Sonata (activity)

Sonata
[[Image:|center]]
Status:	unknown
Version:	unknown
Base:	Yes
Source:	remote
l10n:	missing
Contributors
Owen Williams

Summary

The Sonata activity combines a musicpd (mpd) daemon and the Sonata pygtk frontend in one bundle. To the user the activity appears to be a basic mp3/ogg/flac player.

This app is more of a personal hack than anything else. It does not lend itself well to the use-cases or design of the other XO activities.

Goals

Create a simple mp3 player that can play media saved on flash or SD card. Also useful as an mpd client to an outside mpd server (ie, great for parties to pass around the XO and have users control the stereo).

Collaboration

None

Visual Design

Media

Document	Description
mp3	---
ogg	---
flac	---

Development

Development is internal and not hosted.

Bundles

sonata-11.xo is known to work with build 542. http://wiki.laptop.org/images/7/7b/Sonata-11.xo works on 653 build.

Functional Test

Open the Sonata Activity.

Right click and select properties. Ensure connection to mpd server.

Place ogg or other files in ~/.mpd/Music

Since space is limited on the XO internal storage if your goal is to play audio files from local source it may be helpful to create a symbolic link to the actual files located on an external device, such as an SD card or USB drive. This will save space on the XO's internal storage.

    ln -s /media/path/to/your/device /home/olpc/.mpd/Music/what_ever_you want_to_call_your_link
    for example:
    ln -s /media/disk/misc/ /home/olpc/.mpd/Music/misc

Click Library, right click on empty window, select refresh. Files should appear

Doubleclick files to queue.

Click Current tab, click play.

Music should play.

If you are having trouble getting the music to play, the mpd service may not be running. It should start when the sonata activity starts, but you can start it manually by going to the Terminal Actvity and doing the following commands:

 cd Actvities/sonata.activity

 bin/mpd_control.sh start

• As of January 2, 2008, this activity does not appear to function on the XO-1.
  • 03FEB08 - have the 653 build from an upgrade(crash) and it only started working when I did the mpd_control.sh start. Being played from a mounted USB stick : next will be streaming the media over a wireless connection

• • 04July08 Using the 704 build I was able to launch this activity from the command line going to /home/olpc/Activities/sonata and launching the application manually with ./sonata. I am able to control an MPD server on a remote box. Using the above commands to manually launch the local MPD server I'm able to get it to connect to remote streams and play music through the local machine's speakers. As a test, I created an entry on the 'Streams' tab pointing to Radio Paradise at: http://www.radioparadise.com/musiclinks/rp_128-1.m3u. Double click on this entry on the 'Streams' tab and it will add the stream servers to the 'Current' tab. From there select one of the stream servers and select the Play arrow. I get music. I'm still working on getting it to connect to MP3 files stored locally. I haven't been able to get it to see any local files in the library.

• • 02Aug08 Successful using 703 and 656 builds. My struggle was figuring out that I needed to go into Sonata "Preferences" (right click menu), select the "Behavior" tab and make sure "Update MPD library on start" option was checked. I have two OLPCs, one running each build and otherwise identical. I have a soft link in the ".mpd" directory named "Music" pointing to a USB stick where I keep my music.

External Links

• [[1]] Sonata home page