morningstreams

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This project is the successor of the simple script morniningstream.py.

Sometimes I want to watch acestream on my computer and sometimes on my TV (with LG WebOS) so I came up with the following solution which suited to both circumstances. I expose a m3u8 playlist on my local network which streams point to a running acestream engine using acestream HTTP API.

I decided to automate the whole process of starting a morningstreams stream in a single python CLI program. It can be run on macOS and on raspberry pi.

⬇️ Installation

pipx install morningstreams

pipx is similar to pip but it is better suited to install CLI python application like morningstreams. I suggest you to take a look, otherwise you can still use your favorite package manager (e.g. pip).

⚡ Usage

• You need a morningstreams account
• A VPN is suggest but not necessary (install VPN on RPI)

I develop and test this program on macOS (Intel processor with Big Sur) and on Raspberry Pi (Raspberry Pi 3 Model B with Raspbian 11).

If you are on macOS Docker must be run it the background while using this program.

To install the acestream engine use

morningstreams install

This operation is required to be run only the first time. You can run it again if you want to reinstall acestream engine (on raspberry you likely need a reboot and the run morningstreams install again).

Authenticate with

morningstreams login

This command will ask to input your morningstreams credentials and store them for the future. If you don't want to type the credentials you can provide them using MORNINGSTREAMS_USERNAME and MORNINGSTREAMS_PASSWORD environment variables (Even if you use env vars you must run morningstreams login).

Run the acestream engine in the background, get streams from morningstreams and expose m3u8 playlist on your local network with

morningstreams run

Ctrl+C quit the program in a clean manner.

Options

The Command Line Interface (CLI) is pretty minimal; when in doubt just use --help. Here are some examples

$ morningstreams --help

Usage: morningstreams [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

  Expose acestreams from morningstreams in you local network.
  Source code: https://github.com/S1M0N38/morningstreams

Options:
  --help  Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  install  Install acestream engine
  login    Login and store credentials for furture logins
  logout   Delete login credentials if exists
  run      Expose streams on your local network
  status   Show login status

$ morningstreams run --help

Usage: morningstreams run [OPTIONS]

  Expose streams on your local network

Options:
  --ip TEXT               Ip where playlist is exposed.  [default: 127.0.0.1]
  --port INTEGER          Port where playlist is exposed.  [default: 8080]
  --server / --no-server  Expose playlist.m3u8.  [default: server]
  --engine / --no-engine  Start acestream engine.  [default: engine]
  --help                  Show this message and exit.

📺 Watch the streams

Suppose that the program is running and exposing the playlist at http://192.168.178.101:8080/playlist.m3u8 (I was able to specify the ip using the --ip option). Every device in you local network visiting this address will see the playlist. I can watch streams with:

• a TV with LG WebOS thanks to F-Player
• a computer using a video player which support HTTP Live Stream protocol

On computer I use mpv with some options

mpv --no-resume-playback --rebase-start-time=no\
    --cache=no --cache-pause-wait=3 --audio-buffer=0\
    --stream-buffer-size=4k --pause=no\
    http://192.168.178.101:8080/playlist.m3u8

Just use an alias in your .zshrc/.bashrc to avoid to type this all the time: alias f1="mpv --no-resume-play...".

🔧 How it works

┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━morningstreams━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃                                                        ┃
┃                                      GET acestream ids ┃
┃                   ┌─────────────┐──────────────────────╋─────▶┌────────────────────────┐
┃                   │   client    │                      ┃      │ api.morningstreams.com │
┃                   └─────────────┘◀─────────────────────╋──────└────────────────────────┘
┃                          │           acestream ids     ┃
┃                          │                             ┃
┃                  generate playlist                     ┃
┃                          │                             ┃GET playlist.m3u8
┃ server───────────────────┼────────────────────────┐◀───╋─────────────────┌──────────────┐
┃ │                        ▼                        │    ┃                 │ video player │
┃ │ ┏━playlist.m3u8━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓ │────╋────────────────▶└──────────────┘
┃ │ ┃ #EXTM3U                                     ┃ │    ┃playlist.m3u8                   ▲
┃ │ ┃ #EXTINF:-1, Server 1                        ┃ │    ┃                        stream  │
┃ │ ┃ http://[--ip]:[--port]/ace/getstream?id=13f…┃ │    ┃                                │
┃ │ ┃ #EXTINF:-1, Server 2 (backup)               ┃ │    ┃ ┌────────────────────────┐     │
┃ │ ┃ http://[--ip]:[--port]/ace/getstream?id=3e8…┃ │    ┃ │    acestream engine    │     │
┃ │ ┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛ │    ┃ │   (wrapped in docker   │     │
┃ └─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘    ┃ │container if necessary) │◀────┘
┃                                                        ┃ │                        │
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛ └────────────────────────┘

☑️ TODOs

• Explain how it works
• Healthcheck while stream is running
• Option to automatically start player
• Weekend schedule