Stream your iPod touch all over the world!

Every modern Mac has iTunes in it. Wouldn’t it be great if you can hook up your favorite tunes and play them on any Mac? Yes, you can! With a wi-fi connected iPod touch, you can stream your own music from your iPod touch’s music library to your friend’s MacBook, or your office Mac Pro, or that filthy iMac G4 over at the neighbourhood Cybercafe. You name it; the connectivity is endless. The world is your lounge bar.

All you need is the iPod touch version of Firefly Media Server, and a Mac whose iTunes is setup to Share. Installation is a breeze but here’s the how-to as no instructions were given.

1. The BSD Subsystem is compulsory. It’s in the Installer, under the System category.
2. Erica Sadun’s UIctl is required (to launch the server.) It’s in the Installer, under the Utilities category.
3. The Apache Server is optional. If you want a nice UI to change password and do some configuration changes, then you must install the Apache Server (Installer’s Network category.) Most of you don’t need it.
4. Go to Settings -> General -> Auto-Lock and set it to “Never”.
5. Go to Installer and add a new Source: http://home.mike.tl/iphone (make sure “/iphone” is in small letters only)
6. Look for FireflyMediaServer under the Multimedia category and install it. Installation is straight forward except it takes 5 to 10 minutes. The long wait is because the Fireflly Server needs to build a music database from your iPod’s music library. If your iPod auto-locks itself during this period, strange things can happen. Like I told you just now, set Auto-Lock to Never and run the Installer again when that happens.
7. You’ll see this pop up message after tapping the Install button. You will be told to change your Firefly Server’s password using your mobile safari. Follow the instructions. The password is for when someone wants to connect to your iPod via iTunes Share.
8. If installation goes well (it should), you’ll anxiously look for Firefly’s icon in your Springboard to tap on, but … you can’t find it! WTF!?
9. Tap on the UIctl icon instead, dude.
10. A blank white screen will show up. Patiently wait for about 5 to 8 seconds and you’ll see a lists of (command-line) apps. Scroll down, look for, and tap on  org.fireflymediaserver.mt-daapd 
11. A slide-up window with 4 options appear; tap on “load -w” and then just “Do it”.
12. Your iPod touch should show up under the SHARED category in your iTunes.app. Click on it and enter the Password (default is “dottie” unless you changed it.)
13. It’s Hammer time!

 

Checklist:

• Don’t forget to tell your iTunes.app to “Look for shared libraries” by enabling the option under iTunes->Preferences->Sharing.
• You can find out what “load” and “start” accompolish by launching your Terminal.app and type “man launchctl” at the prompt. Ctrl+Z to exit, or Command+Q to quit Terminal.app.
• To permenently disable streaming across reboot, you must run UIctl and tap on “unload -w“.
• Do not “Auto-lock” when sharing your iPod touch, otherwise your stream will break. Press the Power button instead to turn off the screen and save on battery.
• To change your password manually, ie, without installing the Apache Server, do the following:
  • Mount your iPod touch on the desktop
  • Navigate to and get ready to edit the following file:
    /etc/mt-daapd.conf
  • Search for “admin_pw = dottie” and change it to “admin_pw = newpassword”.
  • Likewise, look for and change “password = dottie” to “password = newpassword”.
  • Save and quit.
• If the installation aborts during the “Building Music Database” phase, you have a song that Firefly cannot process for its database. You have to find out which song is causing the problem! What you can do is cut down the number of songs in your iPod touch to just 1 song. Yes, just one good song for easy database building purpose. After that, run Firefly’s Installer again. Let it build the database and exit the Installer graciously (ya know… where it reverse back to the Installer’s main page after an installation run.) You *MUST* let it build the database successfully as long as you have started the installation process (even though it was aborted.) Otherwise you will not be able to uninstall the Firefly server!! You read it right. Even though the installation was aborted, the server software was in fact installed (and running abnormally causing strange problems to your iPod). Go do some detective work to track down the culprit and ban that song forever from Firefly. The Firefly Media Server for iPod touch is a dream app to have. Really… if not for this quirk. Do I have a clue which song to look out for? Unfortunately I find nothing strange on that ONE bad song I have. There’s no pattern to look out for. Nothing. I looked hard. In fact, it’s one out of ten songs from the same CD I ripped myself using iTunes. Strange isn’t it?