Raspberry Pi troubleshooting and configuration instructions for complete f'ing morons

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First of all, cudos to Azimuth! I have been hacking away with Picoreplayer for years and, with that guide, I had the smoothest install that I have ever had.

Just one note that might be helpful. It appears that you can't get to the Moode GUI using the Duck Duck Go browser. It happily loads the Moode logo, but does nothing else. After beating my head against this problem for a while, I tried connecting with the Chrome browser and BINGO! Tomorrow I will work my way through the set up.

 

Thank you. I actually kind of like Picore Player and it does sound excellent and very flexible depending on setup or how you want to use it. The big issue I had with it is that you can’t jut turn off the Pi or pull the power. You have to shut it down first, otherwise it corrupts the SD card and you have to re-flash. Very annoying because our power goes out at least 4 times a year if not more because of storms or just because a transformer blew in the neighborhood. Unless get a UPS.

Some browsers do have issue with moode.local. Just know it is not https, just http://moode.local. Some phones will also have issues with this. It should work though using the direct IP address. There are several ways of finding using IP scanning software or if you can get to moode.local, just go to the System settings and then click m again and click System Info and it will list the direct IP. Also, http, not https.



I then usually open the IP on my iPhone in Safari and then Add to Homescreen to make it easy to control through my phone.

 

And as promised, the video:

 

Decided to give moode another go, thanks for the guides to get it all set up.

I stopped using it because the library kept resetting. Hopefully the later versions have fixed this bug as I liked the interface in general.

 

You are very welcome! Not the best GUI, but it works pretty well and it sounds the best to me and pretty flexible and also free.

 

For the Picoreplayer, pulling the plug is only an issue if you are running the server on that Pi. Since most people run a single system that is a real issue.

To bring my Moode experience full circle, with Azimuth's guide, I found it easy to install and set up. It is also very pretty, but their idea of multi-room is not what I am used to. You need a separate Pi for the server and they won't let you use "audiophile" features which means Redbook or any hi-rez is not available (at least per their documentation). I have 4 systems in my house, so that makes Moode unworkable.

Picoreplayer is not as pretty and you can get lost in the setup, but it does sound good and lets me fine tune to my preference. And, of course, it does multi-room up to 192 kHz on all players. So I guess I'm still a Picoreplayer guy.

 

I have a stand alone Linux server that all of my files are on that could also double as the main server and then the Pi is just the endpoint. I have never done that and that would make the setup even worse and still does not solve for when the power goes out the server becoming corrupt, without a UPS of course.

Correct. moOde uses the Opus CODEC (whatever that is) and changes everything to 16/48. Not quite the way I envisioned this feature as well, but Tim uses anything that has a free license. So yes, a limitation for sure.

I agree that the setup is bonkers, but it does have really good SQ. Probably a notch above moOde. And you can control it with Sqeezebox.

 

I have several Ubuntu Server boxes with 4TB SSD for Roon server and data replication. They've lost power multiple times over the years. Nothing ever got corrupted on power losses.

 

It’s not any Linux based distro, only Picoreplayer loaded on a Pi.

 

Opus is the successor to Vorbis, brought to you by the same organization (Xiph). It’s supposed to be very good, but did not seem to get much traction probably because of Vorbis’ existing market share.

 

I have been thinking about this. Is the server corruption in the Picoreplayer part of the server or is it in LMS? There are LMS distro's for Linux and Windows. If you used LMS on your Linux server, could you connect to Picoreplayers? I'm not sure, but I think so. Without proof, I think any Squeezelite player or LMS server would be seen by Materialskin or whatever you are user GUI you are using to control the system. Assuming all of this is true, would LMS on a Linux server be immune from program corrouption with power loss? Not that any of this is worth dicking around with since you have Moode working for you.

Another thing I was considering for myself. A UPS for a Windows desktop is large and rather expensive. But a Raspberry Pi uses less than an amp, even at load. Most of my power outages are short. USB battery packs are cheap and I think all I would need is a relay and a diode to disconnect the wall power supply when the power goes down. The USB battery could remain connected all the time.

Sorry for the ramble.

 

It is piCorePlayer itself. If you look at the piCorePlayer information on shutdown, you will find this:



Then it says to go to the web interface on the main page and select Shutdown. I have successfully shutdown and reboot, but if the power goes out, it will not boot and the micro-SD card will need to be re-flashed.

