Amdroid / Ampache = Streaming iTunes library to your droid

[mihalich]

Anyone using Ampache and the Amdroid client?

One of my friends learned about ampache the other day, and the client out for the palm. He told me about it and I got it all setup and working yesterday.

I'm able to stream all my music now from my web server at home to my phone via the Amdroid client that's in the market.

It works perfectly, and it sounds just as good as you're able to set the stream/transcoding bit rate to 192K on a per user basis. I had to force transcode everything to mp3 to get the droid to play everything I had. I have a mix of m4a and mp3 files in my library.

I'm extremely pleased to say that I was then able to delete from my sd card, the 14GB worth of songs I had to sync to my phone to get my itunes library on it. I now have plenty of storage on my card again, and I don't need to go out and buy the 32GB sd card.

The amdroid client needs a lot of work, especially compared to the palm web os version that's out there...but it's good enough for the time being.

- Joe

 

[nader2013]

Can you stream over 3g?

 

[mihalich]

Yes, been doing it all day.

You point the amdroid client at your server via an http url, and give it the user/pwd to login.

It takes about an hour to get the server setup correctly, and configured with the right security so it's secure.

Then you just copy the itunes library up to it (or your mp3 library) and create a catalog, and point it to the directory where the music is. It scans everything and setups up the catalog, and you're ready to stream.

Joe

 

[DatacomGuy]

Wow, thanks for posting. I'm all over this.

 

[Hangdog42]

+1 for Ampache. I've used it for a bit and it works very well.

 

[mihalich]

It's almost too good to be true.

If you add on that, when I turn on bluetooth, the music streams over my car stereo speakers, it's pretty close to perfect.

Joe

 

[johnnybirdman]

Ampache with Ampache for Android is a great combo. Ampache for Android was the first app I downloaded when I got my phone on 11/6.

I've been running Ampache for a few years now as a web based music server to listen to my stuff at work/home. This is easier with a centralized NAS which I also run. The NAS (freeNAS) serves all media to Ampache, Mythbuntu, itunes, etc.
Right now I have a virtualized (Virtualbox) ubuntu server running a webserver and Ampache. With VB folder shares setup and the virtual server the setup can be done in only a few minuets. Plug in the virtual LAMP, download Ampache, run the setup and your done. It takes me longer to open ports on my convoluted firewall than to install the app.
Ampache can also do video but I don't use that feature and haven't tried it on my Android either.

If you like it I suggest you donate, it is a great project. I've only chatted online with the developer twice but he was very nice and answered the questions that I had.
J.

 

[mihalich]

I saw the video link in there, but i didn't fool around with that yet either.

I have, however, fooled around with the radio station feature. You can add radio station streaming url's to it, as a way to collect them all in one spot. There's no support for this (or video) in the android client yet though.

All of this, btw, is also viewable from a regular browser on your computer, and the radio station urls work from here. All they do is launch the stream url when you click on it. So whatever the stream needs, it launches (IE: media player, browser with flash window). You also will need something like VLC media player to play some streams that media player won't play. (someday flash will get here, and this will no longer be an issue, in theory).

The only problem I had was that the only computer I had to put on my DMZ was an old P4 with a 40GB HD. I just barely had enough room for the full itunes library. I was not able to download my entire library to my phone, as I only had 14GB, so I had to pick and choose what I brought down...which sucked.

It's pretty powerful stuff.

-Joe

 

[johnnybirdman]

I also have an old P4 running my NAS with a 1TB hard drive which is why I can get away with my ubuntu/web/Ampache server being a 4.7gb virtual machine. Plus, the same folder that is called 'music' servers my Ampache server, itunes and any other media player/devices/software I use. Recreating media folder over and over gets old and time consuming.

I always forget about the radio feature since I don't use that either. I prefer xmplay as my player of choice for .pls and .m3u playlists. Small and low on resourcess.
J.

 

[Hangdog42]

Did anyone have to do any fiddling to get Amaroid to work? I thought I had Ampache set up properly since I can access and play using Amarok (which I think uses the same interface as Amaroid) however while Amaroid can see the files, it doesn't seem to be able to play them.

I also have an old P4 running my NAS with a 1TB hard drive

Must be a thing about P4s around here. I've got one in my basement running Slackware with about 500GB of disk space and it does everything from NAS to serving web pages. Not sure I'd want to run a VM on it though.

 

[vaio]

And this is better than rhapsody? If so why?

Thanks.

 

[johnnybirdman]

Not sure I'd want to run a VM on it though.

Wrong impression. My NAS is only a NAS, my virtual machines (plural) run on a different PC (keep the DMZ away from the home network. Share to music folder is a local read-only virtual share)

Sorry I have no experience with Amarok but is should be a matter to getting the correct type of playlist.

@vaio This is nothing like, or have anything to do with, the rhapsody music service I am aware of. This is a server you build yourself with your own music.

Check it out. [A] m p a c h e : Pour l'Amour de la Musique depuis le 5 Mai 2001
J.

