I really hate the Duet

[ModelCitizen]

In my whole life I've not ever had a product as bad as this... and I was one of the beta testers!
I've just bought a new battery for my Controller as the last one appeared not to be charging... but lo and behold the new one doesn't charge either and the problem seems to be with the device, not the battery at all.

I've managed to factory reset the Receiver and now I can't set it up again as my Controller dies in the cradle as soon as I press a button.

Logitech felt it was OK to not create any way to set up a Receiver without a Controller so all I'm left with is Robin Bowers unsupported and horribly unfriendly UDAP script, which I've been playing with for two hours now and have got exactly nowhere.

It beggars belief how a company could feel OK about releasing such a time-wasting piece of rubbish as this. I give up. I'll not touch Logitech again. It's all going in the bin.

Bye.

[cenby]

In my whole life I've not ever had a product as bad as this... and I was one of the beta testers!
I've just bought a new battery for my Controller as the last one appeared not to be charging... but lo and behold the new one doesn't charge either and the problem seems to be with the device, not the battery at all.

I've managed to factory reset the Receiver and now I can't set it up again as my Controller dies in the cradle as soon as I press a button.

Logitech felt it was OK to not create any way to set up a Receiver without a Controller so all I'm left with is Robin Bowers unsupported and horribly unfriendly UDAP script, which I've been playing with for two hours now and have got exactly nowhere.

It beggars belief how a company could feel OK about releasing such a time-wasting piece of rubbish as this. I give up. I'll not touch Logitech again. It's all going in the bin.

Bye.

Im a CEDIA licensed media installer. I know my way around most home entertainment devices. Its what I do for a living! I concur with your comments. I have had a Duet for a few years. It works, it quits, it does firmware upgrades, it quits some more. The latest issue ..the controller shows album art, indicates audio is streaming, yet the receiver has no audio! I now use my Roku box to distribute audio through my Russound whole house system. My backup to that is a PC running as a media server. This Logitech piece of S--- is going into davey jones locker. Ive had it with a product thats NEVER proven itself! Logitech...PULL THE PLUG !!!

Im just glad I never incorporated one of these devices into a clients AV system!

[yeomanspc]

We all probably agree that the Duet was a good idea, spoiled by an implementation that quickly ran out of road as products like IPENG came along. The ability to setup a receiver from IPENG or a similar device would fix the issue for many. I actually purchased a couple of extra controllers as an insurance for when my only one failed when Logitech were almost giving them away (49 up). You can still buy one for 70ukp direct from Logitech.

I've wasted more time on controllers than the rest of the system combined over a period of 10 years, but I wouldn't use that as a reason to bin the whole lot. I've also wasted loads of time trying to get my wifi network to operate seamlessly with Apple IOS5 products and overcoming the shortcomings those products have with encryption and multiple access points - but getting rid of Apple won't improve things overall.

A fix to your issue (model citizen) would be to replace the controller that is broken (it will cost, but probably less than replacing the whole system). Another fix would be to borrow a controller from someone to re-setup your receiver. Is the PSU for the controller pumping out enough juice? Not sure what part of Sussex you live in - I am in Hampshire, happy to help. PM me if you want to borrow something.

[pippin]

I don't know whether this is a defense or a rant but here's my 2cts about it:

1. The controller charging issue is really bad, it's a quality problem, I believe it's software and needs fixing. No arguing about it.
1. a) but the Controller still works for me as long as it's in the cradle so I'm fine with it for setting up my Receiver which is wired anyway, meaning I can as well capture it with iPeng.

2. Setup of a WiFi device without a built-in UI is hard. Logitech learned this in the process and the outcome likely is the cause they will not consider this again. At least I would not if I were they.How many other UI-less WiFi devices that don't use WPS do you own?

Yes, there is WPS but that wasn't around when the Receiver came out and it's also something you should not use, it's just one, big, security mess. All but a few routers have a completely broken security once you enable WPS to an extend that you could as well leave your WiFi network completely open.
And the ones where that's fixed are only the ones where the vulnerability came out and the manufacturer/ISP was big/exposed enough to need it fixed. Expect your no-name router to be insecure once you've enabled WPS, should be renamed to "WUS".

Now, even though it's hard, Logitech did nail the process more or less but then there also seem to be bugs in the Receiver that cause the configuration to be unreliable and I have no idea as to why that is. It doesn't seem to be unreliable with the Controller, but essentially all tries to manually do it are so maybe I just didn't stumble upon it with the Controller or the fact that the Controller can use the private p2p network opened by the Receiver as a backup to the wired connection is what makes it reliable.
Overall this whole thing is extremely complex.

