hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2923.txt

Episode: 2923
Title: HPR2923: Describing how I listen to podcasts PART 5
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2923/hpr2923.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 13:21:09

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It's the 16th of October 2019 and this is HBR Episode 2923 entitled describing how I listened
Podcast Part 5. It's of course hosted by MrX and it's about 29 minutes long and carries an
explicit flag. The summary is, in this episode I cover how to use my second add-on board,
the pie face control and display and the show notes contains photos and details instructions
for your information. So sit back, relax and enjoy the show. This episode of HBR is brought to
you by an honesthost.com. Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HBR15
that's HBR15. Better web hosting that's honest and fair at an honesthost.com.
Hello and welcome hacker public video audience. My name is MrX and welcome to this podcast.
I'd like to start by thanking the people at HBR for making this service available to us all.
It's really invaluable service. They go to a great deal of effort to streamline the service
and make it as easy as possible to use. Just pick up a microphone record something and send it in.
You must have something interesting to say I'm sure. It's really quite easy. If I can do it
anyone can. Okay, this is Part 5 of my series about how I consume podcast, listen to podcasts,
something like that anyway. And last time I was talking about my second add-on board which is a
pie face. What is it called? Pie face command and display. I think it is. Something like that.
And this time I'm going to describe what I've actually done with the thing. How I use it,
how I use its capabilities and what not. It's hugely flexible and can be used for lots of purposes
really. You can turn it into an internet radio. You could control a code instance somewhere.
There are a whole host of things you could do with it. But I'll cover what I've done with it.
The description for the matter of fact just says that you can basically throw away your keyboard
mouse. I think that's a bit of a stretch to the imagination. You couldn't use it like a desktop
computer or something. But for simple controls it's absolutely ideal. Anyway, here we go with Part 5.
Okay, so I'll explain the operation of this project that I built out of a pie face control
and display add-on board. Raspberry Pi and enclosure. A few bits and pieces. So the enclosure turns to
sit. I may have mentioned I'm not sure, look at my notes when I'm going to pull this all together.
So I may have already mentioned a bit. It turns to sit on his back which means you can't see the
display. The idea was I could use this thing from all around the room. I might not necessarily be
very close to the thing to see it sort of thing. So I don't think it was very good that it was lying
on his back. So I got an anchor. An anchor stand for a tablet. I wasn't actually using it very
much and I found it fitted just perfectly. It holds the unit at 45 degree angles so I can change
the angle as well. Of course, it sits very securely and never falls off and also gives you access
to all the buttons and whatnot. So yeah, it works really well. And in essence, what happens is
this is like a remote control unit, remote header unit for a Raspberry Pi upstairs
which has the audio player mock music on the command line running all the time.
And by pushing a button that issues an SSH command to control mock on the other Pi which is upstairs
in the bedroom and allows me to play my podcast. It works really well. Very pleased with it. In fact,
a really good solution. I just plug it in. Forget about it really. I don't know if it's quite
unique. I don't know if you can do that with other operating systems. Can you could you issue
a command line command to another remote computer to remotely control something? In other words,
could you script things on other operating systems as a possible in Windows? I don't know.
Maybe somebody could tell me that. I've never done that in Windows. Didn't know it was possible.
Maybe it is. Recently I was at a friend's house and we had a push plush Apple Mac thing
laptop. And it had the SSH and I had done nothing about the Apple Mac so I don't know if you can
control it. You can issue an SSH command to an Apple Mac and remotely control things and run
things script it remotely. It's very, very hugely powerful. So maybe that's quite unique to the
Linux. I don't know. Anyway, so this project I'll describe how it works and what it does. I'm going
to just plug it in now. So, oh, good. Nearly just pushed off the table there.
There's a plug. Any second now. Get that out of the road. Come on. Get in.
Alright, I think that's it. So when you do that, you get a brief flash from I've got a
blink stick connected to the right hand side of the unit. The blink stick has got two RGB LEDs
are front facing one, the black, back facing one. You can mix the colours from the three LEDs
to approximate any colour you like. So that's quite useful. Behind that is a Wi-Fi
Dungle thing, which is quite a lot of latency on it, but this is not only a
tenement of data going back and forward. It really isn't an issue and I'm not an eraser
anything like that. Sometimes it's quite handy because it introduces delays, giving a chance to
see information on the screen before things happen. On the left hand side there's an SD card.
Now it's come up and it says system up. Now it says waiting for IP. Now it's flipped to a screen
that says only eight days for free HPR slot. And now the front facing LED on the blink stick
comes up blue. And that tells me that we're a wee bit short on shows. So get recording.
