Cygnus by orangepeel

Fast efficient web browser control of Winamp

Cygnus is a general purpose plugin which allows you to remotely control your Winamp via a web browser.

Features
- Very small page footprint. Ideal for PDA/Phone use
- Very low bandwidth. Ideal for PDA/Phone use
- Ultra fast search your album/artist collection
- User levels (Guest, User, Admin)
- View and browse albums
-- Alphabetical or date order
- Control Winamp playback
- Playlist jump
- Current play monitor (Customizable)
- Download albums - Optional
- Random album selection
- Play/Enqueue albums
- Customizable font, text, link, visited link and background colour
- Remotely rebuild Cygnus's database
- Daisy chain copies of Cygnus. EG let one Cygnus control another

Staff review

More about function than fashion... this is especially useful for PDA's or phones. A good amount of help documentation provided to get you started.

Comments

Great Idea - Loved it works great one thing would be nice is the ability to adjust volume, other than that great concept - November 24, 2007 by greg gogola

it's good - Yes there was that feeling that i was going to have to create a playlist for each album in my collection - but then i reilized that it was for the better - and that those that where complaining about it had no room to.. then i found that only one folder can be in at a time - that blows -in the next rev orangepeel - could you use the meida lib to do the datamining from? - December 17, 2005 by Orion Shock

Response To Carl - Cygnus doesn't touch the winamp.ini (the place that holds you skin preference). Cygnus runs a small web server. If you already have a service on the same port then it's natural that they will not work together. Finally, as I said to Ryan, Cygnus MUST have playlists and DOES search subdirectories. If you want technical support for Cygnus, check the manual that comes with it. The email address is in there. - September 19, 2005 by orangepeel orangepeel

Screwed up winamp totally Had to remove and re-install - I thought this was going to be the greatest plugin. But is just screwed everything up. Winam loaded in the classic skin and my modern skin was gone. Then when I re-installed it and tried to use winamp again a couple of times it loaded the classic skin and then switched to the modern skin then played one song and crashed. Now I cannot even get it to run. It starts with the classic skin then briefely shows the modern skin then crashes. On top of that when I did try to configure it it does not scan sub directories. (I don't really want to create a play list that includes my whole database) and it kept moaning about the port being in use or something. That of course was before it totally crashed my winamp and won't even let me run it after I re-installed. Now I will have to remove winamp (Probably losing all my statistical info I have accumalated) and re-install from scratch. This really sucks that big one!! - August 31, 2005 by Carl T

Response to Ryan. - Cygnus does search subfolders. The manual states that Cygnus is only designed for playlists (.m3u files). Finally, it's actually designed for very large collections of albums as opposed to large collections of individual MP3's. - June 30, 2005 by orangepeel orangepeel

Lacking in some important areas - The software does not scan subfolders, so is only useful for those who place all of their MP3s in a single directory. Needs more support for large, organized collections. Ideally would allow access to all MP3s in their existing file system. - June 9, 2005 by Ryan Michael

Amazing - This is great, I can now remote control the computers on my LAN. Get going with Cygnus in three easy steps: (1) Install the plugin on Computer A. (2) Under the plugin configuration, click "Users..." and create an admin account. (3) On any other computer, type Computer A's IP address into a web browser and log in. Orangepeel, Cygnus has all I need except for volume control. I hope you add this in the next version. Still, this is 5-star work. - May 28, 2005 by Pascal Getreuer

Great for Hiptop/Sidekick, customization fuzzy, login too often - The web interface for this plugin is as advertised, slim and functional. You can do a lot with very little screen space - perfect. The documentation is very long but not complete. It's excellent a free plugin has been documented, but it needs a review - for example, there is a section on customizing the HTML of the "Monitor" page, but nothing to tell you what the filename of such a page should be. You have to guess. Monitor HTML filename: cygnus_mon.html You also can't get next/prev functionality unless you login as "Admin," which is a bit of a stretch of the word "Admin." This is annoying on a phone like the Sidekick that can't auto-reload, as you are constantly logged out, so a simple operation like "Next" is: Login (wait) Next The login process can be abbreviated by bookmarking the page that results from logging in though. Finally, the documentation could consider having a bit on general webserver/firewall operation, or better yet links to resources on it. I doubt most users would know how to set this up without that kind of help. - April 4, 2005 by Soopah Man

Excelent! Exactly what i was looking for! - Excelent plugin! Exactly what i was looking for. I just tried about 7 plugings and standalone programs and found this the best one and i'm sticking with this. No need for a standalone server/client program (yuck). Just a plugin in winamp and you can control it via HTTP on a customisable port and you can even add authentication via username and password to control how can see and control your playlists. Download your songs directly from your playlist. Enqeue entire playlists. I'd definately try it! - March 19, 2005 by Maurits Grootveld