Streaming audio is a process by which audio (music, speech) can be read and played before the whole audio file has been downloaded. With a live stream, listening begins at the time of "joining" the stream, instead of from the beginning of the recording. Using pTunes, you simply connect it to the network, select a streaming server and within a short while, can listen to music on the go.
In contrast, the "regular" way of listening to mp3s on your Palm is to download the music to your PC, or rip from a CD and convert to an mp3 file[1]. You'd then copy the mp3 files via a USB card reader onto a memory card which is then put in your palm to play.
Perhaps the most well-known streaming service and application/protocol suite on the Internet is Shoutcast. By service, I mean that they provide a directory of live streams, and by application suite I mean they provide tools for setting up your own streaming services, and the protocol is the underlying network "magic" that makes it all possible.
These instructions will allow you to connect a live source of audio (e.g. a radio) to your PC and listen to it on your Palm via bluetooth connection. It's assumed that the PC used for streaming is the same one that has the bluetooth gateway; some notes are provided if you want to have a more complex system where the streaming server is separate from the bluetooth gateway.
Pocket Tunes, being the best music player for Palm, naturally allows you to listen to streamed audio. This might sound awfully complicated, but don't worry, it's surprisingly easy to achieve this, even though the technology underlying this process is very sophisticated and complex. This is a surefire way to impress your friends without major effort!
In order to do this there are several stages to follow. For the first stage of this tutorial, we'll assume you're using Microsoft Windows as your PC's. In a separate section we'll look at using Linux as the The stages are, briefly:
Even if you're a hardened PC veteran, it's still worth scanning through these instructions to make sure you don't miss out on an important step; I will admit to having tried to short-circuit the setup and then wasted quite a bit of time having to go through
If you've not done this before, follow the link to step by step details. The essential points are:
We're going to turn on the visual indicator so that the
adaptor shows its status in the system tray, configure
networking for that adaptor.
For the moment, we're not going to touch connection sharing!
on the network interface which connects this computer
to your network or internet. This is quite a short stage.
For full visual instructions click here.
The essential points are:
For detailed instructions with explanatory images, click here.
Installation Quick Checklist
For all the above, accept the defaults and follow the prompts as normal.
Quick guide to configuring the streaming server
Start the streaming server - a shell window will appear.
Sstart winamp, and bring up it's preferences and find the Plugins->DSP/Effect options, and choose the Nullsoft SHOUTcast Source DSP plugin thus.
You'll then get a pop-up window with four tabs. In the input tab, choose the correct input, click the open mixer to get the windows volume panel up (close the playback window), and choose the correct input, and adjust the gain.
It's now time to turn on the audio source into your PC; a radio or tape player is ideal. If everything is working, the Input Levels should have a working bar graph (blue vertical bars which rise in rhythm with the music, as shown in the image), indicating that there's audio being received. If not, check the settings in the volume control panel; also use the windows sound recorder tool to test recording and play back to verify everything is connected. Make sure the blue bars just briefly touch the top, otherwise reduce the gain/volume or you'll get distortion.
Select the encoder tab, choose "MP3 Encoder" for Encoder Type, and set Encoder Settings to "96kbps,44.100kHz Stereo". You can try different settings later according to the computer power of your PC - you'll need at least a 500MHz P3 to do real-time encoding of mp3's and perform the streaming functions.
Select the output tab. If you're going to be running the streaming server all the time, check the "Connect at Startup" box.
You shouldn't need to touch any of these settings unless you changed the configuration for the streaming server.
Click the yellow pages button; make sure the "Make this server public (Recommended)" is NOT checked - unless you really want the world trying to connect to the streaming server!
You can set the URL, Genre, AIM, ICQ, IRC and Track Title/URL fields according to taste.
You can now click the Connect button. If everything is set up correctly, the status box will now show numbers counting upwards. You've now got a working streaming server. If it doesn't connect, please go through the above steps and check all the settings.
You should be able to use the winamp player to play it's own stream: from the menu, select "Play URL", and enter "http://192.168.100.1:8000" (substituting your own IP address).
You can skip this stage if you've already gotten your Palm talking to the PC and are sure it works. It still might be worth your while to quickly scan this section to avoid problems! For example, users with Palm keyboards might need to turn off the keyboard in the preferences to use Bluetooth!
Creating a connection
In the Palm prefs, in the Communication section
(e.g.), select
Connections. Press the New button, and enter the following
details (you enter items in italics):
For the Device, tap on the space for the name, and you'll get a list of other bluetooth hosts found by the palm. Tap "Find More" if it's not listing your PC. Select your PC's name and tap "OK". It will then ask you to enter a PIN code; use a simple number sequence, don't take too long! Meanwhile, on the PC, the bluetooth icon will turn turqoise on blue, and when you've entered the PIN on the palm and hit OK, a bubble will appear telling you a pairing request is taking place. Click in the bubble, and a window will popup, and enter the same PIN number.
