RTi Dock

Revision History

1.0 The original release of the driver

1.01 Gets metadata on initial connect and supports UTF-8 encoded text in iPod Name

1.02 Adds control of the Base LED's, adds Stop command

1.03 Adds 'Advanced Metadata' check box to the configuration page, see below.

1.1 Fixes a problem where some iPods would browse correctly but then play the wrong song.

1.11 Fixes a problem backing up through the menus

1.2 Adds a 'Play Random Tunes' command

This driver supports the RTiDock iPod dock through ethernet or RS232. The serial cable works with a standard ethernet cable, no RJ45 to 9 pin adapter is needed.

The author would like to specifically thank Matt Lust for his help and support in creating this version of the driver. Without his extensive collection of obsolete iPods the recent round of fixes would have been much more difficult.

Configuration Options

Cover Art

The iPod Classic has a bug in it's firmware that causes it to freeze up after approximately 200 Cover Art requests. If this happens the iPod has to be removed from the dock and restarted. Deselecting this option stops the dock from sending these requests to the iPod. This means you can no longer display cover art, but all the other advanced metadata (see below) that is available remains

Advanced Metadata

The iPod Nano 5th Gen (w/camera) freezes up for a while when a request is made for the advanced metadata. The regular metadata and control come to a stop. Unchecking this box keeps stops those requests. You lose the next song, lyrics, etc. But the iPod acts normally.

Control

The driver provides full two way list navigation of the iPod Music (the dock does not play videos). All music selection is done through the single list variable. The list also adds a 'Play All' option to most menus that keeps you from having to drill down to the bottom level to get to a track name. You can quickly select all the music on the iPod by selecting a top level choice (Artists, Albums, etc) and then choosing Play All from the next menu without narrowing your choices.

The driver also has commands to control the on screen UI if desired, including commands to move among the different screens.

The driver includes a command called Play Random Tunes. When this command is sent the iPod will choose one track on the iPod and play it. You can also set the Repeat and Shuffle state you'd like the iPod to be in after it starts playing. Setting Shuffle to Songs and Repeat to All means that the iPod will start playing random tunes and continue forever.

Lastly the driver supports the iPod's internal EQ settings. You can switch EQ by selecting the EQ from the list. A variable is available to show the currently chosen EQ.

Metadata

The driver supports standard metadata on all iPods: Song title, Artist, Album, Genre and Year. Additional metadata is available from non-iOS iPods such as the iPod Nano and Classic. The driver supports this advanced metadata, allowing you to display Podcast description and release dates, rating levels and lyrics. These are not looked up as they are playing but are taken from the iPod. The driver can also display basic metadata for the next song in the playlist.

The dock is also capable of distinguishing the material being played and has separate flags for music vs podcasts vs audiobooks, etc. It also has flags for the presence of some of the advanced metadata: release date, description etc. This allows slightly altered pages based on the type of media currently playing.

Cover Art

There are two variables for cover art to show cover art in two sizes. Small cover art is an thumbnail version of the cover art less than 100 x 100. It can be fetched quickly from the iPod so it shows soon after the iPod switches to a new track. The large cover art will be 240 x 240 or higher. It can take 5 seconds to download this artwork. While artwork is downloading the iPod cannot respond to any other commands. Because of this the Dock waits several seconds to start the download to allow a user to skip through tracks quickly if desired. For this reason, large cover art can take up to 10 seconds to appear after a track change. When the large artwork is finished downloading the small artwork is also updated with a higher resolution (though scaled) version of this artwork.

Events

Driver events are available for insertion and removing the iPod as well as with every title change. It also has events based on changes to the media and metadata types for the '[Current Media Type]' variables. These events will only occur for the Nanos, Classics and other iPods that support advanced metadata