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Visualizer support object and binary data types#28

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Aircoookie wants to merge 11 commits intoSendspin:mainfrom
Aircoookie:visualizer-details
Open

Visualizer support object and binary data types#28
Aircoookie wants to merge 11 commits intoSendspin:mainfrom
Aircoookie:visualizer-details

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@Aircoookie
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This is an initial draft of the proposed visualizer type specification, including the visualizer_support JSON object, as well as the binary message data type definitions.

Feedback is highly appreciated!

Updated the visualizer support object structure and binary type details.
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Hi @Aircoookie!

Thanks for the PR, sorry for taking so long to respond to you.

I have some suggestions on the architecture:

Splitting into multiple roles instead of tag-value encoding

Instead of a single visualizer role with tag-value encoded binary messages, I think it would be cleaner to split this into separate roles: visualize_beats, visualize_loudness, visualize_highest_amplitude, visualize_spectrum.

Benefits:

  • Each role would have its own binary message type (we have 44 reserved message IDs for new roles)
  • No need for tag-value encoding - the message format would be self-describing based on the message type
  • Clients can still subscribe only to the specific visualizations they need
  • Future-proofing: with PR #42, each visualization type can be versioned independently (e.g., visualize_spectrum@v2) without affecting the others

The only drawback I can think of is a slight overhead from receiving more WebSocket messages instead of bundled data - maybe resulting in at most 100 extra bytes per second, which isn't worth worrying about IMO.

Redundant bin count in Spectrum data

For the Spectrum/FFT data, the leading byte containing the bin count n seems redundant:

  • The client already knows n_disp_bins from the stream/start message
  • With separate roles, the client can calculate it from the WebSocket message length

Other than that, looks good to me!

maximmaxim345 added a commit to Sendspin/aiosendspin that referenced this pull request Mar 19, 2026
…_r1`) (#163)

Implement the `visualizer@_draft_r1` role ([spec PR
#28](Sendspin/spec#28)).

Fully implements the draft visualizer spec except:
- **Beats** (`beat` type / message type 17): beat extraction and sending
are not yet implemented.
- **Frame batching**: `batch_max` is negotiated in `client/hello` and
echoed in `stream/start`, but the server always sends one frame per
binary message.
- **`stream/request-format`**: acknowledged and logged but ignored
(matches spec where request-format is still marked as TODO).

Also refactors role support spec registration out of `connection.py`
into the role registry, so each role family self-registers its support
parser.

`numpy` is now a required dependency (was optional) so that clients can
depend on the visualizer role being available.
maximmaxim345 added a commit to Sendspin/sendspin-cli that referenced this pull request Mar 25, 2026
## Summary
Adds a real-time frequency spectrum visualizer to the TUI, rendered
below the info panels.
While the final `visualizer` role isn't part of the Sendspin Spec yet.
This uses the first WIP version of the role (with role id
`visualizer@_draft_r1`) from [this
PR](Sendspin/spec#28), available in Music
Assistant 2.8.

The spectrum and loudness data is computed on the server, and then sent
through the Sendspin protocol.

Toggle it by pressing the `v` key.

## Screenshot

<img width="2424" height="1046" alt="image"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/fa8ca719-1046-4e14-b57e-20d70b2025a9"
/>

---------

Co-authored-by: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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2 participants