Dr Lovegrove's Squeezebox Utilities

Moose

Moose is a native Windows frontend for controlling and providing information about units connected to Logitech's SqueezeCenter.

 

Moose started out as a fast music searching and selection tool for SlimDevices' SlimServer.

Over the course of development many features have been added, including an animated cover chooser, drag n drop playlist management, now playing toast, automatic coverart lookup, radio selection, favourites management, popcorn, MusicIP integration, etc

Moose uses CLI commands to talk to the server, so it should work whatever platform your server runs on and doesn't need to be on the same PC as the server.

 


Basic Instructions

  • Download Moose067.zip and unzip Moose.exe into a folder and double-click it.

  • If it complains about things, check you have the Microsoft .NET Version 2.0 Framework installed and try again. You can get this via Windows Update, or directly here.

  • If you just want to use Moose as a basic 'Now Playing' and remote utility, you can use it as it is. You'll need to point it at SlimServer or Squeezecentre, and tell it which player to monitor. More details here...

  • To use Moose's speedy music library features, you'll need to get Moose to scan SqueezeCenter's database. Full details of this and further setting up of Moose here...

  • Sit back and enjoy your music.


Releases

  • 0.67 - 26th June 2008
    • MusicIP - 'Create MusicIP Playlist' item added to contextmenus (server 7.1+)
    • MusicIP - Dialog showing musicip playlist added with options to play and re-create the playlist (server 7.1+)
    • Cover Chooser - album's songs added to the context menus allowing play, insert or add of individual songs
    • Library - track number sorting now supports >100 tracks correctly
    • Library - internal structure altered and auto-rescan code tweaked
    • Library - contents now updated post rescan

  • 0.66 - 20th May 2008
    • Options - 'Save Scheme' button which saves the current colour, font and general visible stuff to an XML file
    • Options - Added 'automatically rescan without asking' option to scanner tab - if moose sees the server complete a scan, it'll rescan its moo file automatically - without this checked it would ask
    • Options - Added coverart 'draw style' option to Now Playing tab - currently lets you swap between normal and reflected.
    • Now Playing - Fixed some UTF8 TBS character issues
    • Cover Chooser - Fixed selection of larger covers and double-draw of selected cover
    • Tree - Changed 'Radios' to 'Online Radio / Music Services'
    • Tree - Supports more radio types and music services. Also has more icons. (slacker, pandora, rhapsodydirect, live365, mp3tunes, etc)
    • Tree - Better reporting of network errors

  • 0.65 - 15th May 2008
    • Library - Genre dropdown with alphabetical and genre filtering menus
    • Library - Removed 'filter:' label and added text to edit control
    • Library - Multi-threaded moo loading code, so window opens straight away
    • Library - Amazon grabbed bitmaps should be displayed in the list after the album is played
    • Options - Much fuller control of the now playing text and colours (see text tab)
    • Options - Quicker to open now
    • Moose - supports added for more connected players
    • Moose - minimises correctly with +M key
    • Moose - responds to server scanning finished message and offers to rescan the moo file
    • Amazon - When grabbing covers from amazon, it now save the full-sized grabbed cover in the thumbs directory with 'amazon' at the start of the filename
    • Now Playing - Fixed the font jaggy issues
    • Now Playing - Album art now drawn with 2001-style monolith reflection
    • Now Playing - Playlist column auto-resize tweaked a bit to stop the horizontal scrollbar appearing
    • Now Playing - Playlist column auto-resize button now same style as bottom buttons
    • Toast - Tweaked window code to sort border rendering out
    • About - Moose with outline control

  • 0.64d - 31st January 2008
    • LastFM - Added to list of supported radio stations - not sure if it works though
    • Live365 - Added to list of supported radio stations - not sure if it works though
    • Library - Added more logging to album searching code.
    • Security - Moose now has an embedded 'strong name', so it can be run more securely from network shares, etc.
    • Links - In SC7, the CLI tech doc link now forces the classic skin since jumping straight to it with the default skin means no scrollbar

  • 0.64 - 21st January 2008
    • Squeezeslave - Now just launches a process - no command windows, etc
    • Squeezeslave - Menu now toggles between 'start squeezeslave' and 'stop squeezeslave'. If it says 'stop squeezeslave' it means it thinks it's running.
    • Cover Chooser - optmised the redraw of the non-moving layout mode. Previously only the moving layout mode had been sorted out.
    • Cover Chooser - single-clicking a cover twice will now bring the pop-up menu. Handy for touchscreens.
    • Library Tree - new 'Context menu' button which allows the tree to function without the need for a right-click. To use, select the item in the tree, click the button, click the menu.
    • Library Tree - added touchscreen sizing to the tree, menu button and context menu.
    • Now Playing - right clicking the 'minimise to tray' icon will now exit moose. Left-clicking minimises to tray, as before.

  • 0.63 - 11th January 2008
    • Squeezeslave - Fuller support for squeezeslave. Moose now correctly passes the server IP to squeezeslave as well as providing a settings field to add extra command line parameters.
    • Squeezeslave - New /squeezeslave command line parameter which make moose launch squeezeslave on startup in a minimised dos-box, and closes squeezeslave down when moose exits.
    • Moose - Running a 2nd instance of Moose will now correctly top the 1st instance before quitting the 2nd instance.
    • Coverchooser - Much less load on CPU, yet greater percieved response for user. Also tweaked the way covers are loaded.
    • Coverchooser - Enabled multi-threaded moo file loading code with progress in status bar. NB: This will only be used when opening the library with the coverchooser set as the one to show. The old library still loads the moo file in a non-multi-threaded manner.
    • Coverchooser - Fixed minimise/restore/no covers issue.
    • MySQL - now writes '0.0.0.0' for unbinding rather than '' - this fix was first added to 0.62a.

  • Older release history...





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Comments, hello's and suggestions welcome: drlovegrove@gmail.com

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