Community Build Radio Firmware

[rojikewl]

Apologies if this has already been answered 100 times, but can the Radio knobs be pulled off for this kind of cleaning/treatment? The stickiness drives me crazy. Over the years I've had phones (remember the Palm Centro?—certain colors had the issue and would also develop black spots of what appeared to be mold), scissors, knives and other products that developed this stickiness after a few years. I hope I live to see the day when these plastics that become sticky are no longer used in manufacturing—assuming they are still being used.

[JoeMuc2009]

Hey there,

aere's another method for cleaning any of the parts that have the sticky coating (SB Touch remote, Radio knob, Boom front panel, button mat, knob):

I have experimented quite a bit and found that solvents are causing a lot of unwanted damage. Parts may be deformed, and far more than just the coating is removed. So I have tried with warm water to immerse all parts into. Keep the water around 60°C (or 50°C for the Touch remote) and let it sit for half an hour. Regularly go and check whether temperature is still in range, and also to see if anything changes in the parts. You will find that the coating turns white in the places it was sticky before. The heat softens the coating so it can be scrubbed off eventually without doing too much damage to layers underneath. Some care is needed of course. Cleaning the Touch remote this way needs a lot of attention regarding the temperature as the plastic is so thin that it can deform so much that it won't come together again. Therefore, 50°C is more advisable if you are just cleaning the remote.

Once the heating procedure is complete, get the parts out and get to work right away, using the remaining heat which helps in the cleanup.
Cleaning the knobs is the easiest thing and there is not much to explain about that.
It is a bit more difficult with the Boom parts due to their many edges and corners. The button channels in the front panel are coated on their inside, too, and this coating should be completely scraped off to ensure that buttons will be easy to push and will just as easily come back out into their idle position. I'm using the hard side of a dish sponge for this task, just push a corner of its hard side into each hole and turn around a few times, pushing outside towards the channel walls.
The buttons themselves have coating on their outside edges, too, which should be removed the same way. Just be careful not to remove too much of the coating on each button face. There is a black masking layer on top of each button, with the symbols being left out of the mask, and if you damage the masking layer, the buttons would eventually be all white which certainly is not beautiful. So the button's edges can be treated rather roughly, their tops should either not be treated at all if they were not sticky in the first place, or if necessary, witih litle force and more slowly. It is a good idea to dry it all of from time to time as only the dry state reveals any stickiness left, and also inconsistency in the treatment of the front panel surface.
If you find that coating is too hard to remove, repeat the water immersion process another time. The behavior of the coating varies from device to device, and the way it degrades depends a lot of where the devices were placed. Heat and UV components of sunlight cause heavier and faster degradation, so the time to soften it up depends....

All the rotary knobs in any Squeezebox can just be pulled off, they are not locked in any way, just sitting more or less firmly on the shaft of the encoder beneath.
For the Boom cure the front panel assembly must be disassembled completely, i.e. you need to remove the speaker grilles, loosen 4 TX10 screws beneath to get the front panel off, carefully loosen the FFC that connects the front panel to the mainboard, then loosen 8 small black PH1 screws that hold the front panel PCB to the plastic carrier. The PCB may appear to be stuck which is just the rubber parts of button mat still holding on. It should be possible with soft force and some patience to get it all apart. Also be careful not to tear the rubber mat in case some buttons are stuck in their channels. You can push those in from the front side to help get the mat out.
I recommend to remove the Boom's favorite buttons 1-6 also to ensure that no water is caught behind them. They each have two transparent plastic latches that can be pushed together slightly so the buttons can be pushed out from the back. I also recommend to remove the black adhesive strip from the bottom of the display window because the adhesive does not survive the water bath so well.
Before you put everything back together, please make sure that all parts are completely dry. You can use a hair dryer at some distance to remove moisture forcefully or let the parts sit in a dry corner for a day. Moisture caught between the button mat and the PCB won't get out easily and will do damage. Moisture in other locations will not easily get out of the Boom case either and may cause corrision anywhere. Take your time there, better safe than sorry.

Hope this helps one way or the other.

Cheers,
Joe

[Redrum]

Apologies if this has already been answered 100 times, but can the Radio knobs be pulled off for this kind of cleaning/treatment? The stickiness drives me crazy. Over the years I've had phones (remember the Palm Centro?—certain colors had the issue and would also develop black spots of what appeared to be mold), scissors, knives and other products that developed this stickiness after a few years. I hope I live to see the day when these plastics that become sticky are no longer used in manufacturing—assuming they are still being used.

As Joe mentions above, yes the knobs are removable, they just pull off, but they might be a bit "stuck" from being on there so long. I posted a photo some time ago, but basically I grip with 2 fingers pushed down into the faceplate, and roll the back sides of the fingers (the nail area) to "pry" the knob off. My preferred methods for the knobs is to remove them and use sandpaper/similar to remove everything, then spray paint matte black. chill posted once before of a tactile paint he used when restoring a boom.

Jim

[Heuer]

Anyone tried replacing the Radio knobs with black aluminium (hi-fi or guitar type) potentiometer knobs? They have a 6mm shaft hole and use a small screw to secure them. Lots of styles (modern, retro etc) and colours available. Might add some nice weight to the controls and a sharper look.

[tfec]

While it's not particularly sustainable, I've bought new knobs for my radios on ebay and I'm very happy with them.

