empeg cluster

I live on a network where there is the potential for several empegs at any given time.

I wonder if some web app (jsp/servlet, php, etc) could be coded up which would consolidate the playlists of all the empegs on the net, and present them via a single web interface, from which you could stream.

There could be a nice admin interface which would show which empegs were currently indexed, and allow one to force a resync with one or more of the empegs, in case new music were added to them.

I have a reasonable amount of experience with the technology required -- but would this be interesting to others as well as myself?

Anyway...
rjf&

NEXT: SETI@empeg!

you could probably write software to combine the two playlists easily enough.. just have another box somewhere that indexs all the links on all the known empegs and then puts them in a database that you could view or search. If you didn't want to write this yourself then maybe use htdig or another search engine.

Just scrolling through the backlogs and came upon this and thought about it some more...

It seems you would have to create a psuedo-database that contained all the playlists of the various empegs on the network into one database, and replace the player database with your new one. Then you'd just need a way to mount a drive over the network.

How long does rebuilding the database take? In theory, would network drives and soup views be enough?

Matthew

Has anyone been able to read the database format on the empeg?

It seems you would have to create a psuedo-database that contained all the playlists of the various empegs on the network into one database,

Yes, you'd have to create a database. Nothing pseudo about it!

and replace the player database with your new one.

Oooh, only if the web app itself were running on an empeg. I'd recommend you did it on a full-size PC instead; the database agglomeration stuff will probably need lots of memory and CPU. Or, at least, lots more than an empeg has.

Then you'd just need a way to mount a drive over the network.

No, you could just stream off the empegs using those parts of the existing protocol that Jemplode's backup features use.

And when you've done it, make it serve Rio Receivers!

Peter

this would be really cool. (i imagine it would take a tremendous amount of work to put together, though.)

I disagree. Technically, it's pretty trivial. I originally asked the question because I wanted to see if people thought it useful.

I should temper my 'trivial' comment with a caveat -- it's trivial if all the empegs are running hijack. Then you just need to discover each empeg, request an XML playlist from each, and present the combined (uniqified where possible) playlist via a web interface.

A set of java servlets or php scripts would work great.

We just shipped here at work, so I may have some off time where I can play with this.

Everyone send me their empeg for a couple of months, and I will get it working :-)

rjf&

It's in the mail...

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!

Hmm, reading your comment I realized that I was compleetly missing what you had said earlier. I was thinking of streaming from one empeg to another empeg for playing, but if all you want is from many epegs to one computer, which really shouldn't dificult at all with hijack, if you have a decent knowlege of php or maybe just XML. (speaking as someone who has neither).

Damn, I still want to be able to browse other empegs from the player interface. What's the lightest way to transparently share a drive over the network?

Matthew