yaMPC Tutorial

Firstly, make sure you have access to Volumio from your iPhone or iPad. Launch Safari on your iPhone or iPad, then access to:

　http://volumio.local

If you see the Volumio Web UI, yaMPC should work as well.

As you see, you can use Volumio with Safari on your iPhone, therefore, you can control Volumio without yaMPC. Also, Volumio has its own iPhone App. Then, why would you need yaMPC?  My answer is the answer to FAQ Q6 on this page. In short, they are complementary, I think. However, please compare Volumio WebUI, Volumio App and yaMPC FREE features for yourself.

Volumio is a great distribution, but it has its own queue which is not compatible with MPD queue. Therefore, to avoid conflict, clear the Volumio queue before launching yaMPC. To display the Volumio queue, tap the Queue button.

Then tap the Trash button in the Queue view.

The volume control function in Volumio is detached from MPD too. yaMPC cannot control volume of Volumio.

Install yaMPC from Apple App Store to your iPhon or iPad.

When you launch yaMPC first time, the Quick Start dialog box is displayed.

Let us follow these steps. Tap OK in the dialog box.

I will use screenshots of iPhone here. If you use iPad, the player settings is displayed in the right view.

In the Name field, enter any unique name. For example, "Volumio 3", "Moode 8", and "Raspberry Pi MPD".

Then, tap the Scan button. In this example, yaMPC identifies three MPD servers - raspberrypi, volumio and moode6. Hostname and IP address of each MPD server are displayed. If you use static IP address for the host, tap the IP address because it is faster. Otherwise, or you do not know, enter hostname.

• If you set a static IP address, tap the IP address:
  For example, 192.168.0.3 (volumio)
• Otherwise, tap the hostname:
  For example, volumio.local

If yaMPD does not detect any MPD server ("No MPD Found" message is displayed), enter either hostname or IP address in the Server field manually. Or, refer to the answer to FAQ Q6 in our support page.

Now Name and Server fields are filled.

MPD's default port number is 6600. Leave the Port field 6600. 

Leave the Fast Open Mode setting as is.

Then, tap the Test button in the MPD Server header.

(There are two Test buttons in this scene. Tap the upper one.)

Tapping the Test button and if yaMPC can connect to your MPD, it displays a message as below:

　Test Result

　Succeeded.

If you see an error message, please check network connection to your MPD and the Server field.

This picture says the MPD has 106 albums and the Fast Open Mode is set to OFF. If you have 500 or more albums, Fast Open Mode is set to ON automatically. For more information about the Fast Open mode, see the Online Manual.

Tap the OK button and close the Test Result dialog box. Then, tap the Save button at the upper right corner.

Tapping the Save button at the Player Settings scene, you will see the Players scene.

If this is the first time you configure an MPD player, a dialog box titled Connecting to MPD is displayed. Tap the Continue... button here.

If yaMPC can connect to the MPD, a checkmark is displayed at the left side of:

　Volumio 2

　volumio.local (or IP address)

If you see a checkmark ☑️  like this picture,
Tap the < Queue button at top left of the Players scene.

Then, yaMPC will move on the Queue scene, and you will see an empty queue.

Tap the Albums button at the button of the Queue scene.

You will see a list of albums in two columns like a Juke Box in old days.

The top row of each box is the album title and the bottom row is the artist.

Cover arts are not displayed yet as we have not configured it yet.

Tap any box and you will see a list of songs in the album.

From top of this view:

1. Album title
2. Artist
3. Release date (or year)

are displayed. List of songs is displayed below the album information. 

Tap the triangle (▶︎) button located at right of the release date, and it starts playing songs in the album.

Tap the < Albums button and return to the Albums scene.

Next, tap the Queue button at bottom of this view.

Queue scene is displayed and you can see all songs in the album is in the queue.

That's all for the connection settings for your MPD.

Once you hear the music, tap the Clear button (Trash icon) to clear the queue and stop playing songs.

Now let us review the steps with video.

To display album cover-arts on yaMPC, you need a cover-art image file for each album.

Name each image file "Folder.jpg" and place it in each folder which contains songs of the album.

Please refer to the page "Setting Cover-art for yaMPC" for more detail.

Tap Players button at top left of the Queue scene and Players scene will be displayed.

Then, tap the Player Settings button (cogs icon) in the Volumo 2 cell (or in the cell for your MPD). Player Setting scene will be displayed.

In the Player Settings scene, tap the URL field and the CoverArt Settings dialog box will be displayed.

If you use Volumio, tap Volumio. If you use moOde, tap moOde audio player. The URL field will be automatically filled. Otherwise, refer to the page "Setting Cover-art for yaMPC".

Tap the Test button in the Cover Art (HTTP Server) header. The Player Settings scene has two Test buttons. Tap the lower one.

If yaMPC can download a cover-art image file successfully, you will see the following message.
 

