So just a general question here...who is using Linux as a "media center" of sorts? For...well, years now...I have been using Logitech Squeezebox devices as my main media boxes. The problem with this is the damnable "Logitech Media Center"...formerly squeezecenter. Logitech no longer supports any of it and I think maybe only one person in the world is currently maintaining the thing. It was written in Perl and every time the OS updates perl...it breaks (don't ask me my opinions on perl).

So I have had enough...my Squeeze Boom boxes' displays have all failed due to the sub-standard components they used. And now I can't even get the LMS to work anymore. I'm done...and I'm moving to MPD.

I've been playing around with Rune Audio, and Arch Linux based MPD distro that runs on RPi devices...I like it. But it's missing things like an alarm clock (I've had my Squeeze Boom on my bedside table for over a decade now).

Does anyone have any other suggestions? MPD seems like the way to go. Kodi doesn't quite cut the mustard as an audio player...Rune Audio/MPD is designed to be headless.

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Re: Media Centers
By: Chicken Head to All on Fri Oct 25 2019 05:39 pm

I've been playing around with Rune Audio, and Arch Linux based MPD distro that runs on RPi devices...I like it. But it's missing things like an alarm clock (I've had my Squeeze Boom on my bedside table for over a decade now).

Can't you set a cronjob for working as an alarm?

I use Linux a lot for playing music, videos and making file conversions, but if you limit yourself to a RPi board you are going to be a bit tight on computing power. Their IO is not exactly great. At the hour of truth I just use a regular computer with a regular distribution and regular multimedia players.

I just pulled one of this year's Linux Magazine and found some instructions for getting Kodi running with some popular multimedia providers, but you say it does not work for you, hmmm...
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Hello Chicken.

25 Oct 19 17:39, you wrote to all:

Does anyone have any other suggestions? MPD seems like the way to go. Kodi doesn't quite cut the mustard as an audio player...Rune Audio/MPD
is designed to be headless.

I am using RPi and KODI for a while. (had some Zyxel before, it was crazy). What I like is that I can add whatever I need (many plugins). Also HDMI CEC is working without any issue. But to say the true, I am not so heavy user (pure audio I am using different device and Movies I have in standard resolution)

Did not help so much to you, I know ;-)

Karel

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Hello Chicken!

25 Oct 19 17:39, Chicken Head wrote to All:

Does anyone have any other suggestions? MPD seems like the way to
go. Kodi doesn't quite cut the mustard as an audio player...Rune Audio/MPD is designed to be headless.

Are you looking for a server solution, a client, or both? I don't have any experience with the client side as I'm mostly using appliances (wifi-capable radios, TV's and such) for that. Thus on the server side I'm pretty much fine with having a decent dlna/upnp server. I used media tomb for that part many years, switched to minidlna later, and only recently moved on to serviio.


Regards,
Gerrit

... 10:45AM up 193 days, 20:06, 8 users, load averages: 0.34, 0.44, 0.41

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Chicken Head wrote to All <=-

So just a general question here...who is using Linux as a "media
center" of sorts? For...well, years now...I have been using Logitech Squeezebox devices as my main media boxes. The problem with this is
the damnable "Logitech Media Center"...formerly squeezecenter.
Logitech no longer supports any of it and I think maybe only one person
in the world is currently maintaining the thing. It was written in Perl and every time the OS updates perl...it breaks (don't ask me my
opinions on perl).

I took a Raspberry PI 3 with a 3.5" screen case. https://www.banggood.com/Geekcreit-3_5-inch-TFT-LCD-Touch-Screen-Protective-Cas e-Touch-Pen-Kit-For-Raspberry-Pi-3B3B2B-p-1391232.html?rmmds=myorder&cur_wareho use=USA

I loaded standard Raspian headless with mpd/mpc on it.
I then NFS mounted the music directory from my server.

I wrote up a simple Python program using tkinter to create a control panel for the 3.5" touch screen.

Any complex control can be handled by using an mpc client for Android (which are mostly free).

I hooked it to some nice speakers and, voila, media player that works just as good (if not better) than my old Squeezebox setup.


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Re: Media Centers
By: Richard Falken to Chicken Head on Fri Oct 25 2019 06:48 pm

A Cron job is exactly what MPD people are doing...and I will likely do it myself. I've been spoiled by the Squeezebox way of doing things for a long time...but it isn't a big deal to set up a cron job.

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Re: Media Centers
By: Karel Kral to Chicken Head on Sat Oct 26 2019 05:22 am

Actually it is good to hear about others using Kodi. I tried...I've been using my old Squeezebox to broadcast a "white noise" sound to help me sleep. I tried with Kodi but for some reason it has problems auto-repeating the same track without a stupid delay. Kind of defeats the point.

...but I do like Kodi. I have another Rpi that is my media center using LibreElec, which works great. I've heard you can get Netflix working with it but I haven't had the time to try.
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Re: Media Centers
By: Gerrit Kuehn to Chicken Head on Sun Oct 27 2019 10:45 am

Hi Gerrit:

I'm kind of looking for both a server AND a client. For clarification...I've got a Squeezebox Boom box, and I've got the remote control from one of their older "Duet" combos. Works great, if you can keep the stupid logitech media server running between updates....but I give up on that.

Right now I've got an Rpi running Rune Audio, which is basically Arch Linux running MPD. For a remote control I've got my android phone that can use either the many MPD remotes, or the Rune Audio one.

The nice thing about the Logitech/Squeeze system was it was nicely integrated, with alarm clocks and other things. The MPD-based stuff doesn't go that far. But I think it is more flexible in the long run.

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Re: Re: Media Centers
By: Ron Lauzon to Chicken Head on Sun Oct 27 2019 08:24 am

Thanks, Ron...that's exactly where I am headed.

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Hello Chicken!

01 Nov 19 17:08, Chicken Head wrote to Gerrit Kuehn:

I'm kind of looking for both a server AND a client. For clarification...I've got a Squeezebox Boom box, and I've got the
remote control from one of their older "Duet" combos. Works great,
if you can keep the stupid logitech media server running between updates....but I give up on that.

I had a look at the Squeeze solution many years ago when I was thinking about buying the first client appliance. It looked really nicely integrated back then, but exactly that scared me away from it in the end: it looked like a vendor lock-in.


Regards,
Gerrit

... 10:23AM up 199 days, 19:44, 8 users, load averages: 0.40, 0.38, 0.34

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Re: Media Centers
By: Gerrit Kuehn to Chicken Head on Sat Nov 02 2019 10:23 am

I think the biggest problem with the Logitech/Squeeze Media Server was it's dependency on Perl. That is what keeps breaking.

The LMS had great features ahead of it's time...you could have multiple devices all playing the same thing, in synch (and I did, at one point). MPD supports streaming but not this. And the LMS devices had nice things built in like alarm clocks and even RSS readers.

But Logitech abandoned it a long time ago, and that's ancient history. I like what I'm doing with my RPi 3 running Rune Audio/MPD.

I find it interesting that the alternatives like Sonos still don't do what Squeeze did.
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