iPeng Application now on the App Store
Explore iPeng usability and iPhone speed with the iPeng 1.0 now on the iPhone App Store.
It’s the ultimate remote control software for Logitech® Squeezebox™ players and the SqueezeCenter server. Have full control over the music all over your home with your iPhone or iPod touch.
We told you it would come and we told you it would have limited functionality but Coolio has been an insisting Penguin, so now it does already give you a bit more than originally expected. Here are the highlights:
- Explore your music library at unprecedented ease: Browse your library categories at our wingtips and select one of “play”, “add” or “add next”. And do that on any level that has playable content with the “touch-and-hold” gesture. Available Categories are
- Albums, Artists, Genres, Playlists, Favorites
- NowPlaying screen with multi-page controls: Let’s you do all player related activities in one place
- Play Internet Radio, Music Services and Podcasts: Everything that can be accessed through SqueezeCenter can be accessed through iPeng. Including Search, Artwork and all the other goodies. With the same playback functionality as for the library (as available for streaming content)
- Manage, simultaneously control and synchronize all your Squeezebox™ players and servers with iPeng’s MultiPlayer control: iPeng’s MultiPlayer control now is the main dashboard to select , manage and control your players. And Servers.
- Manage your playlist: Re-order and directly play the Tracks on the current playlist.
- Have full control over your player features: shuffle, repeat, rate songs, love and ban tracks for music services and much more. On the overlay of the artwork screen. Just as you know it from iPeng.
- Full localization through SqueezeCenter: iPeng itself is currently English only, but most menu items and texts are fully localized as of your server setting.
Now on the iPhone App Store for $9.99.
Download and have fun!
For more information and detailed usage instructions see help.penguinlovesmusic.de
iPeng requires a SqueezeCenter server from version 7.0 on, available for free from Logitech® at www.slimdevices.com and one or more Squeezebox™ or Transporter® or any compatible hard- or software player.
Squeezebox™ is a trademark of Logitech.
iPhone, iPod and iPhone App Store are trademarks of Apple Inc.
Tuesday November 25th, 2008 at 10:40 PM
[...] Squeezebox control apps hitting the App Store. The one I was waiting for is the native version of iPeng. It finally became available today for £5.99 ($9.99 in the [...]
Wednesday November 26th, 2008 at 06:11 AM
Nice, I bought it! However I would really enjoy the addition of the “Music Folder” library browsing mode as we get on the Squeezebox. My MP3 lib is folder-organized and I want it to stay that way
Thursday November 27th, 2008 at 09:21 AM
All I can say is… wow, awesome, thank you, you rock. Was looking forward to this one, and it truly delivers.
Friday November 28th, 2008 at 11:32 PM
Just installed – works very nice, thank you. But please, consider one more vote for “Music Folder” browsing option.
Saturday November 29th, 2008 at 02:43 PM
I purchased and installed this app on my ipod touch 2nd gen yesterday. it’s cool, but i have some gripes. First, the album artwork in the album view is often missing, and when it’s not missing it’s assigned incorrectly (A beatles album with artwork from High School Musical?). Also, we have 2 ipod touch in our home and it seems so far that only 1 will have a complete artist/album display, the other ipod has a missing or incomplete list. Does anyone have any information on what is going on here? I have the latest version of Squeezecenter running and i don’t have any problems with it or my Squeezebox controller.
Saturday November 29th, 2008 at 03:02 PM
Do you see the correct artwork on SqueezeCenter’s web interface?
Does iPeng load the correct album, when you select it?
If the artwork in the web interface is correct, then this sounds a bit like the cache is out of sync with the data in the database, try to go to settings (in iPeng) and hit “Flush Cache”.
You can have as many iPengs on your network as you like, i regularly use two.
Saturday November 29th, 2008 at 03:06 PM
Yes, all of my artwork in Squeezecenter’s web interface is correct. And yes, when i select a song(s) from a particular album I do see the correct artwork on the ‘now playing’ screen. I’ve tried flushing the cache a number of times also. I’m wondering if i should delete/reinstall the ipeng app?
Saturday November 29th, 2008 at 03:13 PM
And you see different artwork on the two iPods?
I wonder if there’s a bug in “flush cache”, hm…
Have you completely re-scanned your database recently? If yes, and you are NOT on a recent SqueezeCenter 7.3 beta build, re-installing iPeng could help, an alternative would be to add or remove a single album and do an incremental rescan of the database but probably the reinstalling is simpler.
Saturday November 29th, 2008 at 03:14 PM
Update on this – this morning after i booted up my laptop/restarted squeezecenter, and flushed out the ipeng cache on both ipods, a few minutes later each ipod now shows a complete album list and correctly assigned artwork for each album. The only setting change i’ve made to each ipod is to turn ‘on’ the prevent sleep mode option (last night i had that set of ‘off’). Hopefully my syncing problems are solved, because i can see myself loving this application.
As an aside, i’d cast vote for a ‘music folder’ browse option in a future release. i tend to use that browse option 99% of the time on my squeezebox controller.
