[Android 2.1+] zRadio - Internet Radio Offline - Scheduled recording

This application allows you to listen to your favorite internet radio stations even when you're offline (Internet connection required to record the stations at scheduled times).

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ksatta.irop

Here's how it works:
- Add your favorite internet radio stations
- The app records them automatically at scheduled times
- You can listen to the recordings even without an internet connection

You can for example set the app to record the stations every night when you're at home and you have WiFi. Then during the day when you don't have an internet connection, or when the connection is too slow for internet radio, you can listen to the fresh recordings the app made. I personally use it in my car when I drive around, and there isn't always 3G coverage.

NOTE: I can't test this on all the Android devices out there, so if you have any problems please contact me from zRadio, phone's menu button / about/help (or send email from Google Play). If you only send me report via Android's own system, I won't be able to contact you to debug and fix the problem. My own bug reporting system also sends me better logs of what happened.

Features:
- Supports all formats supported by your phone. For example OGG is supported in Android 2.3+.
- The recordings are lossless (same quality as the station is sending). Only some lossless changes are done to some formats.
- Configurable recording start time and duration (global default and also settings for individual channels). You can also set a station to be recorded manually only.
- You can create multiple recording rules for stations and select weekdays (Pro only).
- The length of the recordings is only limited by your SDCard size, so you'll always have something to listen to when you're offline. (Recording length in Lite mode is 20 min / station).
- "Eyes-free" operation: Switch channel with the volume buttons (safer in car for example). (Phone's menu button / Settings / Playback / Vol. keys change channel).
- Many screen modes including "custom dimming" mode that dims the screen to totally black, and can be woken up by touch (Phone's menu button / Settings / Playback / Screen mode).
- Supports portrait and landscape orientations.
- You can configure the app to enable recording on 3G/Edge/etc, but disable recording on GPRS. (GPRS is too slow for most stations).
- Application pauses recording when phone's current connection type is disabled in the settings and then resumes automatically when the phone connects via an allowed connection type.
- Make new recording only when previous recording has been played (Phone's menu button / Settings / Recording / Always start scheduled rec).
- Max. bandwidth available setting, so that the app records only x channels simultaneously. The other channels are queued until bandwidth becomes available (Phone's menu button / Settings / Recording / Max bandwidth).
- Seeking (Settings / UI / Show seek buttons)

Free (Lite) mode has the following restictions:
(You can buy the pro unlocker to remove these restrictions)
- Maximum number of stations is 2.
- You can't select weekdays or create many rules per station (advanced rec. rules).
- Recording length is 20min per station.

User reviews:
"I love great music, but I don't want to spend time finding it. I want a professional DJ to play a great mix of new and old music along with commentary. Frankly, the new internet streaming services (Pandora, Slacker, Spotify) aren't good enough for my tastes. None of them have replaced the professional DJ. SiriusXM is the only exception, which my wife has in her car. However, their streaming doesn't offer time-shifting or mobile caching. Additionally, I don't want to pay $12/month for each device. There are lots of radio stations streaming their music on the web. Minnesota Public Radio's "The Current" is a great example. My dilemma: streaming radio doesn't offer time-shifting or mobile caching. Streaming radio works only when I'm hooked up on the internet listening live. What do I listen to when I'm not on wifi or if I want to listen to a program that aired at a different time? zRadio solved this for me. Now I can schedule it to record some great radio programs every night so that I always have access to a variety of fresh quality music. So far the app is working just as advertised and I haven't noticed any problems with it." - Jesse, 5 stars

Keywords: Internet radio, offline, record, recorder, airplane mode, buffer, bufferer, scheduler, schedule, scheduled, pvr, cache, timeshift, timeshifting

Changelog
December 06 2012
- Fixed: Rec. schedule not always working after reboot on some devices. (Re-wrote scheduling at boot part)
- Fixed: Rec. sometimes a few secs longer than should've been.
- Fixed: Advanced rec. rules duration wasn't always used.


November 06 2012
- Improved dialogs (background is now dimmed)
- Fixed: Stations disappering or app freezing in splash screen (happened very rarely)
- Improved rec. scheduling at boot (wait for SDCard to be mounted first)
- Fixed: temp file wasn't always removed when adding stations
- More cool stuff under development

August 10 2012
- zRadio database (zRDB) ( Menu / add st. / zRDB)
- Fixes for Ogg format
- Switched yes/no buttons around in send anon. info dialog.
- Tweaked help/about view



July 27 2012
- new: Seeking (Settings / UI / Show seek buttons)
- fix: Prevent station / stream being deleted while playing
- some small changes to the playback UI layout (to make room for seek buttons)
- Improved error msg when there's problems adding station
- Added zRadio database (ZRDB) station info reporting (if user gives permission)






July 12 2012
- Icon is now brighter
- ICS: fixed: Sometimes station list loses focus (clicks don't work).
- Removed "RE-ADD" text showing sometimes in station list. (A remnant from some old stuff).
- Localized weekdays in adv. rec. rules edit (in preparation for localization of the whole app for different languages). NOTE: You can force the first day of week from settings / UI / First day of week, by default it's the default of your locale.
- added zRadio icon to splash screen

- Unlocker: new icon
- Unlocker: added note that you have to keep it installed for 15 mins.

