TurtleRadio Information

Thursday, 09-Jul-2009 21:17:01 BST

TurtleRadio - Using a local file to define internet radio stations

Turtle beach AudioTron

The AudioTron was one of the first Hi-Fi components to stream digital music files and internet radio over your home network. It was ahead of its time with optical outputs and totally independent of other PC hardware apart from storage of the media.

Turtle beach announced in Spring 2007, that they were terminating their TurtleRadio service. Although the service is still running (March 2007) once this stops, every user will be unable to listen to internet radio services via the AudioTron. This free service lasted 3 years after the production of the Audiotron stopped in 2004.

How TurtleRadio worked:

Each time a Audiotron was rebooted, the unit would try to access the internet and download a list of radio stations which were generically assigned by Turtle Beach but could be modified by logging in to the TurtleRadio web site. The Audiotron would call the page http://duncan.turtleradio.com/output/playlist.asp?m=XXXXXXX&client=audiotron&version=3_2_25 where the XXXXXXX was your 7-digit member ID consisting of letters and numbers.

The page returned consisted of a single line XML formatted type string which contained your station play list to configure the Audiotron. A typical output is shown below and has been formatted with spaces/tabs for clarity:

<TBSTATIONS>
	<length>71340</length>
	<username>XXXXXXX</username>
	<ttl>7</ttl>
	<updateavail>false</updateavail>
	<stationcount>339</stationcount>
	<time>1174927288</time>
	<station>
                <id>2047</id>
                <category>Adult Contemporary</category>
                <title>Amped Out</title>
                <location>http://www.ampedout.net/ampedOut-128k.pls</location>
                <format>Shoutcast</format>
                <pa>null</pa>
        </station>
        <station>
                <id>9752</id>
                <category>Adult Contemporary</category>
                <title>Dub Beautiful Collective</title>
                <location>http://205.188.234.37:8024/listen.pls>
                <format>Shoutcast</format>
                <pa>null</pa>
        </station>
        <station>	
		etc
        </station>	
</TBSTATIONS>

The tag names have the following functions:

<length>

This is the length of the entire file in bytes. Remember the output consists of a single line of data with NO spaces.

<username>

This is your unique TurtleRadio 7 character alphanumerical member ID.

<ttl>

This stands for time to live and is the number of minutes that the feed is cached if obtained by a server.

<updateavail>

This value is unknown but may have been used to indicate station updates on the feed.

<time>

This is the time of the file request in seconds since 00:00:00 1970-01-01 UTC.

<station></station>

This defines each station record.

<category>

This defines the category or music type of the radio stream. This can be anything you like for category selection.

<title>

This defines the title of the radio station as shown on the AudioTron display.

<location>

This defines the station URL address for the stream.

<format>

This defines the format of the radio stream and can be either "Shoutcast", "Icecast", or "Windows Media".

<pa>

This value is unknown but has always been set to "null".

Luckily for Audiotron users, Turtle beach had the foresight to add a hidden feature in the last firmware release to read the station list from a local text file rather than using the TurtleRadio website. Although there was no intention in closing TurtleRadio, this information was published in August 2005 after repeated requests by the user base.

Enabling local file access of Turtle Radio: =============================================

1) Make sure you've got 3.2.24 or 3.2.25 firmware (if not, head over to the support section of Turtlebeach.com

2) Get a copy of your own Turtle Radio settings. To do so, go here:

http://duncan.turtleradio.com/output/playlist.asp?m=I2SXDDM&client=audiotron

replacing m=I2SXDDM with your member ID.

3) An XML looking file will appear in your browser. You're going to have to save the *source* of this - in Internet Explorer, go View---source.

4) Save this file to your local machine as a text file (output.txt). Remember where you put it.

5) Next, use a browser to navigate to your AudioTron , http://<your IP>/localtr.asp

6) Check the box next to "Use a local file for Turtle Radio list.

7) The password is "Godzilla"

8) Click on the Save button.

9) You will now need to put the location of your saved text file in the first text box of the 'Configure Shares Manually' page on your AudioTron web browser.

http://<your IP>/shares.asp .

If you have a different share in there, you'll need to move it down to one of the other ones to make room for the text file. Qualify the complete location, so it would be \\SHARE\FOLDER\OUTPUT.TXT

10) Click on the "Save Manual Search Settings" button.

Reboot your AT (From the rear switch.) During boot, you should see a message that it's using a local Turtle Radio file.

If you are unlucky and the service has stopped, you will be unable to obtain your configuration file.

Not is all lost as I copied the last generic version. This can be downloaded from my Home Automation server.

Modification of the file and radio stations:

Modification of the XML-type file by hand is possible but not easy as parameters such as file length and the sorting of categories need to be taken in to consideration.

To assist with modification and to generate a compliant TurtleRadio file, you can use my TurtleRadio online file editor. This is available by logging on to my Home Automation server here

Once logged in, you will need to navigate to "Other", "Audiotron", TurtleRadio Local File Editor".

Please also checkout other options now available here