Beepforce United

🔉 Let's put that old PC speaker on your motherboard to use! 🎶

This is a project I worked on in my spare time at school back in 2010. The python script can play self-composed or transcribed songs on the tiny internal speaker/buzzer/beeper or whatever you want to call it which may or may not be present on your motherboard. (They are quite rare these days but if there is none the OS sometimes makes up for it by generating the sound via the sound card... Of course the real deal is way better 😄)

Requirements:

• Python 3 installed
• any Windows OS (I used the winsound module which provides Beep(frequency, duration) but feel free to contribute an alternative - I would be more than happy to see a platform-independent solution)

Features:

• 3 demo songs included!
• songs with multiple tracks
• frequency visualisation
• exporting tracks as standalone python script
• orchestration: client&server for parallel playback (hence: Beepforce United 😉)
• sorry, no english translation

First steps

Standalone

beepforce.py is the main script. It can load and play a song by itself and provides a server for centralised distribution. Once started you are presented with a terminal. You can list all commands by entering

>>> commands

and you can get further help with

>>> help [command]

Let's go for a song:

>>> load tetris.bfu
Analysiere Datei...
- Dateiformat: 6
- Musikstück: Tetris Theme, Type A
- Komponist: -
- Autor: Niko
- Einheitendauer (ms): 100
- Standardakzentuierung: t
- Oktavierung: 1
=> Datei geladen, 3 Tracks gefunden.

Three tracks were found and we chose the first one which is usually the lead melody:

>>> track 1
Verarbeite Spur 1...
Akzentuiere & optimiere Track...
=> Track konvertiert, 254 Noten und Pausen notiert.

This track consists of 254 notes and rests. If we played the song right now it would be executed sequentially which might sound a bit wonky because of the minor delay in between the execution of each line. Therefore you normally want to put these on a timeline meaning that by threaded execution the accuracy is greatly improved. A cut-off interval has to be specified to force pauses between notes - otherwise some speakers skip a few notes in rapid succession. 20 milliseconds tend to work well:

>>> timeline 20
Erstelle Timeline...
Verkürze Noten...
=> Timeline erstellt, 133 Objekte, Liedlänge 51.2sek, 12 Kürzungen

The song is about 52 seconds long and ready to be played - have fun!

>>> play
Quelle: Timeline
[ Musik starten mit Enter ]
...playing...

▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▒░ 1319 Hz
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...

Server mode

This is the real deal! You start the Beepforce United(:tm:) Server(:tm:) and a bunch of client computers can connect to it. In the server terminal you select a song, launch the "compilation" and initiate distribution. Once every client received its part you may start the countdown and let the party begin 😉

I will leave out the explanations this time as you can surely work everything out by yourself (commands is your friend and all server commands are interactive):

Server (beepforce.py)

>>> server
Starte Server an 192.168.0.42...

Client (beep_client.py)

Willkommen zum BEEPFORCE-Client! (V1.6)
[...]
Bitte Server-IP eingeben: 192.168.0.42
[ ENTER zum Verbinden ]
Kontaktiere Server...
Verbunden!
Warte auf Server...
Server: Bitte PC-Infos eingeben (optional) [ Bestätigen mit ENTER ]:
Hello World!
Sende Antwort...
Warte auf Server...
Server: Anmeldung erfolgreich! (1 Clienten online)
=> DIE KONTROLLE GEHT HIERMIT AN DEN SERVER ÜBER :)
Warte auf Server...

Server (beepforce.py)

server>>> setup

CLIENTEINSTELLUNGEN
Musik-Visualisierungen aktivieren (j/n): j
Versende Einstellungen...
Einstellungen geändert.

SERVEREINSTELLUNGEN
Countdown in Sekunden: 5

server>>> send
Datei: tetris.bfu
Analysiere Datei...
- Dateiformat: 6
- Musikstück: Tetris Theme, Type A
- Komponist: -
- Autor: Niko
- Einheitendauer (ms): 100
- Standardakzentuierung: t
- Oktavierung: 1
=> Datei geladen, 3 Tracks gefunden.
Notenabstand in ms: 20

Distributionsmodus
   0: manuelle Trackauswahl
   1: jeden Track möglichst einmal versenden
   2: Tracks gleichmäßig an alle Clienten
Modus wählen: 2
Letzter Verbindungscheck...

*** Client 1 ***
IP: 192.168.0.42
Angemeldet: 2014-12-15 19:38:40.093458
Infos: Hello World!

=> Client 1 an 192.168.0.42 ("Hello World!")
   bekommt Track 1
Verarbeite Spur 1...
Akzentuiere & optimiere Track...
=> Track konvertiert, 254 Noten und Pausen notiert.
Erstelle Timeline...
Verkürze Noten...
=> Timeline erstellt, 133 Objekte, Liedlänge 51.2sek, 12 Kürzungen
Übertrage Daten...
Track übertragen.

################################
=> DISTRIBUTION ABGESCHLOSSEN <=
################################

server>>> tcp_launch
Latenz in Millisekunden: 0
[ Mit Enter Startsequenz einleiten ]
Initialisiere Startsequenz für TCP-Launch...
Sende Startsignal....
=> Startsignal gesendet!

Client (beep_client.py)

[...]
Übertrage Daten...
Transfer abgeschlossen, 133 Timelineobjekte empfangen
Warte auf Server...
TCP-Launch initialisiert, warte auf Startschuss vom Server...
Warte auf Server...
...playing...

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...

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=> Abspielen beendet.
Warte auf Server...