ANNOUNCEMENT: Remotedy - Android client for Mopidy

[Some of you have already started to use Remotedy, but here is the official announcement ;)]

Remotedy is an Android app for Mopidy

Requires Mopidy v1.0 or later
Requires Mopidy HTTP configuration

Remotedy on Google Play
remotedy.com

The design is targeted to be clean and responsive, while still functional for the user.

Remotedy currently supports following features:

  • Mopidy backend extensions: spotify, soundcloud, local
  • Play, pause, previous, next
  • Seek
  • Volume, mute
  • Now playing
  • Search (results are shown in categories: artists, tracks, and albums and are browsable)
  • Cover art in Now Playing, Playlist, Track list, Play queue and Search
  • Your playlists
  • Play queue (select a playlist; its tracks are added to the play queue automatically)
  • Automatic updates from the player (current track, playback state, seek, volume, mute)
  • Multiple devices (simultaneous control same music server from different devices)
  • Multiple music servers (install music servers on multiple computers, switch between them in Remotedy)
  • Dynamic app background (based on cover for current track)

Planned features for future releases:

  • Browse (for instance Spotify’s curated playlists such as mood, top lists etc)
  • Lock screen widget
  • Edit tracks in play queue
  • Radio

Note: Remotedy is not an MPD client, it only works towards Mopidy. Remotedy uses the HTTP JSON-RPC API of Mopidy. Make sure to enable HTTP in the Mopidy configuration.
To configure Mopidy HTTP, add HTTP section in mopidy.conf with hostname :: according to: http://docs.mopidy.com/en/latest/ext/http/#configuration

The app will always be free (donate-ware).
All development is performed during my spare time.

Feedback is always appreciated!

Coverarts, music, and song titles shown in the screenshots and video are licensed under Creative Commons’ Attribution:

Love the look of this app. Access to my many Spotify playlists is excellent (I am using Facebook/device access). And I can use Remotedy as my Spotify search engine to get any album, which is fabulous!

But I cannot get Remotedy to see my FLACs stored locally. Startup of Mopidy shows them found, and another MPD client plays them fine (but is shite with Spotify).

Happy to continue this conversation on your support forum, where is it?

Thanks for the feedback! Nice look and great Spotify experience are two of the main drivers for Remotedy.

Browse is not yet supported in Remotedy (as of v1.0.15). Only Playlists.
Local files does not appear in Playlists unless there is a .m3u file on the Mopidy server which describe your local files as one or multiple playlists. See https://docs.mopidy.com/en/latest/ext/local/#confval-local/playlists_dir (I haven’t used it myself, but it should work).
However, local files are also accessible through Search (use artist or track name).

Support forum does not yet exists for Remotedy, as for now you can reply on this thread or send me an email.

Hi there, loving the app, feels and looks awesome.
It took me a while to pair it with my Pi even though everything was working correctly, and after using it for some minutes it lost connection and couldn’t sync again. After I restarted the Pi everything went back to normal. I know it’s in development so crashes like these are expectable, is there any way for me to get a log of this to send it to you? I’ll try to replicate it later anyhow, maybe it was related to something I did with my phone or the Pi lost connection for a second.
Keep up the great work :slight_smile:

Anders, something isn’t quite right here. Every other MPD client I have tried can pick up my local files as they are, including clients that use the http rather than mpd interface. All my FLACs are in subfolders by album (as torrented), under a common folder that I give to Mopidy for scanning (mopidy local scan). Internally, it would have to correspond to MPD protocol for access. I should not have to manually index all my flacs into an m3u file, nor use the m3u interface.

Achus, thanks for the feedback!

If a connection to the server is lost, for instance the server is shutdown or WiFi is out-of-range or disabled, if Remotedy is in foreground the user is notified. When the connection is back, Remotedy should re-connect automatically.
Since you mention that everything went back to normal when the Pi was restarted:
If your connection loss happens again, before you restart the Pi, try to connect to the server with another HTTP or MPD client to see if the issue is server related or app related.

If the connection loss has not been notified to the user, and if the UI content is not updated (no content shown in the ViewPager) when Remotedy is re-started, you could have reproduced a bug which occasionally could happen when the Android OS destroyed the activity but not the fragments, and fragments was unable to update their UI views. But this issue would unlikely have been resolved by restarting the Pi.
And a fix for this issue was included in Remotedy v1.0.15.

Ron, I am unable to reproduce what you are saying with either MPDroid (MPD) and Mopidy-Mobile (HTTP):
a) Local files are not visible in Playlists (unless m3u files exists) in either MPDroid or Mopidy-Mobile (and that’s why it is called “Playlists”)
b) Local files can be accessed by using the Browse functionality (for instance in Mopidy-Mobile by Library->Local media or in MPDroid by Files->Local media).

As I told you, Browse is not yet implemented in Remotedy (it’s planned to be implemented).
This is not a bug, it’s a deliberate missing feature because it’s not ready yet. :wink:
Until the Browse feature is available, use Search to find and access local files.