Saturday November 29th, 2008 at 03:16 PM
Yep, i did completely rescan my entire database in squeezecenter last night. I’m not on a beta version. Last night the artwork on one ipod was incorrect, and the other ipod didn’t even show an album list (just said ‘loading’ for an hour or so). Maybe a bug in ‘flush cache’, but either way at this moment i have 2 ipods with correct album art and i’m happy.
Saturday November 29th, 2008 at 03:16 PM
OK, for all those of you who want the “music folder”, this is going into a quick beta test this afternoon and will very likely be part of the first maintenance release going to Apple on Monday.
Saturday November 29th, 2008 at 03:21 PM
Oh, do you have a large database (>2.000 albums)?
The re-scan thing: SqueezeCenter before 7.3 “forgets” the rescan time when you restart it, so iPeng can only determine a change in the cache from the number of albums, artists, etc. However, these don’t change when you just do a full re-scan without changing content. That can get the cache out of sync.
Saturday November 29th, 2008 at 03:33 PM
I’m running v7.2.1 with around 900 albums in the database. All appears to be well now, so like you mention it was probably an issue with my re-scan of the dbase last night. Thanks for your help, now it’s time to kick back for a couple hours and enjoy this app.
Sunday November 30th, 2008 at 10:13 PM
i like!! wonderfull applikation!! the only what i miss is the sleep function. you have planed to add this?
Sunday November 30th, 2008 at 10:16 PM
Yes, of course. Actually it is what I miss most myself. The issue is, that the menu it should go into is not yet there and I will have to do a bit of a re-do of the NowPlaying screen, but it will definitely be on one of the coming releases.
Monday December 1st, 2008 at 08:07 PM
Where is the documentation? I went to the help section, but i am having trouble synchronizing my 4 players…works fine with my duet controler, fine with the old web based interface.
I understand if you have not have time to do any real docs, but what doe the wave with and with out the X mean on it?
Monday December 1st, 2008 at 08:47 PM
I also bought the application, first look is fine.
But the “albums”-View looks terrible, due to much to big pictures. I also had a system crash while viewing this. I made a screenshot, so if you want this to troubleshoot, write to my email-adress. If you’re german (I suggest cause of de .de domain), you can write in german.
Very nice would be also a cover-flow-view in landscape mode (if technically possible), I miss the local play and some other small things, I’m used to with the duet-controller (e.g. %-status while buffering).
cya – d²
Monday December 1st, 2008 at 10:34 PM
You are right on documentation, need to get this done.
Syncing: To sync player B to player A so that A becomes the master, press the wave icon on B and then press A (anywhere).
To unsync, press the wave icon with the X
Artwork: This is a known issue, I assume you are using .bmp Artwork which is actually not supported by SqueezeCenter. iPeng’s first maintenance release, which is ready and will go to Apple for approval today or tomorrow will fix this.
Monday December 8th, 2008 at 12:07 AM
Sorry to say that as far as I’m concerned, the app is a big disappointment. As I’ve posted on the app’s itunes store page, it’s just too unstable to be of any use. I can’t get the app to stay up more than a few seconds, as soon as I try exploring the various options, it crashes very quickly. This is on slimserver 7.1, with 1296 albums, with ipeng 1.0.3.
Monday December 8th, 2008 at 01:40 AM
The problems went away after fixing some garbage mp3 tags and removing an album from The The
. Damn silly band names.
Monday December 8th, 2008 at 08:54 PM
I purchased the product a few days ago and I’m absolutely thrilled. I am looking forward to future enhancements. I do have one question thought. I am not able to see any individual songs beneath my playlists on the iphone and therefore I cannot play them. They are viewable just fine using Squeezecenter, and I have to start playing the playlist from there. Is this the way it’s supposed to be at this time? It’s almost as if the playlist feature relies on the ability to browse folders and I know that is not built into the product quite yet.
Monday December 8th, 2008 at 10:21 PM
Please try to flush the cache. When the server does a rescan, typically playlists are the first thing to go out of sync, even when Albums, Artists, etc. are still working fine.
You will get music folder browsing if you upgrade to 1.0.3 but please skip this update if you own music by “The The” (this is meant seriously).
Monday December 8th, 2008 at 10:49 PM
Thanks for the information – I updated to version 1.03 and everything seems to be working now. I have only one The The song, so I think I can survive the update. Thanks again for your help. This is officially my favorite application on the iPhone.
Tuesday December 9th, 2008 at 10:21 PM
One more information to the cover-artwork-problem: I checked my music-folders: I have no .bmp files in there (only jpg). It seems, that all covers are shown to big, some “only” 30% too big, some ~500%. I get a crash everytime I try to scroll through the album-view.
I don’t have this wrong view in the iPeng-Server-based application or the orginal duet.
Hope 1.0.4 will fix this (even if there are no bmp files).
Tuesday December 9th, 2008 at 10:35 PM
Ok. As long as search is fine iPeng 1.0.4 will fix this.
