Bemused v1.72 ============= Introduction ------------ Bemused is a system which allows you to control Winamp and several other programs using your Nokia 7650 or 3650, or Sony Ericsson P800. It consists of two parts: a server program which runs on your PC, and a client program which runs on your phone. It allows you to do the following things: - browse your music collection on your phone - play any song supported by Winamp, including MP3s, CDs, MIDIs and playlists - pause songs, stop them, fast forward and rewind, move around the playlist, and change the volume - add songs to your playlist and use shuffle and repeat - change the look of your player with skins - stop or pause the music when you get an incoming call - download music to your phone (WAV and MIDI formats supported) - control Winamp 2, Winamp 3, Winamp 5, Windows Media Player 7 and PowerPoint Viewer 97 Bemused can control your PC using Bluetooth, infra-red, USB or GPRS. To use infra-red or USB, you must have PC Suite running on your PC. Also, in this case the connection must be initiated from the PC. The latest version of Bemused is freely available from http://www.compsoc.man.ac.uk/~ashley/bemused . Requirements ------------ - a Series 60 phone (such as the Nokia 7650 or 3650), or a UIQ phone (such as the Sony Ericsson P800) Other phones, such as the Siemens SX-1, the Nokia 6600 and the Nokia N-Gage, should be able to run Bemused - your mileage may vary. This package supports Series 60 phones. There is another package available from the Bemused website which supports UIQ phones. - a PC running Windows 95 or later Daniel Winter has also ported the Bemused server to Linux! This program is available as a separate download from http://www.compsoc.man.ac.uk/~ashley/bemused . - Recommended: a Bluetooth adapter plugged into the PC (supported adapters given below) It's also possible to run Bemused over infra-red, USB or GPRS, but Bluetooth is the best choice. - Winamp version 1.4 or later *** IMPORTANT NOTE *** From version 1.4, Bemused includes support for controlling several other applications. However, the most fully-featured support is for Winamp 2 and 5. Some features (such as adding songs to the playlist and displaying song times) are not available for certain applications. There's a detailed list below. Previous versions of Bemused allowed control of Winamp 3 using a plugin (available separately). This is still possible, but Bemused can now control Winamp 3 directly. If you do decide to use this plugin instead, it is available from http://www.mp3-world.net/d/software/programs/wa3_plugins/2962.shtml The advantage of using this plugin is that more features are available than when controlling Winamp 3 using Bemused directly. If you'd like to use Bemused to control PowerPoint presentations, please note that PowerPoint *Viewer* 97 and normal PowerPoint are supported, as of this release. Supported Bluetooth adapters ---------------------------- The following Bluetooth adapters are known to work with Bemused. If you experience any problems, and you have one of these adapters, contact the author. - MSI PC2PC USB Bluetooth adapter - Allnet Bluetooth adapter - MITSUMI WIF-0402C - 3COM PCMCIA Bluetooth adapter - Racewood BT-dongle - Windigo Bluetooth adapter - BTD-2403 USB Bluetooth dongle - Tecom Bluetooth USB dongle - Epox Bluetooth USB dongle - Acer Bluetooth adapter - Billionton USB Bluetooth adapter - BT-ZIO USB Adapter - Sitecom CN500 - Belkin USB Bluetooth adapter - Conceptronic CBT100U Bluetooth adapter - Anycom USB-220 Bluetooth adapter Detailed list of supported features ----------------------------------- The following list indicates which applications support the various features that Bemused can control. +--------------------------+------------+----------+----------------------+------------+ | Feature | Winamp 2/5 | Winamp 3 | Windows Media Player | PowerPoint | +--------------------------+------------+----------+----------------------+------------+ | Playing files | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Adding to playlist | Yes | Yes | No | No | +--------------------------+------------+----------+----------------------+------------+ | Volume control | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | | Pause | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | +--------------------------+------------+----------+----------------------+------------+ | Stop | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Previous track | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | +--------------------------+------------+----------+----------------------+------------+ | Next track | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Fast-forward | Yes | Yes | No | No | +--------------------------+------------+----------+----------------------+------------+ | Rewind | Yes | Yes | No | No | | Track name display | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | +--------------------------+------------+----------+----------------------+------------+ | Track time display | Yes | Yes | No | No | | Set shuffle/repeat | Yes | Yes | No | No | +--------------------------+------------+----------+----------------------+------------+ | Display shuffle/repeat | Yes | No | No | No | | Display playlist | Yes | No | No | No | +--------------------------+------------+----------+----------------------+------------+ | Detailed track info | Yes | No | No | No | +--------------------------+------------+----------+----------------------+------------+ Installation ------------ The Bemused server on your PC doesn't require any installation; it consists of a single EXE which can be run from anywhere. It will create an INI file in the same directory that it's run from. The Bemused application for your phone is a standard SIS file which should be sent to your phone and installed. Note that there are two SIS files available: one which only contains the "Basic" skin, and one which contains several more. Setup (using Bluetooth) ----------------------- This is the best way to use Bemused. However, the setup process can be complicated. If you have any problems, see the "Troubleshooting" section below. The first stage is to set up a virtual serial port for Bemused on your PC. This process is different for each Bluetooth adapter; the following steps apply to dongles running the Widcomm Bluetooth stack. 1. Right-click on "My Bluetooth Places" and select "Setup". 2. Click on the "Local Services" tab and press the "Add serial service" button. 