I want to prepend that I find Volumio fantastic! Being able to download something like this, flash it to a Pi, attach the 7" display and - Bingo - have an excellent music player is really a gift. Thanks to all who contributed to that development!
After having set up everything and after starting to use it for a few days l have one request though: The music collection on my NAS is - well - considerable. Hence the scroll-lists (e.g. under Browse -> music library or under Media Servers are somewhat longish. And - as I had to learn - the scroll behaviour of the UI when shown on the 7" display is not very responsive or convenient in certain situations:
In the browser on my phone or tablet (Android) - if I want to scroll a longer distance - a scroll-bar appears. Furthermore, the display, when scrolled fast, has something like a momentum, i.e. if I do quick “flick” up or down, the scroll-list keeps “running” on for several seconds. If I make a VERY fast flick it runs from A all the way down to Z (unless I stop it halfway through). That behavior makes it easier and faster to scroll and navigate in long lists.
In the Volumio UI shown on the 7" screen (using the touch-display plugin) the scrollbar is so narrow, it’s practically impossible to hit it with the finger. And - more important - there is no such “momentum” built in. The scroll gesture moves the list just as far as the finger got moved (i.e. a few lines) and there is nothing like a “flick”-gesture, where the list continues to scroll fast. Thus, scrolling through my music list takes forever and a day! It’s then always faster to pick up my phone and select the music from there, which completely defeats the purpose of the 7" I bought to have a “livingroom-compatible” device.
Could that display be tweaked to behave more like in my phone or tablet browsers? I guess, such features are exactly, what makes the difference between a touch GUI and a “traditional” (i.e. mouse-based) GUI.
And just out of curiosity: is that something that needs to be fixed in the touch-screen driver or is it the application’s responsibility to provide that “flick-capability”? If I recall correctly, it’s the chromium-browser that is being used to display the UI on the Raspi’s 7" screen.
I too have all my music stored on a NAS. I have quite the collection of CD’s that are meticulously sorted by / / . This works for the most part but then you get into compilations, soundtracks, mixes. This is where most music software falls flat on its face. Even Apple iTunes has a hard time with this as you cannot really rely on the tags within the songs and they were never designed for the oddball one offs. This makes using the [artist] or [album] not really function as you need to sort by directory structure if you want to find some things. I think of it like each of my subdirectories is like it’s own CD case, and what is on that CD is where I am searching. Like I might have 6 or 7 of the same song title by the same artist but they all can be different as one might be live, the other might have an alternate remix or has been altered by the original artist and re-released on a new album.
From what I can tell, Volumio library view gives me access to the directory structure. So we are all great. But where you run into issues is working from a tablet or small screen touch device, you don’t get the same control as you would on a computer using a mouse or touch pad. I am dealing with a list of over 4000+ sub directories off my main music folder. It can be a nightmare to get from a song by a band in the A’s down to a particular song by a band in the S. On my ipad, it’s trying to flip my finger up and down and scrolling in an inconsistent manner as that is the way it seems to work.
Before I use to use Foobar2000. it was great in it worked, and with my Monkeymote app on the ipad, I could queue up songs and listen to by hearts desire. But the HTPC that I ran with an old version of WinXP has long since died and I just can seem to get it working reliably on the new intel nuc that I bought. Volumio on a Pi is not only more cost effective, and it seems to work much better. Just wished it had a better scroll user interface for long music lists that was better written for tablets. Or supported an external tablet APP to better control the music/queue.
Another idea that might help is the ability to put Letter quick links on the side. So if you wanted a band that was in the Letter R, you would press the R tab/button on the screen and it would jump to that section of the list. That might help out too.
I was thinking about going the attached display route with my set-up. Don’t know if the mods will address this issue but it seems like a valid request. Too bad this forum has more lurkers than helpers…good luck!
I don’t know if there is any API that can be used to link an external app to be given the library list, and be able to pass back song selections, queue editing along with play controls. If that part hasn’t been designed into the code, then developing an external app won’t happen.
I’d like to add my +1 vote for a quicker way to scroll through large music collections on attached touchscreen displays. Momentum and flick gestures would make it far more usable. Even having an alphabetical quick-jump bar would be a huge improvement.