However, if you don’t use bmp then this is definitely also a SqueezeCenter issue, the server is supposed to scale the images.
Could you give us details about your server version and operating system?
Wednesday December 10th, 2008 at 07:00 PM
I run the squeezecenter on a NAS, the Thecus N5200 Pro – more information: http://www.thecus.eu/en/15/ (btw I can really recommend this NAS).
It is a linux-based system with a MOD (more information: http://onbeat.dk/thecus/index.php/N5200_Module:_SQUEEZECENTER), I suggest it is squeezeserver-version 7.2 at the moment, but I will look it up at home.
Wednesday December 10th, 2008 at 10:42 PM
Hi! Very nice app! Apple should give you a cut of their income, as I bought a Touch more or less solely to controll my SB
A few tings, though:
1. I miss the ability to play through my entire collection using the Random Mix option.
2. I was a bit confused by the fact that if you use shuffle once it stays on, and you have to tap the “Now playing” page to view the overlay and find the button to press to turn shuffle off.
To me it would be more logical if the tracks got shuffled only if you press the shuffle button. This is also how the Touch player behaves as far as I can tell?
It also took me a while and quite a bit of frustration to find out how to turn off shuffle. (Reading the documentation was of course way down the list of things to try….) I realise that tapping the screen is the same method that is used by the Touch mp3-player, but my personal opinion is that it would be better to include the shuffle and repeat buttons on the default controller at the bottom of the screen. At least it would be nice to have this as an option. (I haven’t used the Touch mp3-player at all, so I was not familiar with how it works and didn’t know about the tap-the-screen feature.)
Thursday December 11th, 2008 at 03:20 AM
@Wodger:
1. Will come, just a little patience
2. We get that comment a lot. The issue is that with SC, it’s not possible to automatically turn off Shuffle after an album or playlist is played.
However, We are considering to change the logic to always turn Shuffle OFF when you PLAY a whole album or playlist (not for adding tracks).
Friday December 12th, 2008 at 04:43 AM
Do you have any plans to support control of the Squeezebox with iPeng through Squeezenetwork? I don’t always have my computer that runs Squeezecenter turned on, and I often just use the Squeezebox to play Pandora through Squeezenetwork. It would be nice to be able to use iPeng to control it in this mode as well. I realize that I can do so with mobile Safari by loading the Squeezenetwork web page and logging in, but it would be nice to have everything in one place – maybe a separate tab for this? Even if all it did was to keep track of the user’s login name and password, and load the web page, that would still be useful, though obviously one could do more to make the interface better for a small screen (e.g. less panning and zooming needed).
Thanks for considering this.
Friday December 12th, 2008 at 05:28 PM
Yes, I definitely DO want to support SN, but it does not yet have a CLI (which is the interface I use for controlling SqueezeCenter).
Now to use Safari (or UIWebView) for that is actually a cool idea, I will definitely consider that for one of the next releases.
Friday December 12th, 2008 at 10:52 PM
started with your excellent web app, but held back by speed, now native, much improved…one question…really like to see album art, but prefer to sort by artist, you can do this on SqueezeCenter, ie sort by artist, but view all albums by this artist… but I can’t see any way you can do this on the touch with ipeng. Have you any plans, or am I missing something? thanks for such a great app
Friday December 12th, 2008 at 11:42 PM
You can get that through
Artists->All Albums
Saturday December 13th, 2008 at 10:08 PM
Hi just bought iPeng 1.0.3.
Excellent app (like another person I bought the iPod Touch to help control my SqueezeBox among other things). Well worth the £5.99
I have some suggestions for a future update
1) In Now Playing there are 3 screens (one shows artwork, another shows artwork with tracks overlayed). Would it be possible to add a 4th screen that only shows the tracks with the background artwork removed. Just makes it slightly easier to read in some cases.
2) Also if possible it would be useful to show track progress in the title or at the track level e.g 1.00 of 3.45
3) Copy music to iPod Touch local storage and allow local playback
When is the update to .0.4 likely to be?
Note: I have some crashes with the app, is there anyway to debug what would cuase this
Saturday December 13th, 2008 at 10:20 PM
1. There might be another view with more details – including artwork etc. as an option. There definitely will be more than three pages in the future.
2. You know you can get that by tapping on the (empty) center page? Or do you mean it should be visible on all pages?
3. Puh. Don’t think Apple will allow that. Sooner or later I will have local playback, though.
Update: You never know (Apple won’t tell you anything about it), but judging from past experience, I would say: Tonight (US time).
Crashes: Can you tell me where they happen? There’s one known, reproducible issue, which is dragging the currently playing song. I also see rare, random crashes due to heap fragmentation especially when iPeng was refreshing the cache. Those are difficult to reproduce since they also depend on what else is going on on your iPod.
Saturday December 13th, 2008 at 10:41 PM
Thanks for the feedback.
Never knew about tapping the empty screen to show progress info.
Coulf this be incorporatef into the tracks display screen?
