Open Source Projects Europe

= Upmpdcli: an UPnP Renderer Front-End to the Music Player Daemon

[[upmpdcli.intro]]

== Introduction

*upmpdcli* is an UPnP Media Renderer front-end to *mpd*, the Music Player

Daemon. It turns *mpd* into an UPnP Media Renderer. 

*upmpdcli* is open-source, free and licensed under the GPL. It is written

in C++ and uses the *libupnp* (1.6) and *libmpdclient* libraries.

The typical setup is a home network with:

- An UPnP media server (e.g. *Minidlna*, *Mediatomb*, or some commercial

  device).

- An UPnP control point (e.g. *Audionet* or *Bubble UPnP* running on a

  tablet or phone). 

- *mpd* running on some Linux device (e.g. Raspberry PI hooked up to your

  bedroom stereo). 

- *upmpdcli* running on any Linux computer on the network (the same as

  *mpd* or not). It will be discovered by the UPnP control point in a

  standard fashion.

In this usage, *mpd* does not manage the audio files directly and its

configured music directory will typically be empty. It fetches them from

the Media Server through HTTP, using the *curl* input plugin, and does not

need a local tags database.

_What's the point ?_ If you are running an UPnP network with multiple

devices, you may prefer to use a single control application (UPnP-based)

for everything. *mpd* is a very capable and robust music-playing application,

which runs well on small computers (e.g. Raspberry PI or other "plug" type

computers). However it needs a specific control application.

*upmpdcli* lets you control your *mpd*-based players with your UPnP control

point.

[[upmpdcli.config]]

== Configuration

See the man page for command line details. In most situations, *upmpdcli*

will be run as follows:

    upmpdcli -D -c /etc/upmpdcli.conf

The `-D` option tells *upmpdcli* to fork and run in background. The `-c`

option specifies a configuration file.

The configuration file has a simple `name = value` format.

The configuration parameters can be set from the command line, a

configuration file, or the environment in this order of priority. It would

be rather confusing to use a mix of methods, so you should probably chose

one. 

The following parameters can be set:

|========================

|What|Command line|Environment|Config variable

|Configuration file name|-c config|$UPMPD_CONFIG|

|Host name or IP address where *mpd* runs|-h mpdhost|$UPMPD_HOST|mpdhost

|TCP port for *mpd*|-p mpdport|$UPMPD_PORT|mpdport

|Do we own the *mpd* queue and fearlessly clear it|-o 0/1||ownqueue

|UPnP "friendly name" for the device. This gets displayed in network search

  results.|-f friendlyname|$UPMPD_FRIENDLYNAME|friendlyname 

|Log file name. Leave empty for stderr|-d logfilename||logfilename

|Verbosity level (0-4)|-l loglevel||loglevel

|===========================    

[[upmpdcli.boot]]

== Boot time startup

*upmpdcli* will will try to change its `uid` to user `upmpdcli` if it is

started by root. It will refuse to run if the user does not exist.

If started by `root`, *upmpdcli* will also write its process id to

`/var/run/upmpdcli.pid`.

This should make it reasonably easy to write an init script for the

daemon. Such a script exists in the `debian` directory inside the source

tree.

[[upmpdcli.downloads]]

== Source code, packages

The source repository is on link:http://www.github.com/medoc92/upmpdcli[GitHub].

See the link:http://www.lesbonscomptes.com/upmpdcli[home page] for pointers

to releases and built packages.

[[upmpdcli.building]]

== Building

For building from source, you will need a recent `C++` compiler (`C++11`),

and the development packages for *libupnp* version 1.6, and *libmpdclient*.

If you are using the source from Github, you will also need the

autoconf/automake/libtool trio. Use the `autogen.sh` script to set things

up.

Otherwise, the procedure is standard and there are currently no specific

configure options:

    configure --prefix=/usr

    make

    sudo make install