Pi2 Design Idiot-Proof Ready-To-Go RPi/AES Streamer

If your unit has not yet shipped, you won’t have any issues with any cards. If it was already shipped, but after 30 December, again, no issues.

In any case, the Samsung ultra should boot even without the fix.

 

I've had my Mercury V2 for a few days now. When the Mercury's HDMI is connected to my PC monitor, it will display the boot up process with lines of text. The last line of text will tell you that "RoPieee is running" then "Welcome" splash screen then the display will fade to black. I've read that you can connect to the 7-inch Raspberry Pi Touchscreen hardware to display Roon’s current status. I like to check this out in the future.

If you installed the RoPieee image properly onto the provided Samsung SD card, Roon should find the Mercury almost immediately. You just need to enable it within Roon's Settings|Audio then select it as your active audio zone.

When I was updating the RoPieee to the lastest version, I've discovered some interesting things that you may encounter. My first attempt made the RoPieee unboot-able. I was able to resolve this, but I can't remember the steps to achieve a bootable SD card with the latest update. During this ordeal, I re-imaged Pi2Design's RoPieee multiple times onto the provide 32GB Samsung EVO Plus SD card. The results with RoPieee are below:


- The SD card is not boot-able. You can not access the configuration website nor ping its IP address. This was a rare occurrence.

- The SD card is boot-able. You can access the RoPieee's configuration website and check its various settings. Roon displays Mercury in its Settings|Audio section (music will stream), but after a reboot/power-off Mercury is no longer visible to Roon's Settings|Audio. It does appear in Roon's Settings|About as a Bridge. RoPieee setting's remain unchanged though. This remains true after multiple power cycles. In short no music will be streamed after a power off. The webpage power-off and hardware on/off button made no difference.

-The SD card is boot-able. You can access the configuration website and check its various settings. Mercury is not visible in anywhere in Roon's settings. Pi2Design's RoPieee default settings remain unchanged. This remains true after multiple power cycles.

- The SD card is boot-able after multiple power cycles. It works as expected. Once I achieved this, I immediately cloned the SD card onto a 64GB Samsung EVO Plus SD card. I noticed that the provided SD card is marked discontinued on BHVidio's website.

As a side note, a successful re-image of Pi2Design's Volumio and Moode yields a success boot and music streaming player. When you power the Mercury off then restart it, the SD card no longer boot-able only a black screen is visible on my monitor.

I have another Samsung SD card on order. I going to repeat what I did on a new card. I will post my results.

 

Hey AkaiMango

Thanks for the incredibly detailed response. This will save a lot of time thinking"I'm doing something wrong". When in fact it might just be the ability for the MercV2 to respond/engage. It really appears as a hit-or-miss scenario.

I was picking up a Samsung Evo from Amazon but realised it was a Sandisk Ultra (easy to get confused) so cancelled it before it shipped. But now I've read the issue is fixed and it doesn't matter which card (I do enjoy this hobby)
I know Mike is busy sending out pre-orders, but maybe he can chime in and confirm whether this is a good idea to use the latest version OS from the Roopiee Site or alternatively use the Roopiee Image from his Pi2 site instead. (I will be connecting the Merc V2 to Pontus II via I2S only)

 

Yes, Mike, mine shipped out on the 31st Dec and arrives tomorrow in Australia

 

Yep. would have nothing to do with Volumio, much less paying for a subscription for 3 months if not for the Pi2AES, and the fact that the Mercurys ship with Volumio exponentially increases the chance that people who buy one will pay them simply for Tidal Connect. Petty, but also dumb move on their part.

Edit: didn't realize I was replying to a post from 6 pages back, my apologies.

 

Hi All,

my Samsung Evo plus 32GB card just arrived (same model as the one that come with the unit) and I quickly tried it with Picoreplayer and it works without any issue.

BTW Michael when is the v2 manual available? I am trying to study the I2S dipswitch settings with my terminator dac. Wants to make sure its not running out of phase with the clock settings.

ck

 

I definitely need to update the manual to reflect a few changes from V1 to V2. However, the switches are fairly easy to figure out as they are labeled as to which signal is controlled by which switch. When the switch is off, the polarity is the normal V1 polarity. When the switch is on the polarity is flipped.

in any case, it’s a good reminder and I will get on it today.