When I go into the Artists or Albulms view it just crashes after about 1 or 2 seconds back to main home screen. I do have a lot of MP3s (and I mean a lot). It is also crashed when just sitting in the playback screen.
Is there anyway to catch the exception, write this to a log file and display the logfile on the next open. This might help to track down what cuased the crash (note I have never programmed on Apple so not sure if this is possible)
S
Saturday December 13th, 2008 at 10:59 PM
Judging from your description I would think the crashing is one of the known issues, most likely the “The The” issue:
http://penguinlovesmusic.de/?page_id=239
On the tracks display screen: This will be a bit difficult since tapping the screen there usually DOES have a function (selecting the track you are tapping).
Tuesday December 16th, 2008 at 11:10 PM
I am using Squeezecenter 7.3.0 and I just downloaded iPeng. Unfortunately I can’t get it to play any music. I can see all my artists, albums etc. but when I click on a track to select it, nothing at all happens. If I then go to Squeezecenter’s web interface I can see the playlist consisting of all the tracks I have selected! Nothing I do in iPeng will coax anything to play though. I have an iPhone 3G and an Intel iMac with the latest 10.5.6 version of OS X.
Tuesday December 16th, 2008 at 11:46 PM
Can you start playback from the NowPlaying screen?
Have you read this
http://penguinlovesmusic.de/?page_id=179
and this?
http://penguinlovesmusic.de/?page_id=256
Wednesday December 17th, 2008 at 12:01 AM
Ah! I get it now, sorry it behaves differently to the web-based iPeng. I was expecting to click on an album track and be taken automatically to the now-playing screen. Sorry to have RTFM
Wednesday December 17th, 2008 at 12:04 AM
You can get that through
“Settings->NowPlaying on Play”
Also, please note the different play modes mentioned in the first link I posted.
Have Fun!
Thursday December 18th, 2008 at 10:27 AM
A great great iPhone App. Where was I all this time and missed this wonderful application. I have been using SB and iPhone for the last 18 months.
If this works for me it will be THE most important application on my iPhone for the phone function. Yes, it is that good.
OK, now that I am done with the praise (just kidding
, here is my problem:
I have SlimServer 6.2.2 running on a QNAP TS-101 NAS. I understand the QNAP TS-101 does not support SqueezeCenter 7.x and that is why I have not upgraded. The problem is iPeng needs at least 7.0. When I set it up by configuring the IP address of the SlimServer 6.2.2 nothing happens and I get the message:
Cannot Connect to Server
Please see server availability or see Help for server setup information.
Now, the another SB iPhone application – Squidgy – also needs SqeezeCenter to run according to the System Requirements. But I managed to connect and control SS 6.2.2
Please help. I dread your response wil be 6.2.2 is not suported, I will appreciate any help.
ASenna04
Thursday December 18th, 2008 at 11:07 AM
You are right, iPeng will require SqueezeCenter (7.0+) to work. It’s using an interface that is not present in the 6.x versions.
But my understanding is, that there is indeed a SqueezeCenter 7.2.1 version for the QNAP TS-101, you might want to have a look at this:
http://oinkzwurgl.org/?action=browse;oldid=ssods3_ts;id=ssods_ts
There’s also plenty of information on forums.slimdevices.com in the “3rd party hardware” section.
I hope this helps a bit. If it does not, you could turn to Apple for a refund on iPeng, the requirement for SC7.0+ is mentioned in iPeng’s system requirements.
Sorry to not be able to give you a more positive answer, but the 6.2.2 interface is not an option for us since it does not offer a lot of the functionality needed for iPeng.
Friday December 26th, 2008 at 06:00 PM
Excellent application, working flawlessly. I just have problems with the landscape mode. Any suggestions?
Friday December 26th, 2008 at 10:27 PM
sig,
I don’t exactly know what “problems” you have, yet iPeng native does not yet HAVE a landscape mode, so it’s probably that?
Saturday December 27th, 2008 at 12:52 PM
Tuesday December 30th, 2008 at 05:44 AM
Hey there,
Just purchased iPeng but am having difficulty getting it to see my server. I have my firewall off. I tried putting in the server address, like this:
http://192.168.1.100:9000
and that didn’t work so then I also put it in this way:
http://192.168.1.100
without the :9000, both entries exist, but now every time I start iPeng it crashes. I restarted the iPot Touch (gen 1) but that didn’t help. Any ideas? I was thinking to delete and reinstall but I don’t want to have to pay for it twice.
Thanks,
Brian
Tuesday December 30th, 2008 at 06:06 AM
Hey there again,
I changed the name of my SqueezeBox player in SC and now life is good. I am psyched about this app (I broke my SqueezBox remote control last week, but this is 100 times better!)
Thanks,
Brian
Wednesday December 31st, 2008 at 12:56 PM
Good to hear you got it fixed.
One more thing: reinstalling does not mean you have to pay twice, App Store remembers that you already purchased an app.
Yet there are extremely few cases (corrupted cache crashing iPeng before you can reach “Settings->Flush Cache”, exacly one incident so far) where you’ll need that with iPeng.