Your Palm should now be showing this.
Great, we've just paired the Palm with the PC.
Tap "Done" to exit back to the prefs.
Sometimes, you can get an authentication failure, this is a particular problem if you move your bluetooth adaptor from one computer to another. The answer is to delete the pairing on the Palm, which is done by going to the Palm "prefs" screen, selecting "trusted devices", then tapping "details", and there you'll have the option for "Delete Device". You can then add the device as above, repeat the PIN entering phase, and all should be OK.
Creating a Network
In the Palm prefs, in the Communication section, select Network.
Tap the "New" button, and set the following:
Tap the "Details" button. Set the following:
The IP Address is not set to automatic. Take the address you set the PC's bluetooth adaptor to and add 1, i.e. if your PC was 192.168.100.1, make the Palm 192.168.100.2.
The end result should look this this.
You can now test the connection by pressing the "Connect" button. Make sure you can see the bluetooth icon in the system tray at the time, as a bubble will appear asking whether you want to let your Palm access the network - naturally say yes, and also consider checking the box so that you aren't asked again! The Palm's Connect button has now changed to a Disconnect button, and on the PC the system tray bluetooth icon is now turquoise on blue.
At this stage, for diagnostics, there's less well known feature. Tap the Palm's menu button, and find the Options menu, where there's a log option. You can see the handshake that occurred during this activity and the configuration which resulted. It's a bigger secret that you can enter commands here, such as "ping 192.168.100.1" followed by newline; you'll see the Palm send a "ping" to the PC, and the PC should echo back!
Great, we've got Palm networking up and running! Time for another coffee?!
This is, perhaps the easiest bit of all - Pocket Tunes make this very easy for you!
When the Palm is connected to the PC's network, tap
the 
menu button, and in the
upper right, select ShoutCast. Tap the "New" button, and
enter the URL as shown, i.e. append 192.168.100.1:8000.
Check the "Connect to get station name" box.
Tap "OK". You'll now see the details you put into
the Winamp plugin preferences.
The result looks like this
Select the line with the shoutcast server on it, and click OK, this will then cause pTunes to play the stream after it has buffered enough sound.
Not content with live streaming from your own PC? Well, you can enter in the addresses of radio stations you can see on the ShoutCast website. This does need the Palm's networking to have a DNS setting in it, and is only really achievable if you have at least a dual-ISDN (128kbps) or faster broadband link to the Internet.
You will need to set up internet connection sharing on the PC, this is because the network addresses currently used between PC and Palm are special ones, unrouted on the internet, so your Palm cannot connect to the outside world. If you try a web-browser on your Palm, it too could only see a webserver on your PC. You could use a web proxy, for example, AnalogX do a nice simple one, but this won't help Pocket Tunes.
Instead, the best method is to make the PC share the internet connection. If you're already using your PC as a gateway for other computers (e.g. if this PC happens to be connected to your modem or broadband router with a separate ethernet to other PCs), you can't make it also share the internet connection on behalf of the bluetooth network.
To turn on ICS, open the network control panel, select the device which provides the internet connection, open it's properties, select Advanced, and check the "Allow other network users to connect through this computer's internet connection" whilst the Home networking connection selection box is showing "bluetooth". More information is available here.
Using VNC to control your PC from the Palm Once you've set this up, it's a nuisance to have to keep going back to your PC to make changes; but using some other technology called Virtual Network Computing, you can allow your Palm to control your Windows desktop. Download and install the PalmVNC client on your Palm. Download and install the VNC server on your PC, telling it to start the VNC service on the PC; you'll be entering a password which needs to be secure, otherwise anyone on the internet could gain access to your computer! Run the PalmVNC client, connect to the PC (enter its IP address), enter the password and now you can control your windows desktop!
Note that this will "eat" up most of the bandwidth of the bluetooth connection so don't expect to be able to stream audio smoothly at the same time!
Note 1. Audiograbber is a superb freeware software package for ripping CDs and turning them into mp3s on your PC.
Note 2. Although there aren't actually many different
manufacturers of the chips inside these units, many give them different
names and this means that windows needs the drivers specifically built for
the device you have; this is a real pain, but an unfortunate reality.
Not only that, some device makers don't make their drivers downloadable
on their websites; however, you should be able to get onto their customer
support on their website and get sent a link to allow downloading.
You can also find some downloads
here.
