swipswaps/mpd-touch-screen-gui

A small MPD client that let's you view covers and has controls suitable for small touchscreens. It allows to browse the queue, search for songs and run as standalone application.

Usage

This the frontend GUI application for my DIY HiFi system and digital audio streaming solution (based on Raspberry Pi 2B and HifiBerry AMP+) showing on an IL9341 LCD including a touch screen (with 320x240 resolution). It allows controlling a running MPD instance.

As the display lacks any hardware acceleration and is run from the framebuffer, the draw operations are largely reduced. I.e. there is no periodic rendering. The screen is updated when necessary.

Configuration

On the first run the program will install the default configuration file (usually in $HOME/.config/mpd-touch-screen-gui/program.conf and client.conf for the client). See client.conf and program.conf for the default configurations. There is quite a bit you can change that changes behavior and appearance of the application.

If you don't intend to run it on the same machine, you should set the MPD environment variables (i.e. MPD_HOST).

Features

• Global button controls on the left side that are visible in every view. This allows basic playback controls and switching the view.
• Several views that will be extended in the future:
  • Cover view that displays a cover or a replacement with song information. Swiping gestures allow control over the playback (left, right and press) and volume (up and down).
    
  • A playlist view allows viewing and changing the song from the current playlist. Touch gestures allow scrolling throught the playlist vertically and horizontally. Longer swipes will scroll more.
    
  • In the search view an on-screen keyboard is presented that allows to search for songs case-insensitive. The results may be browsed and played in the same manner as with the playlist view.
    
  • A final view allows shutting down and rebooting the machine.
    
• A configurable UDP client allows basic UI controls (intended for use with an IR remote) in 6 directions (next and previous in x, y and natural order):

  > ./mpd-touch-screen-gui-send 
  Usage: ./mpd-touch-screen-gui-send CMD [SERVER [PORT]]
  CMD    - One of: l, r, u, d, n, p, a
  SERVER - Override config value for server.
  PORT   - Override config value for port.
  

  To use the UDP interface, it has to be activated in the program config. The protocol is very simple and consists just of the letters.

Requirements

• SDL2_ttf (font rendering)
• SDL2_image (cover image loading)
• sdl2 (rendering)
• libmpdclient (communication with MPD instance)
• icu (sometimes named icu-uc / icu / libicu - use lower-case conversion for case insensitive search)
• boost_filesystem
• boost_system
• boost_asio (UDP interface for remote navigation)
• libwtk-sdl2 (widgets)
• libconfig

Additional Build Requirements

These are only required on the host:

• C++17 compiler such as gcc
• pkg-config
• autoconf & automake & libtool

Installation

mpd-touch-screen-gui uses autotools as build system:

• autoreconf --install
• ./configure
• make
• make install

Contact

If you find my code useful please let me know. I'm also interested in your use case, any suggestions, improvements or criticism. Cheers!