EML Voice Messaging Updates 1 – 5 & Tips

Since the EML Voice Messaging App is currently only available in Germany, the following posting is written in German:

In der letzten Wochen haben wir einige kleinere Updates für unsere EML Voice Messaging App herausgegeben, die kleinere Probleme mit Abstürzen beheben sollen. Ausserdem haben wir einen Fehler im automatischen Endpointing behoben, so dass es nun auch in lauteren Umgebungen besser funktionieren sollte. Des weiteren haben wir die Seite zur Anwendung mit den folgenden Hinweisen aktualisiert:

• Die Spracherkennung funktioniert natürlich am besten in einer ruhigen Umgebung, wenn Sie natürlich aber möglichst deutlich sprechen. Denken Sie daran: Wenn ein anderer Mensch Sie auf Grund der Umgebungsgeräusche nicht verstehen würde, kann es eine Spracherkennung auch nicht.
• Das automatische Endpointing dient Ihrem Komfort für kurze Nachrichten. Möchten Sie längere Texte auf sprechen, sprechen Sie diese am besten Satz für Satz auf.
• Sollte die Spracherkennung Sie auf einmal überhaupt nicht mehr verstehen, versuchen Sie eine neue Kennung zu erzeugen.

EML Voice Messaging App – Open Beta has started

We are happy to anounce that we just uploaded the first open beta version of our EML Voice Messaging App. German speaking users can use it to dictate messages and send them via SMS, E-Mail, Facebook, etc. Head over to our dedicated page or to the Google Play Store where it should be available in the next few hours.

UPnP Controlpoint Version 1.3 released

We are happy to announce the next release of our UPnP Controlpoint. There were many changes in the application’s code:

• Most visibly the UI has changed given more space and focus to the media items you want to play.
• As a new feature we have added radio stations to the UI. The app comes with a few pre-defined (german) radio stations available on the web. But it is very easy to add your own favorite radio stations to the list. Searching the list is also possible.
• The heart of the application, the UPnP layer, has been re-worked to improve compliance and performance of it.
• The progress bar in the player window will only show if there is a progress to be shown. If the media item does not contain any information about its length, or the renderer does not provide any information on how far the item is rendered (or as in the case of radio streams the length is infinite), the progress bar will not shown at all.
• Bugs reported in the Android Market have been fixed.

If you are using the application already, the update should be available for your device soon. If not, go to the Android Market and try it out. We are eager to hear your feedback.

UPnP Controlpoint Version 1.2.1 Released

A small (but important) bug fix release has just been uploaded to the Android Market. In some situations the App did not correctly recognize that the device is connected to a Wifi network (and got a proper IP address) although this was the case. This issue has been fixed in the recent release. Also a few other minor issues have been fixed which could cause a forced close in some (very special) situations.

Howto: EML UPnP-AV Controlpoint and Windows Media Player 12

We often receive comments stating that our software is not working with some media servers. For several servers we have checked that it is in fact working. One example is Windows Media Player 12, which is verified to work but often claimed to not do. Therefore we had the idea to provide some howtos on how to configure the app and the servers. Although most routers support multicast today, please note that UPnP might not be able to run on your home network at all due to lack of multicast support in some (rare) routers. The following procedures have been verified with Windows Media Player 12 under Windows 7. However, using Windows Media Player as a media server also works with Windows Media Player 11 under Windows XP. Remote Controling Windows Media Player 11 is unfortunately not possible via UPnP under Windows XP.

How do I stream music from my SD card to my (friend’s) Computer?

Ever happened that at your friends home and you had this cool new music on your phone and wanted it share with your friend? You could easily play it on the phone, letting your friend embrace the full quality of your phones speakers… Or you could use the computer of your friend to play it back, since he has hooked his computer to his shiny new hifi system. Unless, you forgot your transfer cable, to transfer the files… However, with our app, it’s possible to stream the file directly to your friend’s computer using his wifi.

