Asterisk Jukebox, "Tape Cartridge" Player, & Wizard

Asterisk Jukebox & "Tape Cartridge" Player is a pair of scripts that provides a jukebox like interface for playing songs/albums stored on the server, as well as logic to perform this playback.

Asterisk Jukebox Wizard (AJW) is a shell script for generating the dialplan that interfaces with the player logic. It was formally it's own project, but has been merged in to this one.

About

Asterisk Jukebox & Player consist of two basic dialplans:

• a common set of logic for playback called from a jukebox interface
• a jukebox interface dialplan for music/album selection

There is no reason you cannot use the player outside of a jukebox, provided you set all the variables and call the proper extensions in it's context.

tapecart-player.conf is provided as it's own .conf file. It should go without saying you only need to include this file in your extensions.conf. If you run a big flat extensions.conf, then you probably already know to copy/paste it in.

Tracks are selected using a 4-digit code that consists of album number and track number. Track "00" is special and will play the full album from the beginning. During album playback; repeat, skip, and back controls are provided. Pressing "0" will also take you back to the main menu.

Playback logic uses internal counters to request files. This requires your files contain ONLY a track number, with or without leading zero. Only two digits for a maximum of 99 tracks are supported. Playback logic's context is called using extension pattern matching which dictates leading zero behavior and passes information required for stand-alone playback routine to take over.

How To Use/Setup

Asterisk Jukebox depends heavily on your files being stored in a specific way; each album is it's own folder, all filenames are track numbers, and the jukebox folder lives in Asterisk's sounds directory.

/var/lib/asterisk/sounds/en/(optionalfolder)/jukeboxroot/album/[(0)1-99].ulaw

Include tapecart-player.conf (or tryinclude), or it's contents, in to your extensions.conf.

tapecart-player.conf provides two contexts:

• [cart-player] - provides single track playback
• [8track-player] - provides album playback

For both contexts, the following variables will need to be set before sending a channel to them:

• c - the context you are sending from (used for returning from player)
• aa - the path relative to your asterisk sounds directory your files live.

Both contexts use pattern matching extensions to select behavior as well as pass information.

[cart-player]

#X - with X being 1 - 9 for files without leading zeros
*XX - with XX being all tracks > 10 or with leading zeros

[8track-player]

#XX - with XX being the number of tracks plus one. files without leading 0.
*XX - with XX being the same as above, but files with leading 0. 

The idea is to keep the 4-digit leading zero code compatible with files that don't have leading zeros. Originally I just forced leading zeros. But, naturally; setting a variable to "01" and adding one to it results in "2", which is not equal to "02" and causes playback to fail. Some of the logic for cart-player is done at the jukebox dialplan for dealing with lack of leading zeros; because sometimes you EXTEN:-2 and sometimes you want to EXTEN:-1.

By design, one would be generating entry extension/contexts using the wizard. But it is possible to use it manually with the above information.

Asterisk Jukebox Wizard (ajw) HOWTO

The script will automatically generate a dialplan for a full jukebox. The script has two methods of operation:

• interactive: ./ajw.sh
• non-interactive: `./ajw.sh name relative/jukeboxfolder introfile outrofile number-of-loops [loop-delay volume]

You don't have to enter the loop-delay or volume arguments if you don't want; but if you want to specify a volume, you have to specify a loop delay. Use 0 delay in this case.

The automatic nature of the script does require your folder/files to already be in place. By default, the script looks in /var/lib/asterisk/sounds/en for what you specify to be the jukebox root. If they are one directory deeper in your default sounds; you can specify that in the configuration. Examples:

• /var/lib/asterisk/sounds/en/jukeboxroot/albums - All jukeboxes live in $asd
• /var/lib/asterisk/sounds/en/astjuke/jukeboxroot/albums - Jukebox root live under another folder (in this case, astjuke/)

You can modify the location of your Asterisk Sounds directory by modifying the asd= line at the beginning of the script.

Once the files are in place and you have read access, run the script and answer the prompts:

"Pick a name/identifier for this jukebox:" - name used for dialplan context

"Enter the folder your jukebox roots live under:" - if your roots live under another 
folder (because network mount/symlink), enter it here. Blank means no addtional path.

"Enter the root folder name of your jukebox:" - folder in sounds that contain
all your albums

"Enter the filename of your menu/intro:" - name of file played when answered.
lives in juke root.

"How many times do you want it to play?" - how many times to play the intro
before hanging up

"How many seconds between intro play?" - how many seconds between intro
 playback

"Enter the filename of your exit file:" - name of file played before hangup.
lives in juke root.

"Enter A Channel Volume:" - Tell the Volume function to set a volume. Defaults to -3

The script now automatically enumerates sub-folders, counts tracks, determines leading zero, and writes the appropiate dialplan. You must prefix your folders with numbers if you want to ensure they are a specific order.

Make sure the conf file is included in your extensions.conf somehow; the same for tapecart-player.conf.

[globals]
#include $name-juke.conf

Then it's just a matter of directing a call to it's context (usually s,$name-juke)

Using The Jukebox

When you dial the extension you're greeted with your intro file. You then need to enter a 4 digit code comprised of the album and track number:

1234
| |_________Track number
|___________Album number

Track number "00" is special and when entered, will play the entire album back from the beginning. In album playback, the following controls affect playback:

• 1 - skips back a track
• 2 - repeats the current track
• 3 - skips ahead a track

At the end of the album, or at any time during playback; pressing 0 returns to the main menu.

Single track playback returns to the main menu at the end of the track, or by pressing 0.

History

24-SEP-2022: Script now takes arguments for even faster creation.
22-SEP-2022: Merge ajw repo. Make script pass shellcheck. 
21-SEP-2022: Add some sanitization. Broke repositories. Fixed 'em.
14-AUG-2022: Fix cartplayer extension fallthrough. Add HOWTHISWORKS.MD. Added ajw.sh
06-MAY-2022: Update Readme. Add conf/examples. 
05-MAY-2022: Initial Commit to self-hosted git.

Explanation of Operation

A full breakdown is in HOWTHISWORKS.MD

License

Asterisk Jukebox
Copyright (C) 2022 Jay Moore - nq4tango@gmail.com

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program.  If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.