Friday January 2nd, 2009 at 09:46 AM
I have a question. I am new to Squeezebox.
Will iPeng allow the iPhone to control the Squeezebox Receiver? If so, is there any need to buy the Controller?
The reason I ask is this. I just got a Squeezebox Classic with the Infrared Remote and I have it hooked up to play through the stereo downstairs with the speakers in the living room. If I want to be able to play music through the different stereo upstairs with the speakers in the bedroom, can I just get a Receiver for $150 and set it up and control it with iPeng on my iPhone?
Alternatively, if I trade the Squeezebox Classic in on the Duet, can I add an extra Receiver, set up both receivers with the Duet Controller, and leave the Controller to run the Receiver downstairs and iPeng on the iPhone to run the Receiver upstairs?
Thanks for your help!
Friday January 2nd, 2009 at 12:49 PM
Robert,
both alternatives will work, yet the first one is somewhat unsupported (by Logitech). As the Duet is designed, you need the controller to set up the receiver. After that, you can control it with iPeng. iPeng itself can NOT do that task, but there’s a community tool that does it, you can read more about it here:
http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=43722
You second alternative will definitely work, all Squeezeboxes and iPeng will connect to the same server and you can control all of them with the Controller and iPeng, even simultaneously.
Generally, for iPeng you will need to run a SqueezeCenter server, iPeng currently does not work with SqueezeNetwork. It does support all of SN’s Internet Radio and Music Service capabilities, but only through the server.
Thursday January 8th, 2009 at 02:18 PM
[...] 11 Dec 2008 penguinlovesmusic.de iPeng Application now on the App Store | Penguin Loves Music [...]
Monday January 26th, 2009 at 08:30 PM
Purchase the product and loaded it on my itouch. It says it can’t find the server. What server is it looking for? Are the terms server and squeezebox interchangeable. Does it want the DNS name; does it want the IP address and port number, or maybe the MAC address, or the IP address listed in Squeezenetwork settings. Is a SSL remote control process required? Is there any information, manuals, etc for this product? I’m running ver 7.3.
Monday January 26th, 2009 at 08:38 PM
Is the Itouch trying to commutate with Squeezebox or squeezecenter?
Monday January 26th, 2009 at 08:39 PM
The server it looks for is SqueezeCenter (the software you installed
from Logitech, the one that has version number 7.3). SqueezeCenter has
to run (and your Squeezebox has to be connected to it) to use iPeng, you
can NOT (yet) use iPeng with SqueezeNetwork.
So what iPeng is looking for is the IP address of the machine
SqueezeCenter runs on.
Depending on your router settings it can happen, that iPeng can not
automatically detect the server. You need to open port 3483 for the
autodetection (this is also true for your Squeezebox, so if your
Squeezebox finds the server, iPeng should do so, too). Also, to use
SqueezeCenter you need to have access to the port your SqueezeCenter
operates on, usually 9000. But per default SqueezeCenter should set
those settings correctly upon installation.
You can check whether your SqueezeCenter is operating correctly by:9000. If that works .
trying to open it in a browser as
and iPeng still doesn’t find the server, go to “Settings->Add Server” in
iPeng and enter
You can see more details on iPeng use here:
http://penguinlovesmusic.de/ipeng-application/how-to-use-the-ipeng-application/
Monday January 26th, 2009 at 08:41 PM
Wake-On-LAN feature will start the squeezecenter?
Monday January 26th, 2009 at 08:43 PM
If the machine SqueezeCenter runs on supports it: yes.
You have to enter the MAC manually, though (“Settings->MAC”).
Monday January 26th, 2009 at 08:46 PM
Thank you!!!!
Wednesday February 4th, 2009 at 09:58 PM
Love the app; very fast and stable. A few comments:
After purchasing your iPhone app and trying it at home, I took my iPhone to a friend’s house (he ended up buying it too). iPeng connected and worked flawlessly. But when I got back home it was unable to connect back to my SC. I removed the server from iPeng and manually added it, restarted the iPhone and still couldn’t connect. Hooking up a protocol analyzer, I could see iPeng was trying to connect to my friend’s server on a 192.168 network, but didn’t even try to connect to my SC on a 10.10 network (not even a single packet). The solution was to “Forget last Server”. Still, it would be nice to have both servers.
While I see no comments from others, I believe there are some bugs related to shuffle: not the actual operation, but the display relating to current status. I first go into Now Playing and turn off shuffle (white shuffle symbol). I then go into an Album view and toggle the play symbol: + says “All Songs”, >| says “All Songs”, but the play symbol (>) says “Shuffle”, even if shuffle has been turned off. In addition, the shuffle symbol on the Albums screen is grayed out, no matter what the shuffle status is. It’s all very confusing. On Dec 10th you indicated you’ve heard other comments related to shuffle, so perhaps this isn’t news to you.
