Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Pandora Radio on the N900 - pyPianobar

You know it is 2010 when you can be riding your bike home from work while listening to music streaming from the internet.

I've been using Pandora Radio for some two years now and I have had a Pandora One subscription for the last year. When I received my N900 one of the first things I attempted to do with it was to load up Pandora via the webrowser as the device has full flash support - much to my dismay I was greeted by a choppy experience and a user interface that was difficult to navigate on such a small touch screen.

Pandora does not currently make an application for the N900 and nor do they plan on making one any time soon (believe me, I emailed them). One of the most wonderful things about FOSS is the community - and once again it steps up to the plate to solve the Pandora radio issue on the N900. The application pyPianobar provides a QT-based touch-friendly interface for accessing your Pandora radio account on your N900
The GUI is easy to use and provides all necessary functionality you need for using Pandora Radio:
  • Play
  • Pause
  • Skip Song
  • Thumbs Up
  • Thumbs Down
  • Station Create
  • Station Delete
The only feature pyPianobar currently lacks that I would like to see added is the ability to set the audio quality (often times I am streaming over 2/3G and would like to toggle it from "high" to "normal" quality). Over all pyPianobar is a fantastic application and just one more example of the power of the community that is behind Maemo!

~Jeff Hoogland

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