Universal Media Server | Forum

Hi there.
I am trying something with UMS that's perhaps a little different. I use it to stream to my WDTV Live Streaming box or PS3. Works great

But what I am trying to do is create notifications on my Android devices with the currently streaming media. I use Tasker and a series of plugins, as well as EventGhost on my PC. This allows me to create custom notifications, use variables and such then I can display whatever I want on my Androids.
I currently have EventGhost sending the debug.log to my Samsung Note 2 every 30 seconds. From that file, I want to extract info on the currently playing media. Ideally, I would like to display it as seen on the status tab in the very lower left corner.

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From there, I could set the notifications to allow for click, which could say do a search on one of the various sites like IMDB or one that tracks tv shows. I could then do whatever I want with that data received back like display the episode or cast info etc.

The Android end of things isn't the problem. What I am having an issue with is trying to find a realtime file that I can extract the info from. The debug.log doesn't seem to change. I can see the file on my Note 2 but no change in the text within it, even though I may start or stop several shows or movies.

I can see the Logs tab updating, and the lower left caption updating on the UMS gui whenever I start or stop a movie or show, but the debug.log file itself seems to be unchanged on my Note 2 even though its sent every 30 seconds.

The last entry is always (with the exception of the timestamp) :

INFO 2013-12-15 15:05:40.218 {PMS Listeners Stopper} at net pms$4.run(PMS.java.557)

I have tried changing the level of the debug.log, but it only seems to affect the Logs tab in the GUI, not the debug.log file itself.

I have tried monitorng the UMS directory for changes in files, sending the debug.log every so many seconds etc. Monitoring the directory for changes seems to yield nothing and the file doesn't change on phone, and it doesn't seem to change when I open it on my PC.

I am just unsure of what other options I have. Am I looking in the wrong place maybe ? Is there another source I could extract that data from maybe ? Forgive me if I am missing something covered, or glaringly obvious, Ive just run out of ideas on how I might accomplish this.

Try using Skifta on your android and see if that can get the info you need to do a web lookup.

Thank you for your reply and suggestion DeFlanko

OK I have it installed on my phone. It seems like it wants to work with my WDTV. PS3 it only seems to provide me with titles on my device. so for now I will just try with my WDTV.
It did work on the WDTV with one file, and placed a notification into the tray. From that, I should be able to use AutoNotification Intercept plugin in Tasker to extract the title to a variable, then of course I would build a task to search said title.

I like the ability to search, then play a specific title from my device. I like the notification which I should then be able to carry on with the rest of my project.
But it seems to start one title, but leave the last title in the notification, or not play the title at all, or it wont find the server, or the app itself jams up, or if it does work, it makes files that would normally just stream as is to my WDTV, actually transcode. The WDTV generally never triggers transcoding action.
If I use Skifta to initiate the playback on the WDTV and it actually plays the file, I see that transcoding is taking place. If I initiate the playback via my WDTV remote, the same file will either stream directly to the WDTV (no buffer) or use TSMuxer.

I must not understand whats going on. Is it transcoding to Android format then serving it to my WDTV ?

Hi again DeFlanko.

I did manage to get this working fairly consistently, but not with UMS Not sure yet why, but playback and behavior is very weird or not at all with UMS. Some shows also start in random spots, but consistent per show. IE the movie Gone always starts at about 40:39 minutes in.
I ended up having to use Windows Media Player server instead. But now (so far), when the title changes, my phone speaks the new title.

"Now Playing: Star Wars Episode IV A New Hope"

I have some variable splitting and stuff to do to change the way things are said, like "Episode 4" rather than "Episode I V " and also to create the rest of the task such as hunting the internet for info on the title and such. Its definitely in its infancy, but so far so good.

Thank you for your suggestion, I appreciate it.

No worries.. glad it worked out so far