Albums. The native Audiotron web interface does the same thing. * The solution to both of these problems is to differentiate the Album titles in the tag itself, in whatever way you prefer. Make sure your Album titles are all unique and you'll be gold. KNOWN BUGS: * Sometimes the Now Playing info doesn't update properly when you click the Next or Back buttons. Requires clicking the manual refresh button. * I hope I've fixed this, but there were some times when the bottom status bar was not showing up. This was bad since, not only does the status bar indicate activity, but it also has controls for toggling Repeat and Random. This appears to be a bug with VB rather than my app, but I have tried to work around it.