2014-05-14, 14:04
My father is a part-time musician who uses backing tracks. I moved him from tracks on a minidisc player a few years ago to an iPad2 running backing track software. His memory isn't what it was, and it seems he's maxed out his storage capacity (in his brain, not the iPad!) at about 600 song lyrics. The iPad app has lyric functionality which is great but his eyesight isn't the best now either and the text is a bit too small.
I thought I had a brainwave. Maybe I could put together a 20" touchscreen with raspberryPi running XBMC and customise the music section of a given skin to suit his needs.
I'd envisage him just touching home menu music and being presented with a screen split 4 ways. Permanently displayed player control OSD along the bottom in a frame (like in the old HTML days). A main frame taking up the bulk of the screen real-estate containing the lyrics for the currently selected/playing song. Two thin column frames on the left displaying folder/playlist (his set lists of which he has several) and in the adjacent frame the track list for the currently selected folder/playlist/set list.
He needs the next track whether highlighted or not, not to auto play and he needs to be able to highlight/preselect the next track without interfering with the currently playing track. Basically a track should only play when it's selected and the OSD play button is pressed. Basically he needs to be able to Queue on the fly just by pressing a track once.
Is all that possible. Which would be the best base skin to start off with. Where can I start learning about xbmc skinning? A tutorial perhaps? I did a bit of HTML coding a decade ago. Will this help me. i.e. Will it be as simple as starting with a base skin and moving around/deleting parts of the appropriate XML file and adding the required tags/code in in the appropriate places etc etc
Thanks in advance for any help in pointing me in the right direction on where to start with this personal custom skin mod project. As I'm likely one of very few people who would use it, I don't expect anyone to do it for me.
I thought I had a brainwave. Maybe I could put together a 20" touchscreen with raspberryPi running XBMC and customise the music section of a given skin to suit his needs.
I'd envisage him just touching home menu music and being presented with a screen split 4 ways. Permanently displayed player control OSD along the bottom in a frame (like in the old HTML days). A main frame taking up the bulk of the screen real-estate containing the lyrics for the currently selected/playing song. Two thin column frames on the left displaying folder/playlist (his set lists of which he has several) and in the adjacent frame the track list for the currently selected folder/playlist/set list.
He needs the next track whether highlighted or not, not to auto play and he needs to be able to highlight/preselect the next track without interfering with the currently playing track. Basically a track should only play when it's selected and the OSD play button is pressed. Basically he needs to be able to Queue on the fly just by pressing a track once.
Is all that possible. Which would be the best base skin to start off with. Where can I start learning about xbmc skinning? A tutorial perhaps? I did a bit of HTML coding a decade ago. Will this help me. i.e. Will it be as simple as starting with a base skin and moving around/deleting parts of the appropriate XML file and adding the required tags/code in in the appropriate places etc etc
Thanks in advance for any help in pointing me in the right direction on where to start with this personal custom skin mod project. As I'm likely one of very few people who would use it, I don't expect anyone to do it for me.