So if that number it scrapes out of the HPR site. And if that number is more than
it's ten or more, then the LED is green. If it's less than that, but more than I think it's seven,
then it's blue. And if it's seven or less, I think it goes red. So I basically switch on when
I come in from work or whatever. And 30 seconds, 45 seconds later, I glance over to it. And by
looking at the LED I can tell the HPR queue empty or adequate sort of thing. And gives my
idea if I need to post a sure or whatever. So that's what I use that for. And that only comes up
when you first switch the device on. That's a recent thing that I added to the project.
I've been adding bits to it for maybe a few years now. So I'll just, if I push the,
so there's five buttons along the bottom of the device. Four grouped together on a fifth one,
which is slightly further apart, making it be easier to differentiate it from the other four.
So the one on the end, if I push that one, the display will go to the main screen. And that,
you know, the message will disappear. And also the blank stick goes out.
So that's me basically cleared that message. And if I push that button now again,
what that button does now is it toggles the back light on the LCD screen. That's quick handy.
So yeah. So I'll describe the functions that these buttons do. So the main screen, first of all,
on the top left hand corner, it has got a number zero on it. And that signifies it within
menu zero. There's actually, there's three menus on a thing. Confusingly it starts at zero. So
from now on, I'll just talk about zero one and two. So menu zero is used when I'm controlling
playing podcasts, basically. And menu one is for playing audio books. And menu two is system.
And these are all added over time. You know, mock can can can play can queue up multiple
um multiple uh things. So I've got a podcast queue and a audio book queue. I can't remember the
actual command. It might be dash. Wow. I can't remember. So you basically pick a different um
different different uh directory. And uh you can set up another another queue um should have
looked at that. I'm just thinking. I put I'll probably describe it when I in more detail when I
made describing a mock itself or may have already done so depending on how I record this show.
But um so the next to the number zero is a number one. And next to that, right beside it is a
play control, a play symbol and a pause symbol. So basically if a push button when it plays and
either plays or pauses uh my podcast that's in the playlist. And it does that by issuing uh the
command uh mock uh dash capital G which is toggle. So that toggles between play and pause. And uh
I think from memory if you push the button it'll say uh audio book on the top line and it'll say
play slash pause. And it stays there for a second or so and then disappears. And when it disappears
what that means that the command's been sent uh accepted by the pie. Um you know it can take a
second or so. Well luckily a lucky lucky fluke that the Wi-Fi uh adapter is a bit as I got a
bit late in saying it. Sometimes it can set for two three four five seconds um well it's doing its
generally it takes a second or so um but I'm in no hurry so it doesn't matter at all.
So that's uh that's button one. Button two uh it says um um button two says info next to it.
And that that gathers information uh of the current track you're playing and it uses a dash i
command so mock space dash i. And uh again that was built up over time. It didn't do all this
initially. And in fact I think my first command ever built on the thing was just to play and
pause you know toggle play and pause. And uh so it's been a gradual build up of um options and
things. So a push button two I'll I might need to speak kind of quick because it happens kind of
quick so let's just see push button two. Oh so it says menu zero uh button two uh podcast
that's in the top line. And then on the bottom line it says uh information. And then so that
stays there for a second. So depending on how long the Wi-Fi card takes to send that information
at that command I should say. And then it says um uh six of 18 tracks 34 55 seconds um when it
also tells you that the mock is either in the play mode or on pause mode the top left hand
symbol tells you is it as a track currently playing or pausing. And it also finally tells you
that there's 31 fort 31 minutes and 48 seconds left to play. And finally it says late night
Linux um season 13 episode 15. And then jump back to the main screen again. Uh so yes so there's
there's three bits displayed on the screen. First of all the first bit telling you that it's the
command it's issued. The second bit tells you about the running time and whatnot. And finally the
third command tells you the track information. So that that means really quite useful. So I know
oh I'm getting quite near the end of my playlist. I better add some more tracks um you know so uh
it could take me weeks to a week or so to get through uh that many uh podcast and of course you
can keep loads of um um tracks obviously. So that's button two. Button three has got um uh rewind
symbol right now and I had to draw some of these actually. Uh and button three it just says uh
podcast uh next and then it it to podcast and previous it says and it jumps to the previous track
and likewise button four uh it says podcast next track. Now I added a wee extra thing to the
previous and next tracks because I found it I'm gonna be miscounted the buttons sometimes
I was trying to push info for example which is the second button and I pushed the third one
button by mistake and then I would uh go back a track or heck. So what I did is for the previous
and next track buttons because I don't use them very often I introduced a double tap facility