3. Note down which COM port this new service will use and press "OK". Now you can run the Bemused server application on the PC. You will need to enter the COM port to use, which should be the same as above. You also need to set the location of your music and the path to Winamp and any other applications you'd like to control, if you want them to be started automatically. Hit the "Connect" button in the Bemused server window to start listening for commands. Now you can run the "Bemused" program on your phone. Once the program is started, you can download a list of your music to your phone by selecting "Refresh list" from the Options menu. This will allow you to select songs and play them. Setup (not using Bluetooth) --------------------------- If you want to run Bemused over infra-red, USB or GPRS, or you are having problems getting Bluetooth working, or conflicts with PC Suite, this is the method to choose. *** WARNING *** This method involves the Bemused server on your PC listening on an Internet socket. Bemused doesn't have any concept of authentication and hasn't been audited for security holes. Therefore, you shouldn't attempt this on a secure PC. Start the Bemused server on the PC, and run through the steps of the setup wizard. If you don't want to run Bemused over Bluetooth as well, leave the "COM port" setting blank. Once the server has started, select the "Listen on Internet socket" check box. The Bemused server is now listening on port 7654 for incoming connections from the phone. The next step is to run the Bemused program on your phone. The first thing the program will do is attempt to download a list of songs over Bluetooth. Just select "Cancel" to cancel this process. Then select "Settings" > "Behaviour" from the "Options" menu. The second-to-last setting is the connection method. If you want to use infra-red or USB, select "mRouter" here. If you want to use GPRS, select "The Internet" and enter the address of your PC in the "Server address" box. Bemused should now try to use whichever connection method you've selected. Note that, if you want to use infra-red or USB, you must have a connection to your PC set up beforehand (using PC Suite). Usage ----- The Bemused application on the phone consists of three views: one for browsing your music, one for controlling playback, and one for viewing the current playlist. By default, you can move between these views using the arrow keys or the "abc" key. In the Browse view, pressing in on the joystick when a file is selected will start playing it; pressing on a folder will enter that folder. You can press left to go up a level. These are the default settings, and can be changed in the "Settings" > "Behaviour" menu. There are also options to add files to the playlist or to download them, and to find files in your music collection. In the Control view, you can move between buttons by pressing left and right on the joystick. Move up and down to change the volume. Shuffle and repeat are turned on and off from this view. Hold down the joystick on the Next and Previous buttons to access fast-forward and rewind. It's also possible to shut down your PC when you've finished listening to music. In the Playlist view, you can navigate the playlist, select a song to skip to, and also clear it. There are a number of "hotkeys" in these views which allow you to perform frequently-accessed actions more quickly. Here is a list of them: Browse view and playlist view hotkeys ------------------------------------- 2: page up by one screen 3: find a song (3 = 'f') 6: find next occurrence of same song (6 = 'n') 7: add selected song to playlist (7 = 'p') 0: page down Control view hotkeys -------------------- 1: previous song (1st button) 2: play song (2nd button) 3: pause song (3rd button) 4: stop song (4th button) 5: next song (5th button) Finally, the "Display Settings" and "Behaviour Settings" views allow you to control many aspects of the display and behaviour of Bemused. The list of settings here should be self-explanatory. Installing skins ---------------- To install a new skin, send the two skin files (a PNG file and a TXT file) to the phone. Then, while they are still in your Inbox, run Bemused. Select "Install skin" from the Settings view. The name of the skin you want to install should appear in the list of installable skins. Once a skin has been installed, it can be deleted from your Inbox. New skins can be downloaded from the Bemused website. Troubleshooting --------------- > "Bemused claims to have connected to my PC, but the "Refreshing list" dialog stays on screen permanently and no song list is downloaded to my phone!" This problem is usually caused by the Bemused server on the PC not running, or being set up on the wrong COM port. Make sure that the Bemused server is running on the correct COM port before you try to use Bemused on your phone. If you have created an extra COM port for Bemused, try removing it and running Bemused on the same COM port as PC Suite (although this will require you to disable PC Suite on that port when you want to use Bemused). If you press the "Find" button in the Bemused server window, it will attempt to find which port to use itself. This will only work if your Bluetooth adapter uses the Widcomm Bluetooth stack. If this also doesn't work, from version 1.4 there is a new command in the Settings view on the phone, called "Find server". If you select this, then Bemused will attempt to find the COM port which the server is using itself. If it succeeds, it will tell you which "channel" the server uses. You can force Bemused to use this channel by selecting it in the "Bluetooth channel" setting on the phone. > "When I download the list of songs to my phone, it crashes! I have a very large music collection." The 7650 doesn't have enough memory to store lists of very large music collections (over roughly 10,000 songs). If this affects you, from version 1.2 you have the ability to only load song lists when they're required. > "I've downloaded a song to my phone and I can't find it!" Bemused downloads music to the "\Nokia\Sounds\Digital" folder on your phone, on whichever drive you have selected in the Settings view on the phone. This is the standard folder which the Recorder application plays music from. If this folder doesn't exist, then downloading the song will fail. > "I've downloaded an MP3 but I can't play it!" The 7650 can only play WAV and MIDI files out of the box. You'll need to get a third-party application to play MP3 files and other music types. > "I can't display the playlist!" You can only display the playlist on your phone when using Winamp 2. Licence ------- Bemused is free software and is released under the GNU General Public Licence. Full source and binaries are freely available. See "COPYING.txt" for more details. Thanks ------ Many thanks to the following people for contributing to Bemused in one way or another: - David Carson - Jyri Kuparinen - Jim Hoyle - Jörg Walter - David Singleton - Daniel Winter - Nick Burch - Jacek Wojciechowski - Ozan Sambur - Joachim von Caron - Marcin Marszałek - Michael Makidis Special thanks go to Symbian and David Mery for their support. Thanks also to everyone else who's written skins for Bemused, tested it, and given me suggestions or bug reports. Contact ------- Bemused was written by Ashley Montanaro. If you have any comments or queries, you can contact me at ashley_montanaro@hotmail.com. Even though Bemused is free, gifts of money or beer are always gratefully received :)