[PLUGIN] Radio Paradise

This topic is dedicated to the Radio Paradise plugin which allows to play their streams - including the FLAC versions - within volumio.

Radio Paradise (http://www.radioparadise.com) is a commercial-free listener-sponsored Internet radio station that identifies itself as an “eclectic online rock radio” station. It plays different styles of pop and rock music, but occasionally other genres from jazz to classical to electronic music and world music.

State:

  • listening to static streams in mp3 and aac
  • listening to the flac versions (main, mellow)
  • metadata for flac (cover, artist, title)
  • pause/resume

ToDos:

  • add possibility to skip/repeat tracks (flac)
  • Last FM scrobbling (in progress: is.gd/Ol6cKG)

Project:
https://github.com/marco79cgn/volumio-plugins/tree/master/plugins/music_service/radio_paradise

Installation:
:arrow_right: The plugin is now available in the plugin section of Volumio in your browser/GUI.

Thanks to everybody who helped me to develop my first plugin, especially lombardox :exclamation:

2 Likes

I’m very interested in this plugin, but am a total newbie when it comes to Linux, I’ve never touched a pi apart from buy a ready built player from ALLO.
Will this plugin ever be selectable from Volumio’s plugin section? If not how do I go about installing it?

To appear in the Volumio UI, the plugin needs to be submitted for approval, after which, if successful, it will be available for download and installation. Marco may or may not feel it is ready for this stage yet. It is possible to install plugins from outside the UI…have a forum search.

Well done Marco for getting it to this stage; I will be trying it out :smiley:

Of course I’d like to make it available from the Plugin section in the Browser/UI.

Until then, you can install it manually. I added installation instructions on the github page:
github.com/marco79cgn/volumio-p … o_paradise

Hi Marco,

I installed it a few minutes after you had posted it.

Works great since then. Sound is great in FLAC. The cover art thing is an absolute hammer. Wow.
Many thanks.

I also use Adrian’s OLED display plugin (based on CAVA)
https://volumio.org/forum/oled-spectrum-display-volumio-raspberry-zero-t9267-20.html#p48638
Unfortunately the station and title info isn’t passed through to it, while bitrate and the progress bar is working. Do you have an idea (if not out of scope currently) ?

Josef

it’s working great and stable now since 6 hours.

Thanks so much for creating this plugin, adding the RP radio stream is practically the first thing I do after installing Volumio! :smiley:

I’ve just installed on my Tinker Board and so far it is working beautifully! The FLAC streaming+Artwork is so much nicer, top notch.

Volumio Rocks!

Congratulations Marco! A great job! it works perfectly.
I am very grateful for this work!
You tell me that I can help in the translation into Spanish.
regard

Working well on a Sparky. I love the cover art, and it sounds pretty good too :wink:.

I don’t know for sure but I guess it’s the way we push the song metadata without using a volatile state as you can see here:
github.com/marco79cgn/volumio-p … #L457-L481
This was the most difficult part actually. Maybe it can be adapted in the OLED plugin where the metadata is read from?

Hi Marco

I installed your plugin. It works very well. Well done!

The mpd_oled OLED display program currently uses the MPD status values when running on Volumio. The values your plugin sets are available through ‘volumio status’, but MPD doesn’t know about them and so they aren’t displayed on the OLED. I didn’t use Volumio status values because receiving the Volumio status update can take several seconds just after a new song starts playing on a Raspberry Pi Zero. However, there is clearly a need to make the Volumio status values available for display, and I will be adding this back in as an option, which will then make the display compatible with your plugin.

Adrian.

Hi Adrian,
yes, we tried different things to show and update the metadata and ended up with the current state. It would be great if you could make this an option in your plugin. I don‘t have a OLED display yet but I‘m very interested in trying it out as well on my Zero W.

Hi Marco

There is a slight difference in ‘volumio status’ values between your plugin and playing the station stream as a web radio.

The plugin has

... "title": "Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Echo", "artist": "Black Rebel Motorcycle Club", ...

The web radio has

... "title": "Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Echo", "artist": "Radio Paradise - Naim exclusive", ...

The web radio service appears to put the station name for artist, rather than the artist name, and join the artist name and title for title, as you also currently have it. Maybe this is an easy way for web radio to get the station name on the Volumio UI Playback page. (The Radio Paradise plugin doesn’t display the station name on the Playback page.)

This might affect other OLED/LCD display programs as well, causing them to print the same text (the real artist) at the start of two lines, rather than the station name on one of the lines.

Adrian.

Okay, interesting. Actually I set the following values in the plugin (for the flac version):

name: song.artist + ' - ' + song.title, title: song.title, artist: song.artist, album: song.album,
So you‘d suggest that I set the artist everytime to „Radio Paradise“ and leave the others as they are? This should be no problem at all as I don‘t rely on the automatic cover search function anyway (because the Radio Paradise api already delivers cover urls).

Hi Marco

If you set the artist to “Radio Paradise” it will be more consistent with the Volumio web radio status values. However, I don’t know enough about Volumio status values to say whether making the change is a good idea or not.

Adrian.

Note: Radio Paradise is available in Dirble catalog (just added icon & 320kbs streams references): so is listed by a baseline WebRadio search in Volumio UI, and can be played directly.
Not sure how we can force Volumio to use particular Dirble stream when there are several though… (applies to any radio).

Thanks for the info, but the main purpose of this plugin is not to listen to the normal web streams but to the lossless flac version (which sounds even better than the 320 kbps AAC stream).

Unfortunately the flac version isn‘t offered as a static stream url and therefore is neither available in Dirble, Tune In or any other webradio service.

@Adrian:

I changed the album info to “Radio Paradise”. You can find the new version here:
dropbox.com/s/x2v43xjp5y8sh … 4.zip?dl=0

I’m not sure whether this is the best approach as the album info is now obviously gone. But as the cover is still there… What do you think :question:

Hi Marco,
great work. Do you feel ready to submit your plugin for review, so it gets published on the repository so it’s easier for anyone to install?

The command line install option is meant only for developers, as we’re keen to ensure quality of the plugins.
Let me know

Hi Marco

Thanks for looking at this. However, I don’t believe the change especially improves the situation as the radio_paradise service is reporting the radio station name using a different tag to the one used by the webradio service.

radio_paradise

"title": "U2 - One", "artist": "U2", "album": "Radio Paradise", ... "service": "radio_paradise"

webradio

"title": "U2 - One", "artist": "Radio Paradise - Naim exclusive", "album": null, ... "service": "webradio"

For a small OLED/LCD display the ‘volumio status’ artist and title values work pretty well to say what is playing on Volumio–they work for albums, webradio, and the youtube plugin, at least, that I have seen. If the radio_paradise service doesn’t have the station name as the artist it would require special handling by mpd_oled to show it. I imagine, but don’t know, that this would also affect other LCD/OLED programs.

With the current setup, you can also see on the PLAYBACK page that the radio station name is printed in a different place depending on whether the FLAC stream or an AAC stream is playing.

Adrian.