Remotely hosted radio station lists for Sharpfin media server

24th August 2022

From version 2.1 of the Sharpfin media server for Reciva radios remotely hosted lists of radio stations can be browsed on the radio. This gives a very similar experience to before Reciva closed down. This page describes the format of the remotely hosted lists for people interested in providing a list of stations. The first lists are being supplied by www.radiofeeds.co.uk.

For the lists to transfer correctly to the radio they must be hosted on a http web address (not an https address). The format of the list must follow the example below.

#EXTM3U
#EXTGRP:BBC Local stations
#EXTINF:Radio Stoke
http://stream.live.vc.bbcmedia.co.uk/bbc_radio_stoke
#EXTINF:Radio Suffolk
http://stream.live.vc.bbcmedia.co.uk/bbc_radio_suffolk
#EXTINF:Radio Wiltshire
http://stream.live.vc.bbcmedia.co.uk/bbc_radio_wiltshire
#EXTINF:Radio WM
http://stream.live.vc.bbcmedia.co.uk/bbc_wm
#EXTINF:Radio York
http://stream.live.vc.bbcmedia.co.uk/bbc_radio_york
#EXTGRP:BBC National stations
#EXTINF:Radio 1
http://stream.live.vc.bbcmedia.co.uk/bbc_radio_one
#EXTINF:Radio 2
http://stream.live.vc.bbcmedia.co.uk/bbc_radio_two
#EXTINF:Radio 3
http://stream.live.vc.bbcmedia.co.uk/bbc_radio_three
#EXTINF:Radio 4
http://stream.live.vc.bbcmedia.co.uk/bbc_radio_fourfm

The specification is:

• The list must start with the tag #EXTM3U on a line by itself
• The second line should be the name of the first group of stations. This may be stations in a similar region, or stations of a similar genre, etc
  
• The group name must start with the tag #EXTGRP: followed by the group name. The name can have up to 50 characters. The characters allowed are A-Z (upper and lower case), 0-9, _ (underscore), - (dash), and spaces. Inclusion of any other characters will cause the group name to be truncated at the first disallowed character.
  
• Stations are then added in two line pairs
• First line: #EXTINF: followed by the station name. Station names can use any standard visible ASCII character plus spaces. The name can be up to 240 characters long. Characters with accents or other characters outside the basic ASCII set are not supported and will lead to the name being truncated if they are included.
  
• Second line: The URL for the stations, which should start with http or https. If possible use http as this consumes less CPU on the radio allowing higher bitrates without buffering issues.
  
• Further groups can be added to break the list up by region or genre etc.
  
• Total list size must be less than 300kB
  
• Lists with up to around 1000 stations will process successfully on the radio. More than this number may lead to slower radio start up.
  

Adding external feeds to the radio

The External station feeds section in the lower part of the station management screen on the radio web interface allows up to 5 external radio station feeds to be added to the radio. When browsing stations using the onboard media server these will appear under the +Feeds menu entry.

Source code

The processing of external station feeds is undertaken by the remote-m3u program which is separate from the main media server. The remote-m3u process runs at radio power on, downloading and then unpacking external station lists into a memory based temporary file system on the radio (nothing is written to the main radio storage). The media server then reads the stations in the same way it reads locally stored station lists. External station data is cleared when the radio is switched off. For the initial release of remote-m3u the data can only be refreshed by switching the radio off then on again.

As with any Sharpfin modifications to the radio the remote-m3u program comes with no warranty and you proceed at your own risk. remote-m3u takes care to filter data coming into the radio from external station feeds, but you should still take care to select feeds only from sources you trust.