3. That's also why I never implemented it in iPeng. All the technical stuff for it is there (you can already now reassign a "lost" Receiver that's still on the network to a server using iPeng) all that's missing is UI. But since iPeng can't use the p2p WiFi network the Receiver builds up (it can't control the iPhone's WiFI) the process will always be a "hit and miss" and in around 30% of the cases or so it will be unsuccessful - especially whenever MySB is involved. And I don't want to add a feature people will rely on to get their system to work and that has a 30% failure rate. I can't justify telling the people "sorry, it just doesn't work for you" when they come complain.
So no. This feature will never go into iPeng.

To sum it up: Yes, the Receiver setup is flawed, but at least 50% is due to the fact that having to set up a WiFi device remotely _is_ hard and should not have been done, a learning that's easy to have with hindsight but _I_ had considered a good and doable idea at the start, too.
But I haven't seen any other product where somebody nailed it.

[paulster]

Logitech have also introduced a bug that's made the Receiver way flakier than it used to be, but I can get absolutely no traction in terms of getting anybody from the team to look at it.

Whereas mine were always rock solid on ethernet, the DHCP code is now screwy and requires one or more factory resets to get them up and running again every time they are switched off. This came with one of the firmware updates, and really needs to be fixed.

The trouble is it's seemingly the red-headed step-child and nobody's interested in it.

[garym]

Logitech have also introduced a bug that's made the Receiver way flakier than it used to be, but I can get absolutely no traction in terms of getting anybody from the team to look at it.

Whereas mine were always rock solid on ethernet, the DHCP code is now screwy and requires one or more factory resets to get them up and running again every time they are switched off. This came with one of the firmware updates, and really needs to be fixed.

The trouble is it's seemingly the red-headed step-child and nobody's interested in it.

does using fixed IP addresses for the duet receiver solve this bug? I always setup my duet receiver (and all my other SB players) with true fixed IP addresses (not just reserved in the router)

[smc2911]

This thread is rather depressing. I was also a beta-tester of the Duet. I have 5 squeezeboxes (2 classics, 2 duets and a Boom) and I have been a fanboy for a long time. I was a bit disturbed way back when logitech bought out slimdevices, but remained optimistic. I am starting to feel that optimism was misplaced. There seems to have been very little forward movement over recent years and support is not really what it should be. I have had a problem for months now not being able to access My Apps from LMS (either through a Mac OSX server or an Ubuntu server). After failing to get anywhere here on the forums and not getting anything more useful than the suggestion to reinstall LMS from Logitech Support (which I'd tried repeatedly already, to no avail), I tried telephone support. Despite there being a phone option for Squeezebox ("press 7 for Squeezbox support") the person who answered patiently explained he had not been trained on Squeezebox nor had anyone in the company (later clarified to "the country") and so all he could offer was to transcribe my problem to email support for a 24-48 hour response.

[raaurora]

For whatever reason, my duet and controller have been immune to the many issues I read about on this forum. Not sure why...I connect over my wireless network...but it has always worked and I am on the latest version of everything. I feel for you guys because I use it all the time and get a lot of enjoyment out of it - which is what you should expect too considering the cost of the duet.

As far as the controller, I know some people have reported that if they put a shim behind it while in the cradle it stands up straighter and charges better. Mine seems to charge ok without any help but I rarely use it anyway. I use either the web interface or iPeng.

[Mnyb]

does using fixed IP addresses for the duet receiver solve this bug? I always setup my duet receiver (and all my other SB players) with true fixed IP addresses (not just reserved in the router)

Yes , it is the dhcp that is affected (,he has the bug nr in his signature) .
This can happen if your network is not so bog standard as to use 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1 as router/gateway/dhcp .
Anything slightly more fancy and you can get problems, we are not talking rocket science here everything is still the same network and subnet etc. An example can be a user that prefers to run the dhcp server on his server and not on a router.

[swayzak]

Logitech have also introduced a bug that's made the Receiver way flakier than it used to be, but I can get absolutely no traction in terms of getting anybody from the team to look at it.

Whereas mine were always rock solid on ethernet, the DHCP code is now screwy and requires one or more factory resets to get them up and running again every time they are switched off. This came with one of the firmware updates, and really needs to be fixed.

The trouble is it's seemingly the red-headed step-child and nobody's interested in it.

I think this may be the bug that's been, er, bugging me for several months now.

Duet works fine for a while, then just stops connecting to LMS. It will often still connect to MySB.com, but not to LMS.

Sometimes turning it off/on a few times will force it to reconnect, but often not.

The only way to get rid of the annoying blue light is factory reset via Controller.

Booms always connect to LMS.