ImpAmp

The demo

This is a "program" written within a web page to aid Improverts noise boys with playing sounds at a moment's notice. The idea is that you can assign a mp3 file to a letter on the keyboard then pressing that letter instantly starts that song. Support for pages has been added so you can have games themes in page one, emergency tracks in page 2, sound effects in page 3 etc. The program has been written within a web page to make it easy to use on different systems/computers. All you need is Firefox and flash installed with javascript enabled.

Currently an alpha/demo/proof of concept is available at http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/~s0453136/imps

Current Features

• Basic functionality works, pressing a letter or clicking will start or stop/reset it

• A stop all function has been added with the space bar

• Track title has been added to buttons Via ID3 data

• Support for separate pages has been added though only 2 have been enabled

Wanted Features/ToDo List

• Create a default setup with games, sound effects, emergency tracks all pre-queued (for offline versions)

• Remove songs from the web version to ease download yet provide an on-line example

• Ability to queue tracks (I wanted to pause when you clicked the progress bar but that isn't easily possible - looking at alternatives)

• Add your own files easily via a GUI

• Possibly add volume control? or just leave that to operating systems and the sound desk?

Bugs Issues and Limitations

Bug- stop all doesn't stop all

• To reproduce
  1. Start playing a long sound
  2. Change page
  3. Attempt to stop by pressing space

• Workarounds
  • Turn sound down, then go back to the origanal page and double click the song or
  • Press refresh

• I don't really know why this happens, the code to stop all is not something i have touched and should not be affected by the different pages

Limited to mp3 files - This is a soundmanager2 limitation

Does not work in konqueror (KDE) or on linux not using non-free flash plugin

Untested on safari or Internet Explorer

Names

do we stick with ImpsPlayerThing or shorten to IPT? Here are a list of potential others (feel free to add)

• ImpsPlayer

• ImpsJukeBox -- IJB

• ImpsBox

• impTunes

• impamp

• noisyimp

• ERIS (Easy Resource for Imps Sound / The Roman goddess of Chaos... is this tempting fate?)

any others?

Discuss

Under the Bonnet

The program uses flash to play music controlled by javascript. The 2 are merged using soundmanager2 which provides an API to do so. SoundManager2 is released under the BSD licence

The page is based on the drumkit demo found at http://www.schillmania.com/projects/soundmanager2/demo/mpc/

I have edited the soundmanager API slightly to suit my needs

Thanks to Scott Schiller - http://www.schillmania.com