July 6 2012
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- Fixed bug with wizard / browse internet-radio.com (ICS only?)
- Lite / Pro stuff added. Older versions will stop working on July 16th. This version will run in lite mode after that (unless you buy pro unlocker).
- Added link to DivineError's deviantart.com page in About.
- Added background image to station list
- Optimization: fixed minor bug with position box.
- ICS: fixed settings / rec. settings / rec. dur -dialog

June 20 2012
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- User is now notified to stop rec. before deleting station.
- Fixed: "Rec. new straight away"-setting enabled didn't work in some cases.
- Station name / rule name edit dialogs: keyboard should now always be shown, and dialog moved to the top
- Station name / rule name edit dialogs: added graphics
- Back key now closes dialogs
- Edit station: added graphics
- Fixed buttons' sizes on small screens
- Weekday dialog fixed for small screens & landscape orientation.
- Adv. rec rules edit dialog fixed for small screens & landscape orientation.
- Fixed playback UI landscape orientation on "notlong" screens.

June 14 2012
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- Advanced rec rules done
- UI/Graphics tweaks
- Switched yes/no button positions in wizard so that yes is always the left button in all dialogs/views
- Fixed bug that recordings weren't deleted when station was deleted
- Added st. list / long-click / delete recording

June 8 2012
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- weekday is now shown with rec. date
- new gfx for wizard/dialogs/etc buttons
- changed text color in wizard/dialogs/etc
- new gfx for station list
- advanced rec rules (EXPERIMENTAL) (edit st. / enable adv. rec. rules & edit adv. rec. rules)
- tweaked rec schedule output abit.. still needs work

May 23 2012
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- Fix settings screen showing some values wrong when opened for the first time. (Happened only on ICS?)
- Added current value as summary for max. rec bandwidth setting
- Unit fix Mbit/s -> Mibit/s


May 22 2012
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- User is notified when there are problems with SDCard
- Better handling of SDCard errors
- Recording stops when battery is low (on by default, Settings / Recording / Stop rec when battery low)


May 11 2012
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NOTE: If you have any problems adding stations etc, please contact me from phone's menu button / about/help. If you only send me report via Android's own system, I won't be able to contact you to debug and fix the problem. My own bug reporting system also sends me better logs of what happened.

- Fixed bug with default rec. duration setting (had "manual only" choice..)
- Fixed some bugs with dialogs causing the app to stop responding
- Fixed UI freezing for a while sometimes when adding rec to media lib
- Added notification when trying to quit app while recording
- Fixed "stop all recorders" when some stations are queued
- Added more options when rec. is paused because of connection type
- Fixed some bugs with "stopping record" etc.. status showing in st. list
- Browsing internet-radio.com should be a bit faster now
- Fixed a bug which caused freeze when adding station on rare occasions




May 03 2012
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- Android's media lib now shows "zRadio" and station name.
- In some rare cases you have to readd stations for new media lib system to work. If a station shows "RE-ADD" text in station list you have to delete the station and add it again for media lib adding to work correctly.
- Toggle "add recs to media lib" setting off and then back on from settings/recording settings to trigger an update to add existing recordings to media lib (if you want to use this feature). After that all new recordings will be added automatically.
- Station names should now be fetched automatically for all stations, send me a bug report if you find a station for which you have to input the name manually.
- Added link to discussion thread at XDA (about/help / discussion..)

April 27 2012
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- Ogg format streams pause/resume fixed.
- You have to add Ogg format stations again for the new Ogg fixes to work correctly.
- Improved bitrate detection.

Apr 20 2012
- Setting to add recordings to Android's media library (Settings / Recording / Add recs to media lib)
(They can be found in Artists / Unknown artist / streams / x). I will still improve this a lot, so that it shows station name etc.. right now it's just 1,2,3,..
- new version naming: for example "Apr 20 2012".
- Big fix for ogg streams coming in the near future

0.91.9 Alpha (April 5th 2012):
- Moved bug report button to about/help in app.
- Added send feedback / feature request button.
- Added reminder about reviewing the app.
- Added a settings wizard which goes through the main settings at first launch.
- Added option to set manual rec. only as global default for stations.

0.91.8 Alpha (March 23rd 2012):
** Added links to internet-radio.com so it's MUCH easier to add stations now

0.91.7 Alpha (March 21st 2012):
- fixed: Some dialogs don't show up on some devices (atleast HTC Wildfire S).

0.91.6 Alpha (March 19th 2012):
- "Station not recorded yet, playing next.." loop bug fixed.
- Mobile data enable question after adding station.

0.91.5 (March 17th 2012)
- Initial public release

Right now I'm working on converting the recordings to a suitable format for Android's media player. It's taking longer than I expected, but it's getting there I'm also fixing the OGG-format pause/resume problems, because they're kinda connected.

Other requests which are next in line:
- Force recording on 3G even if 3G is disabled in settings.
- Pick day of week for recording
- Multiple schedules per station (Also a list view for station's recordings where it's possible to delete recordings etc)
- UI polishing, gfx for dialogs,buttons etc..