Make sure your phone and your friend’s computer are connected to the same network. Grab the newest version (at least version 1.2) from the Android Market (or other websites) and install it on your Android device. As soon as you start the application you will see the media files from your SD card have already been imported into the application. That’s it, your device is ready to stream the music. Now only a little configuration is needed in Windows Media Player 12. Open it and look for Stream > Allow remote control of my player (see left picture). Confirm your choice in the popup that follows, by choosing Allow remote control in this network (see right picture).

After a few seconds you should be able to choose the Windows Media Player as a renderer for a song you select. If you send a song to the Player it should seamlessly start to play it. Thus it is an easy way to share your favorite music with others while sitting together with them.

How do I add the music from my Windows Media Player 12 to my collection?

Also this is quite easy to configure. Again, make sure your phone and your computer are on the same network. Open Windows Media Player and look at the Stream menu. If you see an option Automatically allow devices to play my media then activate it (see right picture) and confirm it with clicking on Automatically allow all computer and media devices in the popup. If you don’t see the aformentioned menu entry, click on Turn on media streaming… (see left picture) and confirm it also in the upcoming dialog. Afterwards, you should see the Automatically allow devices to play my media and should be able to enable it, if not already enabled.

Now start the UPnP-AV Controlpoint on your device and after a few seconds, the server should be visible in the Media Server list. Use the automatic configuration feature to select the proper container, or search it manually using manual configuration. Afterwards the audio should get imported into your collection and you should be able to play it back, on the device as well as on other UPnP Renderers in your network.

UPnP Controlpoint Version 1.2 Released

We are happy to anounce that we just uploaded a new version of our UPnP-AV Controlpoint App to the Android Market. We added a new feature which enables you to stream music from your SD card in your device to any UPnP Renderer in your environment. This feature is enabled by default and can be disabled within the Preferences. As we don’t possess all possible UPnP Renderers out there, we are happy about any feedback regarding non-working devices. Please remember that we are unable to re-act to feedback in the Android Market, so please leave a comment here or write us an email. We have tested this feature successfully with Windows Media Player 12, Philips MCI500H and foobar2k. We had problems with the stock WDTV Live firmware, though. We would like to hear whether it is working on your WDTV Live.

Feedback we got in the past was often associated with the automatic configuration feature. It works fine for some media servers like mediatomb, where we have defined the containers to scan. However, media servers we have not seen up to now are analyzed by scanning through all the content, which takes a while. This can be anywhere between a couple of minutes and more than thirty minutes depending on device speed and size of data in the media server. As the dialog asking for patience was not showing any indication on progress, many people thought that the app had crashed, which was not the case. In the new version we added a progress bar showing how many of the available containers have already been scanned. Please note that especially during the beginning of the scan process, the progress bar may jump back and forth as the total number of containers to be scanned is adjusted. If a big container is analyzed, a second progress bar  is showing  the progress of scanning this one. Again feedback regarding this feature is welcome.

Besides these new features, reported bugs have been taken care of and performance has been optimized. In our internal tests we were able import over 10.000 audio files into the application without crashing.

Before You Rate our App with One Star…

We care about supporting as much UPnP-AV Hardware as possible and therefore we look specifically for people with Media Servers and Renderers that are not working with our Controlpoint. If you encounter such hardware and are about to give us a bad rating because our App is not working with your devices, please reconsider and drop us an email or leave a comment here instead. Ideally, you would also use the built-in feature to drop some debug logs to our server, so that we can analyze the situation in detail. This way we are able to give feedback and support, and –more importantly– we can try to solve your problem. The Android Market unfortunately has the restriction that we cannot contact you to solve problems you might have with the App, therefore a bad rating which simply says “Does not work with my server” is not very usable to us.

UPnP Controlpoint Version 1.1.2 released

We just uploaded a new version of the UPnP Controlpoint onto the Android Market. Not very much has changed as this release is mainly a bug fix release fixing various issues reported to us since the 1.1.1 Release in the Android Market.