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1. ABOUT ########

This plugin enables the Gnome Rhythmbox music player (http://projects.gnome.org/rhythmbox) to output information of the currently playing track to any type of display supported by the LCDproc driver (http://lcdproc.org). It is based on the "Rhythmbox LCDproc plugin" (http://locoudev.0fees.net) by Loic Andrieu, and I extended it to -- among other things -- make it better handle radio streams, be more robust to disconnections from the LCDproc service and be compatible with the new Rhythmbox API (as of version 0.13.3).

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2. FEATURES ###########

   • Displays Title, Artist, Album, current and total time and the track number of the currently playing track, if set.
   • Works for tracks from the local music database as well as for last.fm and regular radio streams. Others have not been tested.
   • Scrolls text that exceeds the display width in two selectable modes: Bouncing or scroll-through.

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3. REQUIREMENTS ###############

   • Rhythmbox >=0.13.3 (http://projects.gnome.org/rhythmbox) For pre-0.13.3 Rhythmboxes, try the version in the folder "lcdproc-plugin-pre-0.13.3"
   • LCDproc (http://lcdproc.org, Arch Linux: lcdproc from AUR http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=8344)
   • Python OOP Wrapper Library for LCDproc Telnet API version 0.02 (http://github.com/jingleman/lcdproc)

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4. INSTALLATION ###############

Make sure the software under 2. is installed.

Check out the git repository:

$ git clone git@github.com:mikerofone/lcdproc-rhythmbox.git

Either copy the lcdproc-rhythmbox folder to your Rhythmbox plugins folder:

$ cd lcdproc-rhythmbox $ cp -R lcdproc-plugin ~/.local/share/rhythmbox/plugins/

or symlink it directly to the folder in your local git clone: $ cd lcdproc-rhythmbox/lcdproc-plugin $ ln -s pwd ~/.local/share/rhythmbox/plugins/lcdproc-plugin

Start Rhythmbox, goto Edit->Plugins and tick/activate "LCDproc plugin". Your display should now display the information on the current track or a notice that it is not playing currently.

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5. CONFIGURATION ################

Currently, there is not too much to configure, and the things that can/need to be configured must be set in the source-code (lcdprog-plugin/lcdproc-plugin.py). The most important parameter is the width of your display (in characters per row), which defaults to 20. You can also decide between two scrolling modes (bounce or scroll-through) for text that exceeds the screen width, and the separation string used in scroll-through scrolling mode. These are set with a gconf-property, but the configuration dialogue is broken and must be fixed.

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6. TROUBLESHOOTING ##################

If your display does not change at all, make sure that LCDproc is really running.

Launching Rhythmbox from the command line with the switch -D lcdproc-plugin enabled debug output for the plugin. It will print some status messages and also stack traces in case something should blow.

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7. CONTACT ##########

Bugreports, feature requests and any other kind of feedback are best reported via the GitHub system. In case you want to drop me an email, write to mike_rofone@imail.de.

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8. COPYLEFT ###########

Copyright (c) 2011 Nikolai Knopp

This plugin is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/. (See COPYING for the licence).