PSP wireless remote control for playing PC-based MP3s

[richyho]

I'm not sure if this has been done before (and my apologies if it has), but I've been having a bit of a 'techie moment', and have come up with a way of viewing, selecting and playing all the artists, albums (inc. album art) and songs in my PC-based iTunes MP3 collection.... using my version 2.0 PSP. I can select and play any tune wirelessly. So, I'm like out in the garden during a party and I can turn on my PSP, see what track's playing in the house, select another track, set up a playlist etc etc.

If this hasn't been done then I'll expand on how it works etc. - and maybe continue developing it to a point where I can make it available for download.

Cheers

RichyHo
(http://www.richyho.btinternet.co.uk)

[wraggster]

hi im sure we would like to know more

[therod]

Off topic, but love that rednering pixel art of your's Rich.

[pspfan]

Sounds pretty cool. I, for one, would be interesting in checking it out some more and possibly even downloading it.

[richyho]

Thanks 'therod'... glad you like the artwork. Planning on putting up some 480x272's some time soon, well, as soon as I finish developing the......

"How to control sweet 'peethree music on your PC using your PSP" thing:

OK. Here's how it works: There's three parts to this:

1) A web server (your PC)
2) A web client (your PSP)
3) Another program (more details to follow)

1) The web server.
This needs to be 'Active Server Pages' (ASP)-friendly, so that kinda limits it to Microsoft's IIS or PWS. A fixed private IP is helpful too. Needs wireless connectivity (duh!).

2) The web client
Hey, how about a 2.0 PSP? (note for all you lucky 1.0 to 1.52's: untested using the wipeout browser hack).

3) Another program
Here's the 'clever' bit. When this program is run, it scans your iTunes folder (or other music folder that follows the ARTIST-ALBUM-SONG hierarchy convention) and sets up an Access database (.mdb) from this info. This database holds info on all songs, artists and albums. Also (crucially) this database also has fields to say if a song should be played, whether it is playing, what position in the song it's at etc. etc.

Now, this program just sits there, watching the database for changes.

As we all know (?), ASP interfaces really nicely with Access MDB's. So you log in to the web server on your PSP. It presents you with a list of letters that refer to the artists' initials. You click an initial (say, 'L'). This takes you to a page that interrogates the database and pulls back all artists beginning with 'L'.

Now you click one (eg. 'Ladytron') and then the next page shows a list of all albums by Ladytron. You click an album (eg. 'Ladytron sound really good and if you haven't heard of them perhaps you should have a bit-of-a listen') and the next page pulls back all the songs on the album. You click a song and that song's entry in the database is updated to say 'play me now'.

Meanwhile, our 'other program' has been watching all this database activity and it notices the 'play me now' flag against the song you just clicked. Guess what it does? Well, it plays that MP3 using it's built-in MP3 player. You hear the song you've just selected and the PSP goes over to a 'Now Playing' screen complete with albumart.

Hope you're still awake after that!!! Anyway, it works (no BS here!). It needs more functionality adding (stop, pause, next etc etc.) but that has already been developed on paper so it's just a few coding days away from completion.

It's not worth me posting the app yet as everything is hard coded into it (itunes folder location etc. etc.). I need to make it a bit more user friendly.

Note that this, when supplied, will not be a simple setup.exe. There'll be other prerequisites such as configuring the web server, file permissions etc to go through.

The beauty of this system is that it is so customizable as it uses HTML. I could even make it 'skinnable'.

Comments would be appreciated.

RichyHo

[AJB2K3]

Creative have something like this but, please do have a go at a psp one. As we have psp's it would be cheper then investing in creatives work

[l_drum]

Ace! This sounds most excellent! I'm eagerly awaiting this now.

Oh, don't suppose anyone knows if there are any plans in the pipeline to support .wma?

Such a n00b question. I apologise.

[richyho]

Oh, don't suppose anyone knows if there are any plans in the pipeline to support .wma?

Yes - both WMA and MP3 are supported.

[l_drum]

Awesome stuff!

Have you got an est. release date?

[richyho]

Awesome stuff!

Have you got an est. release date?

Not yet. I'm currently concentrating on passing my Driving Theory Test (exam tomorrow) and this is taking priority over PSP development . I'll update this thread as progress is made with the app. I'll be looking for a few beta testers before I release. Please mail me if you'd be interested in helping test/report bugs/provide feedback (email address available on the 'contact' page of my website : Dimension Shift : Not posting my email address here for spam reasons rather than trying to get hits on my site ).

I would like to have a 0.1 available to beta testers by the coming weekend.

Cheers

RichyHo