so that you need to tap it twice within a certain amount of time for it to activate if I only
push it once nothing happens so that stopped me falsely going back and forward of track when I
didn't want to and finally that the fifth um the fifth button turns toggles the backlight on the
LCD which I mentioned and uh previously and the the menu one is exactly the same uh as menu zero
except it does it for my uh my audio books the same thing for the audio books um if I'm in either
menu zero or menu one which is for audio books or podcasts if I push there's a there's a there's
um a toggle switch on the top of the unit and you can toggle it either to the left to the right
or you can push it down so if you push it down um I've got another menu come up says uh zero
so tell them in menu zero which is audio books it says seek and below the seek is a message exit
uh with a minus and a plus either side now if I push the button and again it would just exit back out
but if I push it uh uh uh to the left it it says uh minus one minute uh push it again minus two minus
five ten twenty forty and finally it turns back to exit and likewise pushing it the other way
does does you know goes plus so many minutes so that allows me to seek forward or back in
in the current track i'm just going to come out with that exit um and we've got a a menu two which
is obviously third menu confusingly it says two system and then it comes to the screen for system
and at the top left hand corner it says two to to show you that you're in the system menu
and for button one it says sys information button two says wifi button three says hpr
and button five is light so if i push button one sys info now i think that might be a commander
a pockled pockled stole of the intertubes um so it runs a separate command but it gives you
information about the pies doing so push button one it says one system information waiting for
ip guess minute one eight two one six eight one dot ten uh thirty nine point zero degrees and
oh i'll just do that again because i missed it system info it says ip twenty six point one uh
twenty six point one percent not sure what that means um so the wifi signal not quite sure um
button two uh gives me information about the wifi so i push button two one two
it says system wifi info gives me the sys id 95% signal strength and ip address
quite handy uh button three which i won't push does the same thing as um when you first turn
a pie on it it goes to the hpr site and and and scrapes off how many shows are left in the queue um
so that's that one finally five turns light off and on now uh there is another
option if you're an assistant menu and it isn't mentioned on the menu which is a bit confusing um
if you push the uh toggle button down and you're an assistant menu it turns a pie off um i get
i missus something like shut down and it gives you the date and time and what not uh and then i
think uh the blank stick comes on with a blue light toward you that it's shutting down and uh
there's some uh we holds at the top of the case so you can look through them and and you can see
what the early days and the pie are doing um so you can see it flashing away it's shut
shut down and stop and you know i generally get another um five or ten seconds after that
just to be absolutely sure before i unplug the thing um um now they uh another facility that
added um can add a later date um was uh the um the the um the pie face control and display board
is equipped with an infrared sensor an IR sensor and um i was able to uh program it to work with
a remote control i initially tried to program it to work with a spare remote controller had lying
about the place and i wasn't terribly successful with that and i found uh an information uh a
lock i think you got a lock file the next infrared control something like that uh i found a
lock file for uh i think it was a Samsung remote control and that's in fact the remote control i
have for my television and it wasn't exactly the same remote control but oh but three quarters
of the buttons were the same and um so what i did was um because the problem is if i was going to
use the tv to remote control then because this thing is on all the time if i was playing with the
tv it might upset the uh the uh this box and go off and start playing podcast and whatnot and i
would lose track of where i was and everything so that was an issue so what i did was i um i set it
up so that if i pushed the blue button uh then it activates the infrared remote control
but that and itself wasn't enough either because i found it inadvertently sometimes activated it
by pushing the blue button so what i then did is it introduced a double tap again just like the
previous and next buttons it got great flexibility with the um the um libraries and stuff that come
with a pie face uh controller display board and so by double tapping the blue button it says
uh i think you get it flashes three times the backlight of the um LCD it says IR on
i did and then i think if you push it double tap it again then it says IR it flashes once and
says IR off i did that so that i could know at a distance whether it was activating or deactivating
the infrared but of course after i coded that i then got myself a blank stick and i decided
i could use that to determine whether the infrared is on or off so basically now when i double tap
the blue button uh and as well as the LCD flashing three times which is probably overkill and not
necessary now the um the blank stick comes on with a red light uh front facing LED comes on red
so i'd glance you can tell you all right there if i make the remote controls live better watch
what i'm doing um and on top of that when it is live i still then found that i occasionally
