Logitech Airplay Speaker

[TheLastMan]

The biggest issue I have with the squeeze line is ease of use for techo neofites. My system is sold, little to no issues all rooms using wireless with a wireless infrastructure that has N based devices and extenders. Even my microwave no longer causes disruptions in the kitchen setup.

The problem comes when the wife wants to use the system beyond presets I have put on a boom in the kitchen for her or the favorites I have created.

We use iPeng on ipod and iphones to control the system. So to me the interface is good and easy to use. She still has troubles, the kids not so much but they do say things are much easier to do when playing music from their ithing docked in a base. In fact, often if they are in a room with a boom, instead of just using ipeng to play what they want, they will connect their ithing to the external input into the boom and play right from their ithing. I hate that as for the most part we keep everything on the server and then when they want to update their ithing they have a way to easily add the music to their ithing from the server.

For the wife if I know she is doing something and will want certain rooms synced, I predo that for her and then ask her what she will want to play for music so I can easily put the sources there for her such as streaming from Sirius XM or playlists from our large library. So I end up being the DJ so to speak just so she does not get frustrated, go to the basement and unboxes thousands of CD's and go old school.

In some ways I believe we need a very simple interface offering basic features to make this easy on the people who are not technical. For example, a sync interface where is actually tells you what to do on the infterface to sync devices in very easy terms and steps. iPeng is close but not close enough so my wife can easily figure it out.

I feel your pain! Things are not so very different in my household. However I have reduced the extent of a couple of the problems:

Updating kids iThing from server:
Both my older children have access to a laptop which they use to update their pods. I have set up iTunes on this so that it uses folders in the same music library on my server as the Squeezebox (not a shared library, just "adding" folders from my SB library). My library is split into two identical halves, one with MP3s for pods and one with FLACs for squeezebox.

This library is synced between NAS and a PC giving some backup protection for their iThings, and I have set up iTunes on the laptop so that when they add music from the server it keeps a local copy on their iTunes folder on the lappie.

After a bit of cajoling they also let me buy downloads and rip CDs for them as I can do that a lot cheaper than iTunes, and usually a lot quicker too. My son is now getting interested in this process and has offered to take over the job! He is an intelligent lad and understands the advantages.

Wife friendly control:
My wife is happy to use the Controller, because it has "real" hardware buttons with obvious functions not unlike an iPod. She simply does not get on with either iPeng on my iPod or Squeezecommander on her HTC. I have also added an extra genre tag to "her" music so that it is all located in the one menu location, she does not need to scroll through long lists of my "what's this awful racket" music to get to her own stuff.

Sync players:
Not sure what your problem is here. I have set it up so that the "choose player" and "sync" options are a the top of the home menu so that she can find them easily. Even my technophobe wife quickly got the hang of the sync option after 2 minutes of training (the limit of her patience with these things!). However she finds swapping between players with the Controller a bind, so I may have to buy a second one!