Related, I’d really like to see track numbers in the Now Playing list. Since Now Playing shows numbers indicating a song’s place in the playlist queue, there is no way to tell if the album is shuffled or not. Furthermore, my SB displays track, title, artist when playing, which is confusing when iPeng’s now Playing playlist shows “2 Stray Cat Blues” and my SB says “07 Stray Cat Blues”.
Enhancement suggestions:
- Genre and number of songs in Album browse view.
- Ability to jump to Browse view for other albums by the same artist in Now Playing playlist.
- The volume control is hard to select (almost impossible with the tip of my thumb): increased surface area detection would be helpful.
- Being able to change the shuffle mode from Browse screens would be most helpful.
- I’ll turn on my iPhone and immediately hit a button in iPeng (like pause). Since it takes ~1.5 seconds for it to reconnect to my server, it would be nice for it to queue the command until it connects, or perhaps disable and beep when hitting a button before it’s connected to the server.
On Dec 12th you mention you use the SC CLI. Using a protocol analyzer, I see no communications on port 9010. By default I’m blocking 9010 and your documentation makes no mention of opening this up on a FW. Are you using this for CLI (or some other port other than 9000)?
You mentioned in a previous post cleaning up the documentation is on your todo. As a new user (and even before purchasing, as a prospective buyer), it was very confusing. Couldn’t tell the difference between 1.0.4 version (no official post on 1.0.5) and 0.5.3. What I’m guessing is there is/was an iPeng for use via web browser (plugin) in the 0.x.x series and an iPhone iPeng in the 1.x.x series. It seems the iPhone app doesn’t require the plugin, but does it use it? I’d suggest a clearer distinction between the two (perhaps that’s the difference between “iPeng” and” iPeng Application”?) Does the following page have any relevance to the iPhone app?: http://penguinlovesmusic.de/ipeng-the-iphone-skin-for-squeezecenter/developers-section/extending-ipeng-using-the-ipeng-cli-command/
Thanks!
Thursday February 5th, 2009 at 12:54 PM
bldrdash,
thanks for your detailed comments. Please see some answers below, I will also post them on the page but I think it’s more visible in a mail since this is rather long (which I appreciate).
Did iPeng automatically detect your server? In this case, it SHOULD show your server along with your friend’s server on the MultiPlayer page (right swipe on NowPlaying) so that you can select it.
Do you also have a “192.168″ network? The problem here is: iPeng doesn’t connect to a server but only checks whether a server is reachable and then assumes it should use it. The alternative would be to connect to a server first, but that can easily take 30s and this would have to be added to the startup time and I don’t want that. So I believe occasional (dis)connection to a wrong server is the smaller bad.
But you “original” server should still show up in that list, if it doesn’t, adding it with “add server” should help, all the servers entered there will show up in the list even if they are NOT reachable.
This is not a bug but confusion. As I said: We know it’s confusing and there will be some changes with the next version.
The difference is: the “Shuffle” on the “Albums” page is not a status, but a command. It will play the album shuffled, so always turn shuffle on (as in the iPod application). If you want to play the album un-shuffled, just click the track to start with.
See also: http://penguinlovesmusic.de/ipeng-application/how-to-use-the-ipeng-application/general-usability/
The change I want to make is that the Action in the Browse menu acts independent of the actual state.
Well, so much to display, so little space
NowPlaying will get a complete makeover with 1.2, we’ll see what we can do…
Good one. Not sure about Genre, but # is doable.
Another good one, will probably be in the 1.2 makeover.
0 chance
As of FW 2.2 the detection is done by Apple’s control and out of my hand. I’m a bit frustrated about that control (Apple themselves don’t use it in the iPod App, they do use it in the Apple Remote, where it has the same issue as in iPeng).
Maybe some day we will write our own control to fix this, for the time being it has to be Apple’s.
Why? It’s one swipe or click away from the browse screen, the alternative would be some kind of context menu which then would also be one swipe/click away, so what’s the advantage? Or do you have other ideas?
Good suggestion.
No, iPeng uses the CLI commands but the channes is HTTP over prot 9000, there’s a JSON/RPC wrapper for CLI in SqueezeCenter.
We do not want iPeng to use other ports than 9000 for exactly this reason. The only exception is port 3483 for server discovery, which you can do without if you add your server manually.
Yes, thanks, looking for a Web Master right now
That page currently has no relevance for the application and it is still undecided whether that feature will be implemented since now there’s an alternative using the TrackInfo feature of SC (which wasn’t present when we developed the iPeng CLI extensions).
One more thing:
Could you do me a favor and add tickets for your feature suggestions/bug reports in the iPeng ticketing system? That would be the recommended way to make sure it’s not getting lost.
https://trac.penguinlovesmusic.de/trac/ipengnat/newticket
Friday February 6th, 2009 at 12:37 AM
I’m thinking about getting an Ipod Touch. Just one thing…
Instead of just working as a remote, can you store ogg music files ON the Ipod Touch and stream TO a Squeezebox receiver?
I’m aware that the Ipod cannot as such play the ogg files but maybe it could just stream stored files to a compatible media stream receiver..
