Overview
TealPlay (Figure 1) is an open-source (MIT licensed) media center application that can play audio and video files. It supports a locally-hosted media library, which can be used in offline/off-grid applications. Since TealPlay does not send out any data, it is also private. One can use TealPlay to watch a video without being watched by a video hosting platform. In a post-disaster scenario, TealPlay could deliver an organized library of instructional and/or entertainment content.
Audio Visualization
This project is jointly mentored with Prof. Megan Hickman Fulp.
One major feature that is still lacking in TealPlay is support for proper audio visualizations when playing music. There appears to be a way to decode the audio file programmatically in Qt for Python, which is the GUI framework that TealPlay uses. However, the resulting data from the decode will be in the form of raw bytes. In order to visualize the audio, Fast Fourier Transforms (FFTs) will be required to extract frequency data. From there, other mathematical algorithms and graphics programming techniques will be needed to generate the visualizations.
Metadata Editor
Another useful feature for TealPlay would be to add library management support. Library entries in TealPlay use sidecar files (in the NFO or a custom INI format) to store metadata about the associated audio/video files. At the moment, a third-party application like MediaElch must be used to add metadata to the library. It would be helpful instead to be able to edit the library from within TealPlay, particularly when building media libraries of lesson, tutorial, and other instructional content.
Radio Tuner Support
TealPlay already has support for TV tuning on Linux systems using the dvbv5-zap command-line program to set up the tuner. Radio support could be added (again, primarily on Linux platforms) by adding functionality to use inexpensive RTL-SDR tuners. With minimal hardware, TealPlay could support the FM broadcast band, NOAA weather radio, and 2-meter amateur radio. Additional hardware could enable the AM broadcast band, shortwave, and other amateur radio bands. It would even be possible to download weather satellite images from NOAA using the correct hardware and antenna.