Please post here if you posted a request in the old thread, I didn't have time to copy them before the thread was deleted. I went through my notification e-mails, but incase I missed something

benuli said:

I like your application. I want to write a EPG for my favorite Station and schedule recordings with it. Is it possible to use your app for that? Some Intent called with a URL, Starttime and duration, would be great!

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

I can implement this, but so that there's no misunderstanding, I haven't decided anything yet but I will probably release this as a paid app when it's ready, and some kind of lite/trial version. Meaning that if your EPG needs zRadio to record, people who use it would need to buy zRadio.

I might also implement some EPG system in the app itself, I have some ideas, but that is still long ways to go Just so that if I do it one day, it won't come as a surprise to you

Just an update if you're wondering why there haven't been any updates.

I think I got the Ogg pause/resume problem sorted out (related to converting recordings to play in Android's own media player). Anyway, I had to fix this at some point.

When there's a disconnection while recording ogg, the recording is playable only up to the disconnection point. I'll fix this next while I'm working on the Ogg stuff.

Looks like then finally adding the recordings to the music library _should_ be easy to implement

Wilkinsons said:

Hear this message, it！！！！！！！！！！！！！！

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Hmm, ok. If you send me a bug report or other feedback I'll see what I can do. I know the app is far from perfect (at the moment)

New update in Google Play. I added full changelog for all versions to first post.

The recordings can now be added to Android's media lib (Settings / Recording / Add recs to media lib). For now they're in Unknown artist / streams / x. Will improve this in the future

My "big Ogg project" is nearing completion, but I thought I'd do a smaller update release because the Ogg stuff will still take a while. I already know what I have to do, but I'll continue doing that next week. When I'm done with that Ogg streams should work too, right now pause/resume doesn't work, etc..

I started fixing the ogg stuff because it has some stuff in common with adding the files to media lib, but it turned out to take longer than I expected. Anyway it's getting there and it's good to have that fixed too.

Update

Update released. Changelog in first post.

All Ogg problems should be fixed now. That took quite long to implement, but now it's done

I also looked into getting the station names for all stations, but it didn't work like I thought it would so I'll continue that later.

I also started implementing a system so that Android's media lib would show artist "zRadio" and title "radio channel name". That's not ready yet, so it's not included in this release. Also when I implement multiple scheduling rules per station then it can show more info too.

Update

New update in Google Play. Changelog in first post.

Now Android's media lib should show artist "zRadio", album "zRadio" and song name [station name]. I can tweak those around how you users want them

Update

Mainly a bugfix release, added feature to temporarily allow mobile data.

Now the only request left is multiple schedules per station, and selecting weekdays, etc. I'll start that next week.

I've been receiving some bug reports via Android's own reporting system, which is good, but the problem with Android's own system is that it gives me very limited info and even a bigger problem is that I can't contact the user to debug and fix the problem. So if you encounter any freeze / crash / etc, please send me a bug report from zRadio, menu button / about/help. Thanks.

I fixed some problems that caused freezes / app not responding / etc, but there is still lots to be done for the UI.

I've been fixing some bugs which appear when SDCard is full or faulty. I'm also adding a feature which stops recording when battery is low. I still have to do some more testing with the changes before releasing update. Also I thought I'd change my releasing cycle so that I do new releases in the beginning of the week, so that if there is some urgent bug I can fix it during the week

I've also been planning how it would be best to implement the multiple schedules per station. I thought I'd fix the SDCard full/faulty bugs and add the battery low feature first.

Just thought I'd report here. Next update probably in the beginning of next week.

Update

Fixed bug which had been bugging me (better handling of faulty / full SDCard).

Also the app now stops recording automatically when battery is low.

Nothing else this time, I took a few days off to get some fresh ideas, and I've been planning the multiple rec schedule thing:
Something like this:
- It's called "Advanced schedule"/"rules"/something under station edit. It disables the normal recording settings for that station.
- A rule can repeat daily, hourly or weekly.
- Each rule is recorded in its own file. So each time the rule records, the previous recording of that rule is overwritten.
- If a station has multiple rules then a selection dialog is shown when station is clicked.
- Next / prev chan. buttons cycle through all recordings (station default recs and advanced rule recs)

Feedback is welcome, I'll start on that tomorrow.

Looks like settings shows the stop rec when battery low setting as off before you change it. It's actually enabled by default, but the settings shows it as being off.. The mysteries of Android's SDK, long story..

I'll fix it tomorrow.

Update

May 23 2012
- Fix settings screen showing some values wrong when opened for the first time. (Happened only on ICS?)
- Added current value as summary for max. rec bandwidth setting
- Unit fix Mbit/s -> Mibit/s

Now on with the advanced rec. rules..

Progress update

I've been working on the advanced rec rules, tweaking new graphics with the graphics designer and I have to make better error handling so that all error reports use my own logging system instead of Google's (I've received 2 error reports after May 11th, so atleast it seems there are very few serious bugs left .

Next update release target date Mon-Wed next week.