Friday February 6th, 2009 at 05:11 AM
This would require a SqueezeCenter (or compatible) server to run on the iPod. While this has been demonstrated with a jailbreak device about a year ago, it’s definitely beyond the scope of iPeng for now.
Sorry.
Saturday February 28th, 2009 at 05:40 AM
Like many other people, I am waiting for iPeng to support Squeezenetwork before I purchase iPeng and the Squeezebox receiver — I don’t want my computer to have to be on in order to use iPeng with Pandora and Rhapsody.
Can you advise as to when you will support this functionality?
Saturday February 28th, 2009 at 11:59 AM
SqueezeNetwork support is planned for the next release (1.1). That feature is going into beta testing this weekend.
Tuesday March 3rd, 2009 at 02:31 PM
admin! Thanks!
Another question: Based on my reading of the SlimDevices forums, it sounds like Squeeze Box can now fetch songs off ReadyNAS without having your PC running. Will iPeng allow me to access and control songs stored on a NAS?
Tuesday March 3rd, 2009 at 02:37 PM
Watch out for the news article I’ll write about SN today, will include some screen shots
NAS: As long as it’s a NAS that supports SqueezeCenter: YES!
ReadyNAS will do but is a bit on the slow side (SC needs quite a bit of CPU), the bigger Synology oder Qnap NASs work fine (not the entry level models).
Personally, I’d recommend a Nettop or Mini-ITX type of machine running Linux (nothing ideological, just runs better than Win on small scale servers).
Saturday March 7th, 2009 at 03:26 PM
I’m very pleased vith 1.0.5 native ipeng on my itouch, but how can i prevent it from disconnecting from Wifi network when it goes in to sleep?
When awaken it takes 2-5 sec to reconnect.
Prevent sleep mode works but will drain the battery fast because the screen is on all the time.
Whould be nice if it where possible to auto dim the screen in this mode.
Keep up the good work. This is a killer app!
Saturday March 7th, 2009 at 07:46 PM
Marling,
this is planned for 1.1 but I do yet have to find out how to prevent iPhone from shutting down the connection itself. But it has to be possible somehow, after all Apple’s iPhone remote does it.
Sunday March 8th, 2009 at 07:55 PM
Update: Works, will be in 1.1
Monday March 9th, 2009 at 04:18 PM
Wow , that was fast! When can we expect 1.1?
Monday March 9th, 2009 at 04:27 PM
There already was an open feature request for this for a while, actually, it was the first ticket opened in iPeng trac
The “core” functionality for 1.1 is finished (new communication, plugins, SqueezeNetwork support, see also: http://penguinlovesmusic.de/2009/03/03/preview-ipeng-goes-squeezenetwork/ ).
Now there’s some debugging to come plus some “details”, mainly UI stuff but that can take some time as well. Plus Apple’s approval time.
I’d say: End of March, maybe a bit earlier, target would be submission to the App Store two weeks from now.
Sunday March 22nd, 2009 at 06:32 AM
Hi!
Will it be possible to listen to streaming music through the iPhone headphone jack with iPeng (essentially, select it as the player in the same way that you can with the Duet Controller)? I don’t believe you currently can (unless I missed it)!
When I purchased iPeng I just assumed I would be able to do this, but still like it for all it other functionality. It would be great to be able to use it with SC on my NAS to stream all my music through headphones!
Sunday March 22nd, 2009 at 02:07 PM
Mulu,
right now this is not possible with the iPeng application, there is a limited local playback capability for iPeng 0.5.3, the plugin version but this will only work in the Safari interface.
Currently, streaming capability is planned for iPeng 1.3 and I expect that to show up with the iPhone 3.0 upgrade, maybe a bit earlier if I get it done based on iPhone 2.2
Tuesday March 24th, 2009 at 04:50 AM
Hi,
I just bought a SB receiver, and I am very excited to try your app. I am wondering whether I should wait to buy your app in a few weeks, or whether I can buy v1.0.4 now and simply upgrade to v1.1 for free in a few weeks.
What is your policy regarding versions of your app? Do I need to repurchase the app with each version (I hope not!).
Thanks!
Tuesday March 24th, 2009 at 09:16 AM
The policy is that there is no policy
However, 1.1 is definitely a free upgrade as will be 1.2.
That, btw, is currently the general App Store policy, you can’t have paid upgrades, you would have to sell a different app then. This will change in iPhone 3.0.
Regarding iPeng 1.1: I hope it’s not several weeks, it has already been submitted to the App Store and pending approval I hope it will show up within a week at latest.
Tuesday April 7th, 2009 at 05:54 PM
Hi!
is there a german language support available at present- you’ve mentioned that in the release notes. at the itunes store it says english is the only supported language.
your app sounds very interesting -if it’s in german i’ll definitley buy it
greetings
Tuesday April 7th, 2009 at 06:07 PM
Hallo,
Das Programm ist nur teilweise übersetzt. Der App Store schaut nur nach, welche Sprachprofile vorliegen, und da gibt es nur Englisch.