Ok, sorry, I misunderstood what you are telling me. I had not seen MPD
listings from the Mopidy json/sqlite backend written as "browse"
functionality before. The m3u thing is a red herring, as Mopidy local
scan hoovers up local files without m3u files. I will get a beer out of
the fridge and excercise some patience. I am certain your app will be
the chosen one soon :wink:

Hi Anders, I just got your app working against my Mopidy server and it’s working great with Spotify. I like the design, very clean and fast. Thanks!

One question: It does not appear to work with the Google Music plugin (mopidy-gmusic backend). I can see all of my playlists and songs within those playlists, but none of them will play and the cover art never loads. They play fine using the webclient so I know the backend works. Any thoughts? Could this feature be added at some point?

Thanks!
Aaron

Aaron, thanks for the feedback!

The mopidy-gmusic extension is not listed under Remotedy’s supported backends.
The latest release of mopidy-gmusic is more than 1,5 year old, and uses an unofficial Google Music API.
The mopidy-gmusic extension has not been upgraded to Mopidy v1.0 APIs, which Remotedy requires since v1.0.8.
At this time there are no plans to make additional support for the mopidy-gmusic extension in Remotedy.

Hi,

Thanks for this project!

Sadly, I cannot get the app to connect to my server.

Mopidy 1.1.0

[http]
hostname = ::
zeroconf = Mopidy HTTP server on $hostname

The server is detected by Remotedy, but the connection fails with

Could not connect to player Mopidy HTTP server on [my hostname] at [my ip]:6680
The player is not reachable.
Check connection settings or select another player.

I have port 6680 open via firewall rules on the server.

Is there any way to see what actually happened?

Hi Andy,
make sure the [http] configuration contains port in addition to hostname. So the following is required in mopidy.conf:

[http]
enabled = true
hostname = ::
port = 6680
zeroconf = Mopidy HTTP server on $hostname

You can verify that the server can be reached by trying to access http://[hostname]:[port]/mopidy in your browser.

Hi Anders,

Thanks for the nice app. Looking forward to extensions. I do have one problem with it I think. It could also be a problem with my mopidy installation, that’s a bit hard to find out. The problem is that Remotedy never lists any albums or artists when I search. This is a bit annoying as that is usually what I’m searching for. The reason I think this is a problem of remotedy and not mopidy is that run the same query in curl I do get a response with entries that have "__model__": "Album" and "__model__": "Artist" (I’ll not paste a log here, but if you want I can send it)

Wim

PS: when you get to the browsing feature, please take into account that classical music tagging is not really compatible with other tagging (composers are usually listed as artist, messing up your artist list). I at least would really like a classical music mode and a normal mode (that filters out classical music).

Hi Wim,
which mopidy backend do you use? And make sure to use the latest version of Remotedy.

Regarding browsing and tagging, Remotedy does not do any filtering based on tagging, and there are no plans for it. Remotedy shows the result untouched from the mopidy server.

Remotedy v1.1.0 has now been uploaded to Google Play.

What’s new:

  • Browse
  • Edit tracks in play queue (to move track in play queue: long-press and then drag)
  • Filter search on mopidy backend
  • Context-based popup dialogs (browse artist, album, …)
  • Now Playing view (animated) at the bottom when main Now Playing tab is not shown
  • Navigate into a playlist is done within the playlist tab (tracks tab removed)
  • Stop button
  • New icon: material-design
  • Bug fixes

Remotedy on Google Play
remotedy.com

Requires Mopidy v1.0 or later
Requires Mopidy HTTP configuration (host and port)

Remotedy v1.2.1 has now been uploaded to Google Play.

What’s new:

  • Lock screen notification (media style) while playing (both in lock screen and in notification drawer)
  • Fix for volume state
  • Bug fixes

Remotedy on Google Play
remotedy.com

Requires Mopidy v1.0 or later
Requires Mopidy HTTP configuration (host and port)

This is a pretty nifty app, but its networking behaves very oddly — on both CyanogenMod 12.1 and 13, using it requires me to open both TCP port 6680 and port 7 on my Mopidy server’s firewall, despite there being absolutely nothing listening on the latter port for Remotedy to talk to.

Apologise for the thread necromancy, but I did not see a better place to report the bug.

Hey, I’ve been using this on and off for some months now, and I’m really liking it, so thanks a lot for all the work! And like the previous post, sorry for reviving, but not sure where else to post.

One thing I would like to suggest; hardware button volume control.

Ha! I’ve just spent an hour tracking down the same issue today.

@Anders_Nilsson is Remotedy attempting to wake the player with a Wake-on-LAN packet and then bailing out of player connect if it doesn’t receive an ACK?

(Remotedy version is v1.2.1 on Android 7.0, kernel 3.18.31-perf-g708ac5e - essentially stock Android on a Moto G5)

Hi Anders,

I love the app, but I discovered it today only :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:
I can’t find my streams browsing the app, those I can see under “Streams” in the webapp.
Anyway to add it in order to acces it quickly ?