So really, I think the only options are to a) have it hooked up to a small UPS, b) back up the micro-SD card somewhere to an .img file so it can get back going again like nothing happened. It is probably smart to do b anyway to save time, so you don't have to re-flash and then do all the configuration all over again. The Ambre is powered by a normal power plug, so I would need a small UPS, but the router and my switch I think would also need to be connected so I could at least power it off when the power goes out. But even if that is not possible, just a small UPS should keep it up and running for a few hours - which would solve about 95% of the power outages I experience on a yearly basis.

You CAN also program GPIO's for shutdown on the Tweaks page, but I don't quite understand what Active High, Active Low, Pull Up, Pull down means. Nor do I know what GPIO the power button on my Metrum Ambre is tied to, because it would be cool if I could just hit the power button to shut it down. The power button does hit a relay of some kind of putting the Pi in standby. I have not tested it off the bat - maybe will test later today after I backup the SD card.

 

We have had some rough weather recently and I have had a couple of quick (seconds) power outages. Although I have had Picoreplayer wake up with a corrupt SD card after such an outage, in this case it only took a reboot on the web page GUI and everything was fine. The Pi2AES, dac, and the rest of the chain don't seem to mind the power outages as long as I use a good surge suppressor so I decided that I only need to battery backup the Pi itself. That is easier than a whole UPS because you can use a cheap USB power bank. I got one for less than $10.

I am using some very good DIY linear supplies and the Pi2AES and the Pi are powered separately. Some voltage regulators, including the one in my power supply protect against the output having a higher voltage than the input. That means that I only had to connect a USB power bank in parallel to the power supply to have it power the Pi during a mains power outage.

Below is a picture of my rough linear supply with it's very Rube Goldberg power bank as back up. Alas, there was no room inside the power supply box for the power bank. The linear supply was developed by Jean Paul over on diyAudio and has ripple at -120 dB with low output impedance. You gotta credit a guy's work.

 

Not sure where else to put this question.

I'm working slowly on getting all my Bandcamp purchases available to stream on my RED via BubbbleUPNP.

I was thinking of getting a Mac mini to store all the files, but I don't know anything about using them, and it will require a lot of reading and setup and also maintenance.

And I noticed that BubbleUPNP offers playback from OneDrive. and I just got 1TB of space with OneDrive in a family Microsoft subscription.

has anyone tried putting FLAC files on OneDrive and streaming them with BubbleUPNP? Or does anyone have any thoughts on why a Mac mini would be a better solution?

Of course I'd keep a local backup if I did OneDrive.

Thanks!

 

A cloud backup is way better than a local backup. I use a Linux server as a file share on my local network only because I don’t want to pay for a cloud based solution. You won’t be able to use Diretta, but not sure if you are interested in that due to the cost and complication in setup and playback. Mostly you need a Windows machine as a Roon core or for ASIO plackback. But you should have no issues with OneDrive with UPnP.

 

Hi - posted this in the HQPLayer thread already, but probably should have put it here instead:

Looking to build a Pi or similar SBC as a network FLAC player using DLNA, sending files to my network bridge which is an ultra Rendu. Will probably use HQPlayer but not averse to using my current player (Media Monkey) or even a Linux one

Anyone have any experience setting one up? I have some IT savvy but not with Linux.
I was going to get the most basic, low-powered board I can find, install Gentoo distro and go from there...

It also has to hookup to my NAS which contains the music (FLAC files)

Thanks!

 

I use BubbleUPNP to stream Tidal to a RED. And I go through phases where I get this error message that my "Token has expired" and it sometimes will stop an album from continuing to play in the middle of the album. I'm guessing this is Tidal going BubbleUPNP permission to access my account but only for a limited time or something.

I can often pretty quickly get back to where I was buy quitting BubbleUPNP and then it re-loads my Tidal account (it takes a minute to load, rather than when you've been using the app, it immediately brings up all your artists, etc). But sometimes I have to restart my Samsung S10 that I use BubbleUPNP on.

I'm just wondering if anyone knows any workarounds for this. Here's a picture of the error message

 

I've not used BubbleUPnP recently, and never with Tidal, but when I used it, I found the developer very responsive to questions and bug reports, you might try to ask him. Maybe there's a bug in Bubble that makes it not always renew the token.

 

I would just make sure you fully shut down the BubbleUPnP app when not using at the end if the day so it is not running in the background. I could be wrong.