Thanks for the quick reply.
I know my use case is a bit odd, having 3 Pi’s running Volumio, so it would be great if you could make those changes - when you have time - and I will test them out.
Mark Gosdin
Small status update.
I’ve been working on the switching between devices, was not as easy as I expected, but hopefully soon it’s done. There will also be an option to connect on the first device automatically, to not affect users with only one device after first time starting the application, to keep it as it was before for them.
“Currently playing screen” is reworked. Not so loyal to volumio web interface style anymore, but now all controls should work as expected.(also fixed an crash if you swiped album art towards bottom)
The app can now be installed on devices with android 6 and up, instead of 8 and up what it was before, I’m investigating if it’s possible to expand the support for >4.4(KitKat) without major surgery.(i do not have an device with such old Android version, so it’s impossible to test for me)
And something i forgot probably.
I will try to push the update on store by end of week, if i have the time.
2 Likes
Here’s a test version for you, i have not yet put it in playstore, because im randomly getting odd crash myself, and im still looking for the root cause.
it does now have the ability to select device, and switch to another one by pressing the button which contains “system” on the mainscreen.(there is “switch” at the bottom right corner, which brings back the selection screen, if you dont have the auto connection selected.(thats bugged for now, it does not distinquish between first launch and device switching)
Im quite confident, that the switching would work now, but prove me wrong so i get something to do 
Thanks for the update.
Unfortunately, I get the “Something Went Wrong” message when I attempt to install. I do have install apk’s from unknown sources turned on for the file manager, but it fails on my LG K51.
Mark Gosdin
It might be that i have forgotten to increase the version code of the .APK from the one that is in playstore, this mean it won’t let you install on top of the playstore version.
It should install fine after uninstalling the one you get from playstore
I just uploaded new version on playstore, should be available within 12hours or so, probably alot faster.
It does include
New “now playing” screen.
Support for multiple Volumio device’s in network.
Alot of bug fixes, which should also show in better performance overall atleast on older devices.
Can be installed on devices with android >5.1 android and up now.(was >8.0 before)
Can actually create an playlist from queue now, not just an button without function anymore.
And probably something i forgot.
As of the current state of the app, i would greatly appreciate any feedback from you guys, either in here, google play store or via email which you can find on the playstore. I’m trying to respond quickly to any concern.
1 Like
[Update]
Ive been working on a update that should fix atleast 2 crash bugs, which have now became the major causes for crashes, actually these 2 are the only ones i am aware anymore, hopefully no new ones will pop up.
Also finally i implemented reordering of queue items and swipe to delete which i had completely forgotten.(better late than never?)
It will be live tomorrow
Very nice. Great to see the development goes on.
Finally found some time to play with it.
First impression is looking good, in order to get some structured feedback, can you add a development log in your first topic.
so you/we have a clear overview what is ready for testing, being developed,…
It’s easier for people that step in for testing and avoid bug reporting for stuff that has not been delivered yet or multiple reporting for the same issue/topic.
Like:
Ready to test
Under development
Next steps
Reported bugs
Requested
Can’t find the version number, but downloaded form the playstore (release 20-Jul-2021).
Running on Andriod One (V10)
Bug:
- Pressing Home => Album => applications stalls for 2 minutes, when loaded the app becomes very lagging. Doing the same for Artist work smoothly
- When the “isn’t responding” popup appears => Wait => Selecting a different function, app doesn’t respond anymore (selected Media server, not sure if it is implemented)
- my webradio, doesn’t work. Stuck on “Loading Content”. Loading the same radio channel from my favorites works.
- When doing a search in Qobuz or Spotify, the app crashes when trying to scroll.
- When the app has moved to the background, it looses the settings (like showing Queue). It moves back to the first step, selecting which “Volumio” you want to connect. Unfortunately this one is intermitted.
Request:
- Missing scroll bars to fast swipe to huge library
- Albumart not loading in Queue
Suggestion:
- Move time consuming tasks (like loading albumart) into background workers. This will avoid stalling of the main application.
So far my feedback for the first run.
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Thx for testing it out!
Local library stuff is pretty much untested by me, as i don’t have huge collection of music and mostly listening from Streaming service, it works with small set of files. I believe that the issue comes from the fact that i have no paging currently when loading stuff from volumio device(it tries to allocate everything at once to memory, which is bad)
Every network operation/data parsing is done out of the so called “UI thread” already, so that should not be the issue, but i might very well be incorrect and need to double check that Incase i have made some mistake in that.