　Test Result

　Successfully downloaded.

If you see an error message, check if you have an image file (Folder.jpg) at the location the error message displays. Also if your HTTP Server (e.g. Nginx) has access to the folder and file. 

If the test succeeded, tap the OK button and close the dialog box, then tap the Save button at top right of this scene. 

Once you tap the Save button in the Player Settings scene, you will see the following dialog box on the Players scene.

　Server Information Updated

　Tap the cell to reconnect.

Tap the OK  button and close the dialog box, tap the Volumio 2 cell (or the cell for your MPD) to re-connect to Volumio (or to your MPD).

Once yaMPC has re-connected to Volumio (or to your MPD), you will see the following dialog box.

　Connected to Volumio 2

This dialog box will not be displayed when Fast Open Mode is OFF. When Fast Open Mode is OFF, each cover-arts is automatically downloaded when it is displayed, so you do not need to download all cover-art file in advance.

To download all cover-art files and create thumbnail cache for them, tap Yes button here. Then, yaMPC starts to download cover-art files and a progress bar is displayed at the top of the player list.

Once yaMPC completes downloading all cover-art files, dialog box with the following title will be displayed.

　Updated Thumbnail Cache

In this example, thumbnail caches for 104 albums out of total 106 albums were created, and two cover-art files were failed to download (hence, could not create thumbnail caches for them).

Tap OK button and close the dialog box, then tap < Queue button at top left of this scene and return to the Queue scene.

Once you return to the Queue scene, tap the Albums button at the bottom of the scene. Then, confirm that albums cover-arts are displayed in the Albums scene.

In this example, cover-art of the top middle album (title is "22 Hits...") is yaMPC's default cover-art. yaMPC uses the default cover-art if it fails to download an image file.

You can scroll cover-arts by swiping upward.

Now let us review the steps with video.

yaMPC provides various way to find songs to play. The most basic method is choose an album and play songs in the album.

It's fun to browse cover-arts in the Albums scene to find songs you want to play. Or, if you want a specific album or artist, you can filter albums with its name or part of the name or word.

In this example, 'Be' is entered in the search text field. Tapping the search button, yaMPC filters albums which include 'BE' case-insensitively, i.e. 'BE', 'Be' or 'be' can match with the search text.

Of course, you can enter non-English characters such as European tréma or umlaut characters, Chinese characters and Korean Hangul.

This is an example of albums filtered by 'Be'.

Beethoven from album title, Beatles and BeeGees from artist match with 'Be'.

You can scroll cover-arts by swiping upward.

Tap any album. As we did before without cover-art, you can play songs in the album by tapping triangle (▶︎) button.

Then return the Albums scene by tapping the < Albums button, and choose other album.

Tap the button with (...) icon which is located right of the triangle (▶︎) button. The following menu is displayed.

　Add

　Play

　Clear / Play

　Cancel

This is the menu for adding and/or playing all album songs into the queue.

By default, the triangle (▶︎) button is same as the "Clear / Play" button in this menu. It clears the queue, adds all songs in this album, then starts playing the first song in this album.

Tap the Add button here. All songs in the album are added to the queue, but yaMPC still continue to play the current song.

Tap < Albums button and return to the Albums scene and tap other album.

This time, tap the button with (...) icon of the third song. The following menu is displayed.

　Add

　Play / Next

　Clear / Play

　Add Album / Play

　Clear / Add Album / Play

　Cancel

This is the menu for adding and/or playing song(s) in to the queue.

By default, single tap of a song cell is same as the Add button in this menu. It just adds the single song to the queue.

Tap the Add Album / Play button in this menu. It adds all songs in this album into the queue and starts playing the third song.

Tap the < Albums button and return to the Albums scene. Then tap the Queue button to display the queue.

Now let us review the steps with video.

You can control the playback of songs on the Queue scene. Tapping a song starts playback of the song.

 
You can also control play/pause, stop, next, previous, random, repeat with the playback control buttons.

Edit button allows you to change order or delete songs in the queue. After editing the queue, you can save the songs to a playlist by tapping Add Playlist button. But you need yaMPC Full Function (In App Purchase) to play the saved playlist.

Clear button (Trash icon) deletes all songs in the queue.

If you set MPD Mixer Type to Software or Hardware, you can control the volume by tapping the speaker icon. (If you use Volumo, you have to set MPD Client Volume Control ON to control the volume from yaMPC.)

You can change the volume with the slider. Or, use the + and - buttons to fine-tune the volume. Tap the speaker icon at the left to set the volume to zero.

X button closes the volume pane.

If you set MPD Mixer Type to None, they speaker icon is grayed out and you cannot control the volume.

Tap the ▶︎ Playing button to display Playing scene with a large corver-art. You can use playback control buttons as in the Queue scene.

Tap (i) button at the right of the song title to display its song information.