I’ve somehow managed to sell a number of copies of the Erbosoft Distributed Music Changer, Mk.I, and, of course, I’ve been using it at the Gin Rummy and the Evans Family Compound for awhile now. However, I’m brainstorming ideas now which should eventually lead to an updated version, if I can find the time to put them into actual code. Here’s some of the things I’m thinking of:
- I really need to use the new
llRegionSay()API with the thing, to eliminate the 100-meter limitation and let you use terminals anywhere on the same region as the master component. However, there’ll have to be some way to allow messages to “straddle” region boundaries, too, sollShout()will have to stay in some form. - Multipage dialogs! I’m sure people might have more than 12 stations they want to use with their music changer…particularly clubs that have a lot of DJs. The terminal code will need to handle the presentation of multiple “pages.”
- Some way of “interlinking” two Master Components, so they share station lists and commands. This is how I might handle the region boundary issue on messages, too, by making the interlink protocol use
llShout()rather thanllRegionSay(). - Dynamic configuration of the system channel. We need to have some form of “discovery” so that Master Components can pick the channel on which they will communicate with terminals and slave tuners, and give terminals a way of “rendezvousing” with the Master Component dynamically. (How do we identify which “system” a terminal should consider itself part of? Based on what? Object ownership? Group membership? And Slave Tuner Components present their own unique problems.)
- Some sort of dialog-based configuration override on the Master Component side, to allow configurations to be changed on the fly.
- A list-based access control system.
- And lastly, and most complicated…Figure out how to extract the current song information (artist & title) from the MP3 stream! I’ve been tearing my hair out looking for information online that would tell me how this is done…hopefully I won’t have to grovel over the source of, say, xmms to figure out how.
Of course, if the RIAA gets their way, there may not be many Internet music sources left to use with a music-changer device. Which would suck for us in ways that go far beyond a simple L$500 box.
