Playing Music Over a Network Connection Using Music Manager (Amarok)
With very limited storage space, most people will want to use the music player that comes as standard with the Xandros build to play music via a network connection, rather than having a bulky external drive. This isn't as easy as it could be, but easy enough if you follow these steps.
Assumptions
You are using a wifi or wired network connection to your home network.
Your music is stored on a windows PC and you have already shared the music folder.
You know how to configure a firewall and router.
Required Additional Software
Note: multiple attempts to get the media player to add music to the collection via a mounted share have always failed. It plays the files fine, but the collection (easiest way to manage your playlists) never populates. Also, if you have a large collection, it'll take the media player ages to populate each time you open it. This method is far lighter on the player, and has the added bonus of being able to work over the internet as well as your LAN.
Setting Up Your Windows Machine
Download and install Bonjour for Windows on to your Windows machine.
Go to the FireFly site and navigate to the nightlies download section (download / nightly releases ) and pick the currently “most stable” version. As yet the windows release has not made it out of beta, but its working fine so far.
Install FireFly on the machine that holds your music collection.
Run FireFly, and an icon should appear in the task bar. Right click and amend the properties. Most should be self explanatory, but ensure you set the port / note its number and change the path to your music directory if necessary.
If you use a firewall, make sure FireFly is allowed through it.
If you use a router, ensure you forward the port that was in the FireFly config (TCP/UDP) to the internal IP of your windows machine.
Setting Up the Music Manager
Launch the Music Manager.
From the vertical navigation bar on the left, choose “Media Device” (bottom of the list).
Click the ”+” icon to add a new location.
For
LAN play - enter the INTERNAL IP of the machine running FireFly (eg. 192.168.0.6)
For INTERNET play - enter your IP as determined by your
ISP, or use a forwarding service like no-ip.com and use a
URL instead (eg. 81.554.21.45 or media.no-ip.org)
Click on the machine ID that appears below, and the list should expand to show your collection sorted by artist.
Pick what you want to play and enjoy!
- by Hepatic