DYNAMIC AUDIO OUTPUT OPTIONS

DYNAMIC AUDIO OUTPUT OPTIONS PROJECT

We manufacture and market ‘Music Servers’. The music servers are Fedora Linux computers that are run headless as a digital music source in stereo systems. The music servers use ‘setup’ software that users access by browsing to the music server on their local network. The existing setup software is supplied to us and is not well documented. It is written using SMARTY PHP Template Engine.

Audio playback uses ALSA audio. The user selects which of three renderer software apps they wish to use by opening its setup page, and then they select setup options and save them.

One of the setup options the user must select on these screens is the audio output device to channel music to. Different music servers will have different audio devices available to them depending on whether internal audio has been enabled or disabled in the motherboard’s BIOS, and depending on what USB audio devices have been connected to the music server by the user.

The objective of this project is for the options presented to users to be dynamically created based on what is enabled/connected. This process should run at the time that the user opens any of the renderer app setup pages. See the attached setup page where a dropdown is currently used to select the audio output.

The number of available devices, and descriptions of the devices can be discerned from the existence of and the contents of standard ALSA files found under /proc/asound. We will provide the freelancer with information on how to interpret the ALSA information into the right presentation of each device type to the user in the selection screen. Therefore a set of nested if statements or a similar method, that check for the existence of certain files, and check for strings inside the files, will discern sufficient information to identify the set of options that are to be presented to the user. The options will be presented to the user with radio buttons for selection of one option at any one time.

This need can be met by some editing and addition to existing SMARTY PHP and Template Files, some javascript, and some bash scripting. We are open to a solution developed in an alternative to SMARTY, and there is some benefit to us to gradually, or in total, re-writing the software in a 'better' language.

The key milestones are:

- Description of the recommended solution - this is necessary in order for us to be convinced to move to the next stage, and it may trigger a discussion about widening the scope of the project. For example we might agree to a simple editing of existing SMARTY files, or to a re-write of the relevant pages in another language.

- Proof Of Concept - in this step we get to see a working prototype that proves the robustness of the solution. The proof of concept stage may result in widening the scope depending on what possibilities present themselves.

- Completion - completion of the project to the software acceptance stage.

We are also looking for a long term relationship with a person or organisation with the coding skills we need for this and a number of future projects, so if this goes well we will wish to discuss the next project with you.

You will need to install our software (includes OS and all apps) on a computer for development and testing. You will need to sign an NDA.

Smarty PHP JavaScript Bash Scripting

项目ID： #25617696

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