This is Pipod version 3-b, a python program which turns a raspberry pi with an AstroPi sense hat into a music player.

This software is mostly a mental recollection duplicate of the original pipod software due to the original's destruction in an accidental system erasing. Version number includes destroyed version.

MANUAL:

Introduction:

Pipod is designed to work with the AstroPi sense hat so the software can be run without a mouse or keyboard. A different control system is possible provided a loop is made which moves to the next file based on the USEREVENT in pygame.event by calling next_file(). Note that the current loop also handles the difference between seeking and changing files. Separately, also note that some formats cannot be seeked by the current version of the pygame mixer and are thus ignored based on the REJECTED_FORMATS setting. The two known current ones are WAV and MIDI.

Setup:

Change the absolute variables under "settings" to match preferences (be careful with the REJECTED_FORMATS setting: removing formats from it that cannot be seeked by the pygame mixer will cause Pipod to crash if a seek is attempted on them. However, adding formats which can be seeked will not cause a crash; they will just be ignored). Place all desired music in the folder specified by the PATH variable. The nature of music loading allows file-folder hiearchy and plays files in order: For two folders A and B, Pipod will play all files in A before files in B. Create a desktop configuration file which loads the script in python (This is Pipod B, which is configured to function with only native modules, but thus only works with python 2 currently). The desktop file can then be placed in /home/pi/.config/autostart to load Pipod at boot. Connect the sense hat before boot.

Operation:

Pipod will start playing automatically on run. The sense hat joystick serves as the controller with the same orientation as the Apple iPod; up and down for volume, left and right for changing files, left and right hold for seeking, and center for pause/play.

If Pipod is seeked back to the beginning of a song, it will not move to the one before it. It will, however, move to the next song if it is seeked to the end of the current one. Pipod treats the list of files like a ring. When it reaches the end, it will loop around to the first one. Pipod has no in-operation shuffle function (There is a variable SHUFFLE which, if set to True, will shuffle the music).

If the setting SPEAK is enabled and espeak is installed, Pipod will read the name of the current song when paused. Altering espeak settings is not recommended unless you know what you are doing. You may find information from help("espeak.espeak") to be useful. The espeak settings are just before the Pipod object.

Troubleshooting:

-Pipod depends on the system "find" command plus the modules pygame, random, time, commands, and (only if SPEAK is enabled) the python espeak API (all but espeak are native on Raspbian).

-If you have other programs with GUI's which load at boot, they may interfere with Pipod's joystick event reciever window.

-The SPEAK setting will only work if the python espeak API is installed.

-older versions of pygame, and even modern versions with certain music types, may not be able to seek. This is known to be the case with pygame 1.9.1 playing MIDI or WAV files, so these files (really, any files in the REJECTED_FORMATS setting) will be ignored.