Alles, was iPeng-spezifisch an Texten im Programm ist (also z.B. “Settings”) ist ebenfalls nur englisch.
Aber überall da, wo Standardtexte verwendet werden (die meisten Menüs, manche Dialoge), werden die vom Server bezogen und verwenden die Spracheinstellung des SqueezeCenters. Typischerweise muss iPeng dazu zwei mal gestartet werden, weil beim ersten Start die übersetzten Text halt noch nicht vorliegen.
Wednesday April 29th, 2009 at 12:03 PM
Hi
After reading a comment a little further up the list I’m unsure as to whether I need to purchase the Squeezebox Duet receiver on it’s own (along with iPeng and a iPod Touch) or if I need the receiver and remote for Squeezebox Duet first. The earlier post seemed to be saying you need the remote to initially configure the device, from there on in you can use the iPod/iPeng combo.
Can you clarify please? Thanks!
S
Wednesday April 29th, 2009 at 08:53 PM
Steven,
It is correct, you’ll usually need a Squeezebox Controller to set up a receiver. iPeng can’t do that and for the foreseeable future (pending Apple giving Apps direct access to the iPhone hardware) this will stay that way.
There is, however, a 3rd party tool called Net::UDAP that can be used to set up a receiver. I’ve never used it myself, I recommend you read up on it a bit here:
http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57861&highlight=Net%3A%3AUDAP
Tuesday July 28th, 2009 at 10:32 AM
Thanks. This is a near perfect application!
Thursday July 30th, 2009 at 03:30 PM
Not sure if this is the right place for this, but I’ll try.
Just got a Duet and iPeng. So far, I’m happy with both, especially the Ipeng which I find to be a better way to interact with the receiver.
The only problem I am having is this. I can go to Rhapsody and perform a search (album, artist, track–it does’t matter) and the content comes up just fine. I can play a track and then try to get back to the main search page to begin a different search. When I do, iPeng crashes. I can then peform another search but I have to start over from scratch by reconnecting to the squeeze network, selecting Rhapsody, search, etc.
Has anyone seen this? Is there a setting I missed that I need to change? Would the fact I am using the “free” one-month version of Rhapsody cause a problem?
Thursday July 30th, 2009 at 03:55 PM
Good find.
Do you see this only through SqueezeNetwork (I’ve been able to reproduce it there, although not always) or also through SqueezeCenter (I haven’t been able to reproduce it there)?
Thursday July 30th, 2009 at 04:40 PM
Not sure I understand your question. Are you asking if the search issue is present when I search for something on Squeezecenter (i.e., searching through my iTunes library)? If so, I haven’t tried that but I can when I get home.
Thursday July 30th, 2009 at 05:29 PM
No, I mean if you are searching Rhapsody when connected to SqueezeCenter. The menu is a little bit different on SqueezeCenter and SqueezeNetwork. For example, you’ll find Rhapsody under “Radios” when connected to SqueezeCenter while it’s under “Services” while connected to SqueezeNetwork.
The two menus also use different code so I need to understand where exactly the issue arises.
Thursday July 30th, 2009 at 07:02 PM
I just went home and tried it. It works fine.
Thanks for the tip about the “radio” section. One of the knocks against the Duet is that you have to switch from SC where your own music is stored to the SN where you have Rhapsody/Pandora/etc. With your app, I can have both in the same place and can create a list that has a mix of my music as well as music from online sources.
Friday July 31st, 2009 at 05:01 PM
Last night I played around with the search much more. When connecting to SC, it doesn’t crash iPeng when going back to the search screen. However, I did notice an issue with the “Radio” section search screen. If you try to search without having put any text in the search box (e.g., if you accidently hit the search button rather than the text box to bring up the keyboard), it says “no search query specified”. That is exected. But it continues to sayt that even after you correct the mistake and do put text in the search text box. It will continue to result in that message every time you try to search, with or without text present. To clear it up, you have to either exit out of iPeng or go to a different radio service (e.g., Pandora) and then back to Rhapsody. Let me know if you need anything else.
Wednesday November 11th, 2009 at 07:35 PM
I an considering purchasing the iPod Touch 8gb model. Will the app be suitable for this?
Wednesday November 11th, 2009 at 07:47 PM
Yes, iPeng works fine on an 8GB Touch. But please make sure it has iPod Touch Firmware 3.0 or later since that’s required by iPeng 1.2 which is the current version on the App Store.
Friday January 1st, 2010 at 01:34 AM
[...] played a CD for the past 5 years!!!!! Here is a link to the iPeng web site – hope link works!!!! iPeng Application now on the App Store | Penguin Loves Music http://www.logitechsqueezebox.com/product_matrix.html __________________ Transporter (Black) [...]
Thursday February 10th, 2011 at 09:15 AM
Just installed this on my iPod Touch from the iTunes shop but it doesn’t appear to work. Help!
Thursday February 10th, 2011 at 12:55 PM
Please update again to the 1.3.1 update that is now available on the App Store.