Do you get album art at the queue view for any media? (I don’t have art in any local files, so those might indeed not show up, if the art url is in yet another format which i don’t fix at runtime currently.)
I’m currently not at home, but will take closer look of what’s happening asap.
euh…
Spotify and Qobuz, no clue as it crashes the application.
All other media is loaded from my NAS (+51000 tracks), and queue’s have no albumart. Same for currently played song.
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I need to investigate that one, Spotify, qobuz and tidal should have been working OK from pretty much the first release, would love to hear from others if they see the same behaviour since i have not observed this behaviour with those myself.
I can’t see the crashes yet on developer console, hopefully those would show up to give me some clues of what’s wrong.
Steps to reproduce:
Home => Qobuz => search “Rag’n” => swipe => application crashes
Very interesting catch, was able to reproduce it, thx. I’ll fix this as first priority tomorrow morning since I’m able to reproduce it so easily.
I have hopefully resolved the issue with search crashing and albumart for queue view now, new build should be available in store today later.
To me this looks like that Android have killed the activity from backround, if you go to homescreen from queue view, and relaunch after it should go back to where you left it aslong as the system does not kill the activity. I will try to investigate if there is something i could do for it thought. But if the system kills whole application process to free recources then i dont think i can do anything for that.
By any change, have you enabled the “Dont keep activities” from developer options?(usually close to the bottom in there) With this option set, what you observe would be expected behaviour.
Should be live now.
Also wanted to let you know, that my friend borrows me his huge music collection so i can sort out the proplems with local content. Way easier to optimise loading of the content in chunks when i have something to test against.
I already made some optimisations on how to draw the stuff on screen and can tell that it made huge difference, but the solution sadly is not future proof for the application yet.
Proplems is that i do not know ahead of time what kind of data should be shown on next screen, and all the decision’s have to be made runtime. When we add loading the content in pieces and not everything together, it really makes it a bit hard.
Obviously i could hardcode everything, but in my opinion that would be just short sighted, Everytime something changes in volumio end i would need to update all relevant stuff, which is why I try to dynamically adapt to all content to make the application easy to maintain and not break to some minor change in volumio side.
Or only load the active screen, like there are 8 albums per screen, and load the art when the screen is untouched for a sec. this improves the scrolling behavior, still you need to load the names though.
Resolved:
- Home => Qobuz => search “Rag’n” => swipe => App doesn’t crash anymore
Improvement needed:
- Home => Albums, still loading very slow 45seconds to load 12 albums. Scrolling runs smoother now but takes about 2 seconds to respond by jumping in the list.
This also means, you can’t go back as the app is waiting untill the first screen loaded. use background process, or Asynctasks?
If you open an Album from albumview and go back, you need to wait again for 45s
Bug:
- My Web Radio not loading
- Album art is loading now in the queue, but very inconsistent. Itloaded for Qobuz, but fails on media from my NAS.
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thanks for feedback again!
Glad to hear it works now! i hope i found the root cause, atleast what i fixed was stupid error by me which could have been avoided.(just needed to swap one code line with another, so that i set the list adapter properties before populating it, well should be good now)
This one confuses me alot, for me loading the Albums is pretty much instant. I’m 100% confident that the loading is done in backround thread, only switching to UI thread when all data is ready to be shown.
Im still trying to replicate the issue, something that came to my mind is that how big the art images you have are?(in megabytes) perhaps i have some optimisations to do in this are.
And currently im prefetching 20 album arts max when the view is first time shown, rest is loaded when it gets on the screen or is close to be shown.
“My web radio” is not showing any content?
I believe i need to set up Nas server to see whats wrong with that one, for me all the Windows pc DLNA shares or local content from usb drive’s does work as expected with album art, there is propably something i should handle different when loading from NAS box.
I have aprox. 2600 albums, cover art size varies from 33kB till 600kB.
My webradio isn’t loading anything, just get stuck in a grey screen. I do have to mention I use urls from juke.nl (they are long as it contains access tokens), they stream the favorite Dutch stations in Hi-Res.
I don’t use any local files, all media is on a QNAP NAS. tot. library size is 3.5 TB.