crimsontime

I just wanted to share how I got my Optimus V to seemlessly play my entire music collection over wifi (>20,000 files) from a network drive, no server needed. I'm not sure if this requires root or not. My phone is rooted. This makes my music collection completely portable around the house and I don't need to run any power hungry always on server to do it. This solution does not make the collection available outside your home wifi network but works great at home.

1) Install MortPlayer from the market. MortPlayer can read any folder as your network share. In addition, it does not require volumeid so it can index your files that are on your network share that you will mount to your sdcard without issue. (Other players won't work -tested PowerAmp, Default Music player,Meridian... many others -they won't index from a sd mounted share)
2) Install Mount Manager from the market. This is better than CIFS Manager because you can automatically connect on wifi.
3) In Mount Manager, map your network share for instance 192.168.1.116\music or whatever it is to your sdcard. Set the sdcard mount point to be something like sdcard/music2 or whatever you choose. This will make your entire music collection viewable under sdcard\music2 or whatever you chose as the mount point.
4) In Mount Manager, enable the settings to connect automatically to your shares when you connect to wifi, and disconnect when disconnected from wifi.
5) Launch Mortplayer and select the share you created on the sdcard as the primary music folder. Next wait patiently as Mortplayer indexes your gazillions of files. This could take a long time so make sure your phone does not shut off wifi during the process. You may need to tweak your battery saver or other settings to make sure it stays alive depending on your configuration.
6) In Mortplayer, make sure to turn off the scanning. Configuration>Preferences>Initialization>Update Folder Structure>Never. I would only manually scan if needed if you have a lot of files because it takes forever to do the initial scan.
7) (Optional -recommended) Make a backup of Mortplayer and its data if you can so if something gets foobared, you can restore the app and its data so you don't have to re-index again. I use Titanium Backup for this.


That's basically it! No server needed. You can play all your files from attached network storage. I welcome questions, comments, criticism, or improvements to this setup!

Last edited by crimsontime; May 24th, 2011 at 02:48 PM.

woodsb123

Crimsometime, not sure if what you mean by "server" is an actual server instead of workstation pc and I would be curious if you are able to access your music without your pc, which the network drive is connected to, being powered off. I have the same access that you have, however, I have an external hard drive connected to my pc at home and my pc needs to be turned on at all times, which is actually not a bad thing. Also, all I needed to do was install the "Audiogalaxy" app on my workstation as well as my Android phone. No syncing is involved, also none of my music is in the "Cloud". What Audiogalaxy allows me to do is access my entire music collection(unlimited amount of songs) from either my phone or any pc with internet access, and this is done whether I have wifi, 3G, or 4G connectivity. Check it out at Audiogalaxy - Your Music. Your Playlists. Hit Play from Anywhere.

crimsontime

My method works without any pc or computer. You only need to connect a network drive directly to your router and use your android phone following the instructions above. By "server" I mean any pc or other computer that is being used as a server, not necessarily a dedicated server.

I'm aware of Audiogalaxy, but I did not want to run my pc (an old laptop) just to play my music at home. If I ever need to play music away from home, Audiogalaxy is probably the method I will use but then I will need to run a server. Even then, I would probably only run a server when I specifically needed to and just read my network drive otherwise. This saves power and frees up my pc. Other cloud services are not a good option because I have too many files.

I have also researched accessing my music by just connecting to my router somehow over the internet but I don't know yet if it this possible. Since our phones are themselves computers it seems like we shouldn't need to run another computer just to make use of our own network storage.

Last edited by crimsontime; May 24th, 2011 at 05:09 PM.

AlbinoAsian

Thanks for your hard work with this, I've been looking for a way to do this but am a bit of a noob when it comes to media sharing. I was searching around the android market for some apps that might help. I did fine one that might actually do what you did but a little easier.

https://market.android.com/details?id=org.gmote.client.android

I was disappointed when I first got it because I thought I was misled and it only works as remote control, but it can actually stream any folder on your computer (needs installation of a program to serve it though). Just wanted to let you know its worked alright for me so far.

Also thinking of hooking it up to my wifes computer to put the volume down when she's deafening me =)

tommyh

Sorry for resurrecting this old thread, but this seems like a pretty nice solution in the absence of other decent options.

One issue I have is my Mp3s skip every few seconds. Anyway to tell the MortPlayer to buffer or ... ?

EDIT: It's definitely a buffering problem on my LG Ally. I installed MixZing which buffers songs IF the equalizer is turned on and the settings are changed. Works great now.

Last edited by tommyh; November 10th, 2011 at 11:44 AM.