Welcome to Coherence

-- Newsflash -- Stable version: 0.6.6.1. Development version: 0.6.7 (svn)

Content

  1. News
  2. What is it?
    1. For Users
    2. For Application Developers
  3. Current State
  4. Supported Devices
  5. Download
  6. Documentation & Hacking
  7. Contact and Discussion
  8. History
  9. License
  10. Dependencies
  11. Variety
  12. Publicity



News

December 22, 2009
December 20, 2009
Oktober 2009
June 19, 2009
May 19, 2009
May 12, 2009
April 23, 2009
February 24, 2009
February 23, 2009

older news...



What is it?

For Users

Coherence offers a toolkit including:

  • a DLNA/UPnP MediaServer stand-alone application, which exports local/home or online media files via its backends to other UPnP clients.
  • an audio/video DLNA/UPnP Media renderer stand-alone application, based on the GStreamer framework (early stages).
  • Cadre: an image DLNA/UPnP Media renderer stand-alone application, to be used as a picture frame.
  • Mirabeau: a standalone UPnP bridge application, to share your UPnP content between two or more local networks over the Internet (work in progress).
  • The Inspector: a UPnP Device and Service analyzer/debugger tool, which can also be used as a UPnP control-point.
  • Plugins or extensions for other applications to open them to the UPnP world, thanks to the framework (either as media servers, control points or renderers). This includes Totem, Nautilus, Eye Of Gnome, Rythmbox, Banshee, Elisa, amarok...

The toolkit is known to work on various Linux flavors, BSD, (Open)Solaris and Windows. It can be installed either as a standard python source-code download or through various OS-specific packages.

For Application Developers

Developers get a framework written in Python with an emerging DBus API. This framework is designed to automate all UPnP-related tasks as much as possible and enable applications to participate in digital living networks, primarily the UPnP universe.

The core framework of Coherence provides:

  • an SSDP server
  • an MSEARCH client
  • server and client for HTTP/SOAP requests
  • server and client for Event Subscription and Notification (GENA)
  • A device implementation dock

UPnP device implementations are pluggable. For instance, we can pick the MediaServer device and plug it into the core. Or attach the MediaRenderer device. Or attach both, or two MediaServers and a ControlPoint - this is the point where one of Coherence's particular features kicks in.

This probably makes more sense if we look at how UPnP devices are implemented within Coherence. On one side of the device we have the connectors to the core, but on the other side there is a dock for a backend to be plugged in. So a device implementation is generally a simple translation map between the the core and its backend.

As an example, a MediaServer connects to the core via the ContentDirectory and ConnectionManager services and bridges them to a filesystem backend. Or bridges them - let's say - to a less skimpy one, the MediaStore? of a MediaCenter exposing its content in a way already presorted by album, artist, genre,...etc.

More information is available in the Architectural Overview.

Current State

At the moment Coherence is primarily focused on the UPnP A/V devices but any other UPnP device can be addressed, too. Such as a Lighting Controls bridge to EIB home-automation.

The core itself is fairly complete and can be used on its own for debugging purposes.

Supported Devices

Here is a list of devices which have been reported to work with Coherence. Please keep us informed about your devices.

Download

  • Binary packages are available for various environments: they are listed on the packages page
  • Alternatively, there is an entry in the CheeseShop enabling you to install and upgrade with easy_install: easy_install Coherence
  • The source tarball for the current stable version is available here
  • Source checkouts via Subversion are possible too:
    • current stable release: svn co https://coherence.beebits.net/svn/tags/Coherence-0.6.6.1 Coherence
    • current development: svn co https://coherence.beebits.net/svn/trunk/Coherence Coherence

Documentation & Hacking

For information about installation and using Coherence with(in) your application and writing backends and plugins, please visit the DocumentationDepartment and the slowly growing list of SupportedDevices.

There are also some posts about Coherence in my blog, these will sooner or later get incorporated into this site.

Contact and Discussion

  • Please add your bug-reports, suggestions, patches or comments as tickets to this trac instance
  • You may also add your feature requests here
  • You need to register first, to reduce spam
  • Developers and users usually hang around on

IRC: irc://irc.freenode.net/#coherence or irc://irc.freenode.net/#moovida

  • There are two mailing-list for Coherence:

For searching the history of the coherence-dev mailing list you can use nabble.

Frank Scholz, the lead developer of Coherence, can be reached at dev@coherence-project.org.

History

Coherence has its roots in the work of

License

Coherence is licensed under the MIT license.

Dependencies

Variety

There are other projects that are similar to Coherence or provide related functions, such as a dedicated UPnP MediaServer implementation. They are listed on the Resources page.

Publicity