xAP for SqueezeCenter

Slim Devices make a popular range of network audio players. One of the big attractions of these devices for home integration is that the players contain little intelligence; all the clever stuff is done by a software server, SqueezeCenter (formerly SlimServer) an open source project written in Perl. This makes the system highly portable and customisable.

While the latest player product, the Squeezebox Duet, comprises an intelligent remote Controller with colour LCD display and a display-less Receiver, all the older products feature a highly-readable VFD display, still available on the current Squeezebox Classic. This has been popular for a long time with home integrators since it can be used to display home status and alert messages while remaining a fully functioning music player.

xAP Plug-in for SqueezeCenter is a second generation, pure-Perl implementation of a xAP connector for this platform. The previous version, released in 2006 supported server software v6.x (SlimServer) and followed on from the original .Net version. This version has been revised to work with v7.x SqueezeCenter software, features significantly enhanced message display functionality as well as numerous other enhancements and bug fixes.

The plugin provides two-way xAP communication for SqueezeCenter with the following main functions:

• Player power and volume control with xAP BSC
• Player transport control
• Player mixer control
• Player message display
• Playlist management
• Server control
• Access to low-level remote button and IR codes.

The plug-in can be downloaded from the download page.

The manual page for the plug-in (included in the download) can be viewed online here.

Support, discussion etc of the plug-in can be found on the Slim Devices 3rd-party plugins forum using this thread.