 

[tnorris]

I run MPD (Music Player Daemon Community Wiki) on my media server and then control it from my Droid with pmix (pmix - Project Hosting on Google Code) It seems to work pretty well as a home music solution. Ampache has a slightly different use case than MPD does.

 

[Hangdog42]

Wrong impression. My NAS is only a NAS, my virtual machines (plural) run on a different PC (keep the DMZ away from the home network. Share to music folder is a local read-only virtual share)

Ah. That makes a lot more sense.

Sorry I have no experience with Amarok but is should be a matter to getting the correct type of playlist.

Actually my problem was with Amaroid, not Amarok. Of course as soon as I posted this, Amaroid decided to start working. I hate when that happens.

 

[johnnybirdman]

I run MPD (Music Player Daemon Community Wiki) on my media server and then control it from my Droid with pmix (pmix - Project Hosting on Google Code) It seems to work pretty well as a home music solution. Ampache has a slightly different use case than MPD does.

I always wondered about MPD as a solution but don't know enough about it to figure out how I would use it. I know you can 'control it from anywhere' with various methods. I'd love to get something small hooked directly to my stereo (not a PC) that could be an MPD player/node and control it from anywhere. I need to research more... or just blow a ton on an amp with a direct network connection.
Thanks for the info.
J.

 

[vaio]

Hey guys, thanks for answering my question, super forum!

 

[shake&bake]

Does anyone know any other media streaming options? Like maybe something slightly more simple? Not that ampache looks too complicated or anything.

 

[Hangdog42]

To be honest, Ampache is about the easiest thing I've come across. MPD is good, but a bit more complex to set up. Icecast is acceptable, but its development seems to be more than a little slow.

 

[mihalich]

Yeah, Ampache is about as simple as it gets for hosting your music. The time saver is that it uses Xampp, which is a pre-built & bundled package of the apache web server and mysql database.

Once you have xampp setup and secure (which is 95% of the work), all you have to do is drop the ampache web application into a directory in the xampp installation, and you're up and running.

The instructions are pretty easy to follow, but you do have to know what you're doing, to make sure you lock down the web server.

Joe

 

[Fadelight]

I spent the last hour setting up the servers. I guess I should've started with the app on my phone... it could have saved me a lot of time if I had realized beforehand that the app was just going to constantly force close on me.

 

[nader2013]

How does ampache/amdroid work?? I downloaded the app and I dont know how to connect it to ampache. And how do I get and ampache username and password?

 

[Fadelight]

How does ampache/amdroid work?? I downloaded the app and I dont know how to connect it to ampache. And how do I get and ampache username and password?

You have to set all that shit up yourself. Honestly, I found it to be a bit of a PITA.

Ampache on Windows [Ampache :: Wiki]

There are 2 or 3 other pages with various instructions on them for how to set everything up to stream to your phone, but I've uninstalled them, so I can't remember enough of it to google search everything for you. Just use google for everything you run into along the way.

 

[Hangdog42]

For those who haven't come across Ampache before, it is a web-based system for streaming your own music across a network. If you're not comfortable with setting up, securing and maintaining a web server, then it really, really, really isn't for you.

However, if you're like me and have an Imperial boatload of mp3s you'd like to access from anywhere and have reasonable computer skills, it is a great way to access your music from anywhere you can get a network connection.

 

[deftdrummer]

Can someone tell me how this stacks up to Sunsonic media streamer? I just got that configured on my Droid and it works flawlessly! Love it

 

[mihalich]

I spent the last hour setting up the servers. I guess I should've started with the app on my phone... it could have saved me a lot of time if I had realized beforehand that the app was just going to constantly force close on me.

Fadelight, the app force closed on me at first too, a lot. I found the problem to be a combination of 2 things:

1) If you try to run the app before the user/pwd are set up on the server, and try to log in, and then click on one of the buttons it would force close.

2) I found that this app (or the phone, not sure which) really wants to stream in mp3 format. So in the end I wound up setting up the transcoders in the ampache/config/ampache.cfg.php file as follows:

transcode_m4a = true
transcode_m4a_target = mp3
transcode_flac = true
transcode_flac_target = mp3
transcode_mp3 = true
transcode_mp3_target = mp3

transcode_cmd_flac = "<some-path>\bin\flac -dc %FILE% | <some-path>\bin\lame -b %SAMPLE% -S - - "
transcode_cmd_m4a = "<some-path>\bin\faad -f 2 -w %FILE% | <some-path>\bin\lame -r -b %SAMPLE% -S - -"
transcode_cmd_mp3 = "<some-path>\bin\lame -q 3 -b %SAMPLE% -S %FILE% - -"


The flac, fadd, and lame exe's have to be downloaded and put in some directory and you put the hard coded path to them in the cfg file as above.

Once I did all that, I haven't had one force close.

I'm running DM 1.0 ROM btw. Maybe your problem is 2.1 related also, if you're on a 2.1 based ROM.

Joe