forgotten and um sad to things going up and i didn't mean to particularly when i was playing
with uh with kodi and uh so what i did was i made all the other buttons uh other than the light
light button um double tap as well from the remote control uh so if i push the play button twice
then it basically does it basically activates that button one which just toggles between playing
pause for example and i used a stop button to toggle between the backlight but because that
doesn't matter uh like that's doing uh i didn't bother introducing a double tap on that one
so um and the thing is that the the sensor for this thing is deep inside the unit and i thought
oh this is never going to work you know you need to be right next to it or whatever but i found
that it was uh very sensitive and worked all around that the the room to the far far corners
the um blank sticks got two LEDs a front facing one and a back facing one
uh the back facing one i used that when uh when i sent messages to the pack to the uh to the
box uh what happens is i got a bright purple i'll bring on a bright purple LED to show that um
the um uh that there's a message coming basically so it means i can see this bright purple um
um it's bright purple um halo behind it and that does my attention to the fact that there's a message
sitting on the um pie to look at and i use uh send messages such as you know this backups complete
or this downloads complete or i'm a secondary miss you like to it basically uh generally um time
stamp it so i can see oh i like that half an hour ago or something um it's quite handy
find it really the the unit immensely useful um and because it works on wifi i can take it anywhere
like plug it in and and and and control this remotely control us it's pie elsewhere in the in the
house um so in fact i've got the the unit sitting on the disk next to me just now to to explain it
to you basically um i'm trying to think if there was anything else don't think there was
can't think i think nope don't think so hope you're having this too boring i'll just
so i'm going to turn it off now so if i push it's on the system menu and if i push the toggle button
down it'll say shut down 18o to 1053 and 51 seconds and the blue light comes on and if i look
over the top of the three holes in the case the tiny b holes i can now see the green light on the
uh pie board flashing 1 2 3 4 and then it stops so now the pie is probably safe to turn off
um so i'll just oh just unplug that now yeah but that's it off yeah so um this is a final solution
for uh controlling uh mock music on the command line i do still sometimes use uh my triply pc
occasionally um and again occasionally with my laptop or other pc but 90 percent the time it's
it's the uh it's this um control box thing that i use and um hopefully that's in spadgie to my
uh do something similar to yourself uh to get a bit of spare time um these days i haven't got
as much time but um i still manage to do a bit of programming occasionally on on the box
the most recent thing i did was the uh the seek command uh so i do get a time a time from time
time to to think about other things it's it's hugely flexible and there's a lot of things you can do
um you're only limited by your imagination um oh one one other final thing the the toggle buttons
on the top uh i discovered the menus were jumping from time to time and i i couldn't
quick work out what was happening and then it occurred to me that well maybe it switched bounds
because they're pretty naff uh toggle buttons uh on this thing uh i mean they work but they feel a
little bit rough um so i introduced i used a double tap thing so that if it gets more than
uh two taps within a set amount of time then it doesn't it doesn't um it would fix the first one
and ignores the the the remaining ones and um because i tied all sorts of putting adding in delays
and various things and i couldn't work on what was going on um and and that's what it turned out
to be just just a uh switch uh switch noise and i was you know you would flick it to the left and
and rather it receiving one command to go to the left it was maybe getting two or three or something
doth like that so that solved that problem and that was a bit of a faff sort of working
what was going on there but yeah now the the devices it's like a it's like a bot uh it's almost
like a one is um off the shelf bot devices you know you buy plug it in and forget about it it's uh
almost don't think of it as a a raspberry pie anymore um so yeah great fun great fun so
hope you enjoyed that anyway i think that's probably all i've got to see on now on the project
okay that's a bit for this uh episode uh hope you didn't find it too boring and uh
next time uh i may and i say may i've not quite decided yet
i may do a walk through some bits of the code uh that go along with this project uh just just
briefly obviously because uh well these things tend to take longer than you expect but
i'll try and give it a brief because i know uh um talking about code um high levels
fair enough but trying to go into the nitty gritty's as uh it's campaignful in the years you know
the syntax and whatnot so i might do that i'll see and um and finally if you've
got some interesting hobby or past or something you want to share with us why don't you do that
to i'm sure you would really find it interesting uh just go for your bombs and give us a show
and lastly if you want to contact me i can be contacted at mrx at hpr at googlemail.com
that's mrx at hpr the at symbol googlemail.com so until next time thank you and goodbye
listen listen listen listen listen listen to me listen to me listen to me listen to me listen
listen listen carefully listen carefully what i'm about to say is what i'm about to say is what
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