Quick Start – configure Spy mode

You need to complete the Initial Configuration Wizard before proceeding with the following steps.

Now that the Observe & Detect component is running, the first steps are:

• check whether the Observe & Detect component is able to find your Sonos zones
  • double click the Control Spy shortcut which has been installed wherever you requested during the install step (ie. the desktop or the Windows tool bar)
  • a control menu for the Spy component is opened inside your browser
  • 
  • run option List known zones
  • this should list all of your Sonos zones (if the report looks scrambled up, press F5 a few times to force the browser to refresh the report)
• check whether the Observe & Detect component is able to see your track plays
  • start playing a track using a Sonos zone
  • then run option Recent track starts from the control menu in the browser mentioned above
  • you should see the track that you just started at the top of the list

If you don’t see the track that you just played, there is no point proceeding until you have resolved whatever issue is causing this.

If the above all checks out OK, the next thing to do is to configure the Play Counts component of AlbumPlays so that it is able to receive communications from the Observe & Detect component. The Play Counts component is that which we have been calling Last.fm mode up until now.

Presuming that you have already been successfully using AlbumPlays in LFM mode, you have not too many options to set.

Firstly run a final cycle of AlbumPlays using Last.fm mode. ie. Run a Get and an Approve action to flush out your last remaining scrobbles from Last.fm before converting to Spy mode.

Initially focus upon the following (as further documented here). You access these configuration options via the Configuration (MyScrobble.ini) shortcut :

1. define the disk location where the components can communicate with each other; set option _nas_path to point to the same location that you specified here for the Observe & Detect component
2. if you are using the database method to communicate, set option _external_SPY_database to point to the transfer database that you created during the previous step

3. list the Listener IDs for whom the Observe & Detect component is collecting spy observations; _lfm_id_list

   • I suggest that you start off with a single listener
   • this must be your AlbumPlays Listener ID, which may not be the same as your Last.fm account name.
   • The ID is already recorded in this configuration file’s [general section] in the _user option
   • nb: it is important that any listeners are identified by exactly the same ID in each of the two AlbumPlays components
   • if you duplicate the _lfm_id_list option line into the [general section] of the configuration file for the Playcounts module of AlbumPlays, the next time that you start that component, it will verify that you have used identical IDs across both components .

4. Finally put this Play Counts component into Spy mode

• set option _source_lfm to _source_lfm=N (or comment out the line by putting a # character into column 1)
• if AlbumPlays is already running, stop and restart it (use the normal Scrobbles shortcut to restart it)

 
Then run a Get action with the source set to Spy, see here for an illustration of how to run Spy mode, and for an example of the expected output

Spy mode component needs to be left running whenever you are playing music on your Sonos. If you have elected to install this cmponent on a PC it may be configured to auto-start whenever the PC is turned on.

Example configuration file recipes

[general section]
_database=~/AppData/Roaming/Python/sonos_scrobbles/AlbumPlays.db
_external_SPY_database=albumplays_spy.db
_nas_path=//Your_NAS/your_share/
_user=BJM
#_source_lfm=y
[get]
[massage]
[crunch]
[gui]
_scrobble_mode=user

[sonos_observer]
_nas_path=//Your_NAS/your_share/
[detect_spy]
_lfm_zone_default_id=BJM
_out_text=Y
_database=albumplays_spy.db

[general section]
_database=~/AppData/Roaming/Python/sonos_scrobbles/AlbumPlays.db
_nas_path=~/Documents/AlbumPlays
_external_SPY_database=~/AppData/Roaming/Python/sonos_spy/albumplays_spy.db
_user=BJM
#_source_lfm=Y
[get]
[massage]
[crunch]
[gui]
_scrobble_mode=user

[sonos_observer]
_nas_path=~/Documents/AlbumPlays
[detect_spy]
_lfm_zone_default_id=BJM
_out_text=Y
_database=~/AppData/Roaming/Python/sonos_spy/albumplays_spy.db

Once you have Spy mode running you should read this section to ensure that the default settings are enabling AlbumPlays to use track location to successfully match your Sonos local library plays back to your MediaMonkey database.

If the Spy O&D module is running upon an unattended device, you may want to configure that device to email you if a problem arises which interupts the collection of your Sonos track play. Instructions are here.

There are further configuration options; eg. you may now want to modify this configuration file to assign Sonos zones to household members.

Related steps

• Controlling the Spy module from your PC  
• Enrolling isteners into the main AlbumPlays module  
• Scrobbling – Quick Start guide  
• Advanced configuration – Observation & Detection  

• Advanced configuration – Play count processing  

• Spy mode index