 

I am running Tidal connect on stock Paspbian OS, without any audio patches. Those online instructions on how to install do work. No subscription needed.

 

Hi all,

On the Mercury V2, I been trying to configure RoPieee's wi-fi, and the following is displayed when I select apply:

Your changes to the configuration are saved.
To make this new configuration active you need to
run CONFIGURE.


​

Where is this "configure" located?

Also the MAC address for the wi-fi reads unknown. Configuring the wi-fi should be straight forward, but I think must have overlooked something.

​

I'm not sure if the images will display. Thanks in advance. I don't think I have permission to add images since I'm new. Are imgur URLs permitted?

 

The images don’t show.
The Configure button appears on the top right, under the Ropieee header section.

 

I checked on three web browser and that Configure button does not appear under the RoPieee header. I'm at a loss.

 

After tapping on Apply, a pink bar with red CONFIGURE button should appear.

Also, when you tap on Enable Wireless, it doesn't automatically switch to the Wireless tab. Make sure you open the Wireless tab and enter your information.

 

Thank you for the image. Apparently my home network setup did not allow that configure button to appear. I also resolved the issue with the MAC address not appearing in the Wireless section. I had to enable 2.4 GHz on my access point. I guess its better for both 2.4 and 5 GHz to be enabled.

 

Inch by Inch! Shipping 14 tomorrow leaves 16 back orders. Might even get them all out this week! But next Monday definitely.
As always, thanks for the tremendous support and patience.

 

My Mercury shipped on 12/30 in the AM so I was expecting there to be issues with using other cards. Just for kicks, I just tried an old SanDisk Ultra I had lying around. Used the Volumio image from the Pi2D website and everything loaded fine on the Mercury. Go figure. Of course, the original Samsung Evo Plus card that came with the Mercury works just fine.

A few early notes from my install:

1. USB SSD drives gave me problems with needed power, but USB flash drives did not. The latter do work but are indeed slow.
2. NVME is the way to go, and one of the key benefits of the Mercury. I used the instructions in post #587 above to mount a NVME in Volumio. Easy. Works great. Thank you for that post!
3. Using a LPS will reduce noise from the SMPS to below what my analog meter can measure (or maybe in my setup, I should try using a ground wire as mentioned in Goldensound's review of the Mercury V1).
4. Real nice having all of the available outputs on the Mercury.

Thanks, Michael.

 

A few question for others using the Mercury:

If I want to turn off the USB ports completely because I will only be using the NVME for file storage, do I just remove the instruction "dtoverlay=dwc2,dr_mode=host" from the userconfig.txt file?

Also, what is the best way to turn off the outputs I'm not using (say, the Toslink, BNC, and 2 HDMI outputs)? Or maybe these are questions for Linux not Mercury?

Thanks.

 

Removing that dtoverlay line would disable host mode. Note that you would need to also remove it from config.txt.

As for the outputs they are always on as long as the hifiberry driver is loaded. You can not selectively enable/disable them.

 

Good news, able to finish install Moode and setup Roonbridge on Mercury V2. However, the NVME still not available.

I went to check on post 597 and I am still struck. If anyone got some pointer would be greatly appreciated.

 

I'm far from an expert, but I think you're missing a space.

This:

sudo mount/dev/nvme0n1p2/ mnt/SDCARD

instead of this:

sudo mount/dev/nvme0n1p2/mnt/SDCARD

Also, I believe the "ext4" in one of the commands in post 597 should be changed in your case because it looks like your drive is formatted in NTFS. For example, I would use "vfat" instead of "ext4" because my drive is formatted in FAT32. I would also check to see if NTFS works with Moode because, in the past, NTFS used to cause issues with Linux based systems. Not sure about now.

 

Thanks for the catch. However, still no go. I do know ext4 is what Linux is primarily format that could be the issue.