Sonos controller for BlackBerry and Nokia

I have just posted the first preview release of version 1.0.3. This release has one important new feature: support for the Library.

This means that you can use tiggit controller to browse the music that is available in the Sonos library, and to select tracks to be played. The library can be organised by Artist or Album, or play list. The screen shots below give you some idea how to navigate the Sonos library.

You can expand by artist, album, imported play list or Sonos playlist. When you have found the track(s) that you are looking for you can add them to the queue either as a single track, or as an album or play list.

When navigating around the library you can use the keyboard to jump to the first track/album/play list that starts with the letter pressed. For example, pressing the K key will make the library viewer jump to the first Album that starts with K. If you expand this album view and move to it’s tracks, pressing K again will jump you to the first track that starts with K. This ‘hot key’ functionality works in much the same way for artists and playlists.

When adding to the queue you can choose to either add the track/album/playlist directly to the queue, or just play right away. In this case the track(s) are added to the end of the queue and the first added track is selected and the zone player is set to play mode.

As this version provides support for play lists, it also allows you to save the current queue as a Sonos play list. Simply select Save queue from the menu, and give the list a name, as illustrated by the screen shots below.

Registered users can now download this release of tiggit controller here. To install, use your BlackBerry browser to click on this link for over-the-air installation.

One thing to note: tiggit controller performs a one-time download of the details of the library, and so when you first open the library view you may be presented with an empty list of albums and artists. In this case select Reload from the menu to cause the library details to be downloaded. This can take a few minutes. Each time you add new tracks to your Sonos library you will need to reload again from this screen. Playlists are updated each time tiggit controller is run.

Please note that this is an early release and may have a number of defects. It is being released at this time for early customer trials and feedback. The preview version is only suitable for OS 4.6, and has only been tested on a BlackBerry Bold. This build will not work on OS 4.5 and may not work on other devices. At this time tiggit controller does not work with BlackBerry Storm 2.

Still to come for the full release of 1.0.3 is

• Library search
• Improved ability to set equalizer settings for linked zones.

Work on library access – the ability to show the music library, and add tracks/albums to the zone player queue – is making good progress. I thought I would post a couple of screen shots that show work in progress. I have realised that this really needs a video to make this come to life, but for now here are some screen shots. These show the library view and the new menu options from the library view.

I have departed from the approach taken by Sonos in this implementation: With the desktop controller Sonos make requests to a zone player each time the controller needs information about the library. From the BlackBerry there is quite a bit of overhead in parsing the zone player results, and so I have chosen to download the library details and store them on the handheld, allowing the user to choose to reload the details. Additionally the handheld builds the Artist view from the Album view, rather than requesting it from the zone player.

I will use a similar approach for the imported playlists, but will use the server to provide search functions, as I feel that the zone player will be faster at searching the library than the BlackBerry.

I am expecting to post a preview version in the next few days that allows at least access to the library, if not play lists and search.

Version 1-0-2 of Tiggit Controller for BlackBerry is now available for download. This version uses the same library to access the Sonos Zone Players as the Nokia controller and has compelete separation of the BlackBerry specific code. This is, of course, not very interesting for BlackBerry users.

Version 1-0-2 also fixes a bug that resulted in only the first 25 tracks in the queue being downloaded.

Existing users can download the latest version by simply selecting update from the menu. The update will be downloaded using the WiFi connection.

Here are some screen shots of the progress I have been making on the Nokia project. As you can see many of the basic screens are in place and are functional. I have decided not to add the queue to the what’s playing screen as the E71 does not have space on the screen for this. Instead there are two buttons to allow users to navigate to the Volume settings and the Queue display.

There are still a number of problems with network access and performance in general of the Nokia device. It is remarkably slower than the BlackBerry. There is also a problem with the Nokia disconnecting from WiFi at every opportunity, requiring rejoining the network for every access.

Incidentally the queue shown above is a Napster play list, so at first glance it would appear to work with Napster.

Release of the nokia version is being held up by two things:

1. My intended target is the E71 and similar smart phones. Naively I assumed that all of the APIs available in the SDK would be available on this device – which they are not. So, having got a long way implementing the user interface in SWT, I have had to start again and implement in pure LCDUI. This is making good progress, but is quite a bit of work.

2. The second problem maybe more difficult. The E71 appears to close down it’s WiFi interface when inactive and so misses status updates from the ZonePlayer. I need to find a way to keep the WiFi interface active. I would also like to limit the irritating network selection dialogues.

Anyhow, here is the progress that I have made so far, in the form of some screen shots from the simulator. As you will see the UI is still quite clunky, but it is getting there. When I can I will also post some pictures of the code on an actual E71

Those that have already contacted me about taking part in initial trials will receive an email when there is something ready to download and trial.

The nokia controller is working on the nokia simulator – it does all the basic functions:

• Loads and displays the list of zone players
• Allows you to open a zone player and see the current track that is playing and the current queue
• Pause/Play the zone player
• Skip forward and backwards
• Enable/disable shuffle and repeat

The user interface is incredibly klunky, mostly because this is the first time i have used SWT or coded for Nokia, but I expect it will improve in due course.

The blocking factor at the moment is that when I load the code onto my N71, which I have bought for testing, it crashes before it starts. This is probably a simple problem, but is taking a while to track down. Once I have solved this, I will make the klunky prototype available for testers.

In the mean time if you are interested in being one of the lucky (or not so) people to join the early test programme then please add a comment to this blog, and I will be in touch.

Here is an update on the project to build the Sonos controller on Nokia smart phones.

The library that provides connectivity and functional access to the Sonos Zone Player has ported to Nokia without significant issues. The only problem has been some changes to the XML parsers – RIM provides a consolidated XML parser which has needed to be re-built on the Nokia platform.

I have built a very rough and simple user interface and will be posting some screen grabs soon. I am now looking for some trial users to start using the first cut version. Although it is very rough it does provide much of the functionality of the BlackBerry controller. Those that are interested should make a comment to this post and I will contact you directly.

Tiggit Controller is now release and available for $10 via Mobihand, and affiliated sites.

http://www.mobihand.com/product.asp?id=40251&n=tiggit-controller

tiggit controller has a new first time user experience. There is nothing much I can do about the permissions procedure that is forced by BlackBerry, but after that, users are greeted by the screen below that invites them to add a zone player or click for help

The user then clicks on add a new zone player, enters the network address of only one of the zone players on the network, assuming that tiggit controller can connect to the nominated zone player, it is able to download the details of all of the zone players on the network.

You may also notice the button to click for assistance: This simply launches a web browser with a URL to the home page on tiggit.com

This new functionality will be in version 0.0.9 which will be released at the weekend. I am expecting this will be the final release before making tiggit controller available as a product on Mobihand and the BlackBerry App Store.

Sonos version 3.1 found it’s way to my development environment today, and without thinking I clicked OK to accept the upgrade on my Sonos ZP90. The update went without any problems as you might expect, and then the client decided it needed a new version.

Whilst the client was downloading I attempted to control the zone player with tiggit controller. My heart sank – part of it had stopped working. How foolish of me to allow the update to go ahead when I am so close to getting a proper release out of the door!

Anyhow, without making too much of a drama, I allowed the Sonos Desktop client to download and install. Once that had completed the Zone Player was once again controllable with tiggit controller, so nothing had been lost. The good news is that tiggit controller appears to work with version 3.1.