[ralphy]

For anyone trying to setup a poky build environment I've uploaded 20200213-updated-utilities-i386.tar.gz to my sourceforge site.
The file contains 32-bit curl-7.52.1 git-2.25.0 openssl-1.1.1d wget-1.18 to allow bitbake to consistantly download the sources successfully for squeezeos builds.

I use Ubuntu 10.4.04 i386 for my build environment which was current when the poky environment used to build the firmware was released.

Extract the file in /usr/local as root

sudo tar -x -z -C /usr/local -f 20200213-updated-utilities-i386.tar.gz

I'd suggest using a non-root user for building the firmware.

The ssh v5.3p1 binary included in Ubuntu 10.4 finally stopped working with github on my build environment, so I've rebuilt all these tools with more recent versions.

I've uploaded 20230114-updated-utilities-i386.tar.gz to my sourceforge site.

The file contains curl-7.87.0, git-2.38.2, openssh-9.1p1, openssl-1.1.1s, wget-1.21.3 and ca-certificates as of January 9, 2023.

Extract the file in /usr/local as root

sudo tar -x -z -C /usr/local -f 20230114-updated-utilities-i386.tar.gz

You can safely delete /usr/local/lib/libcurl.so.4.4.0 afterwards as that library is for the old curl-7.52.1.

[zoma]

I'm stuck updating my 'baby' if anyone has any ideas. Sure looks like it should work. Keeps offering the old firmware. Thanks much!

Logitech Media Server Version: 8.4.0 - 1675097179 @ Mon Jan 30 17:48:13 WEST 2023
Hostname: Carnotaurus
Server IP Address: 172.16.4.30
Server HTTP Port Number: 9000
Operating system: Windows 11 - EN - cp1252
Platform Architecture: 8664
Perl Version: 5.14.1 - MSWin32-x86-multi-thread
Audio::Scan: 1.06
IO::Socket::SSL: 2.068
Database Version: DBD::SQLite 1.58 (sqlite 3.22.0)
Total Players Recognized: 0

​[23-02-02 12:50:07.5754] Slim::Networking:Discovery::getFakeVersion (131)
You're using a SB Radio with a buggy firmware not recognizing this version of Logitech Media Server.
Please consider patching it. Until then we'll try to play nice and return a fake version number...

See https://github.com/Logitech/slimserver/blob/public/8.0/README.md#sb-radio-and-logitech-media-server-8.
[23-02-02 12:52:34.9067] Slim::Utils::Firmware::need_upgrade (344) baby needs upgrade! (has: 7.7.3 r16676, needs: 8.0.1 16907)
[23-02-02 12:53:37.1772] Slim::Utils::Firmware::need_upgrade (344) baby needs upgrade! (has: 7.7.3 r16676, needs: 8.0.1 16907)
[23-02-02 12:58:11.9567] Slim::Utils::Firmware::need_upgrade (344) baby needs upgrade! (has: 7.7.3 r16676, needs: 8.0.1 16907)
[23-02-02 13:00:42.4133] Slim::Utils::Firmware::need_upgrade (344) baby needs upgrade! (has: 7.7.3 r16676, needs: 8.0.1 16907)
[23-02-02 13:30:00.2328] Slim::Utils::Firmware::need_upgrade (344) baby needs upgrade! (has: 7.7.3 r16676, needs: 8.0.1 16907)
[23-02-02 13:33:44.0655] Slim::Utils::Firmware::need_upgrade (344) baby needs upgrade! (has: 7.7.3 r16676, needs: 8.0.1 16907)
[23-02-02 13:40:43.2481] Slim::Utils::Firmware::need_upgrade (344) baby needs upgrade! (has: 7.7.3 r16676, needs: 8.0.1 16907)
[23-02-02 13:44:21.5189] Slim::Utils::Firmware::need_upgrade (344) baby needs upgrade! (has: 7.7.3 r16676, needs: 8.0.1 16907)
[23-02-02 16:23:47.8086] Slim::Utils::Firmware::need_upgrade (344) baby needs upgrade! (has: 7.7.3 r16676, needs: 8.0.1 16907)
[23-02-02 16:32:40.6265] Slim::Utils::Firmware::need_upgrade (344) baby needs upgrade! (has: 7.7.3 r16676, needs: 8.0.1 16907)

[Redrum]

I'm stuck updating my 'baby' if anyone has any ideas. Sure looks like it should work. Keeps offering the old firmware. Thanks much!

I'm a little fuzzy on this, but let me suggest, and have others provide more detail or correct me...

You posted in the community firmware thread. If you would like to us it, it should solve your issue. Follow the instructions (post #2).

Otherwise, take a look at this thread, specifically start at post #2: https://forums.slimdevices.com/forum...ed#post1552221

Personally, I did the version compare fix, but 3 years ago? I believe, but could be wrong, that this was addressed in later versions of LMS, and should not be required in 8.4? Not sure...

Jim

[garym]

I'm a little fuzzy on this, but let me suggest, and have others provide more detail or correct me...

You posted in the community firmware thread. If you would like to us it, it should solve your issue. Follow the instructions (post #2).

Otherwise, take a look at this thread, specifically start at post #2: https://forums.slimdevices.com/forum...ed#post1552221

Personally, I did the version compare fix, but 3 years ago? I believe, but could be wrong, that this was addressed in later versions of LMS, and should not be required in 8.4? Not sure...

Jim

Agree with Jim. I had to do the version fix years ago, but wiped all that out with a factory reset when I installed the new community firmware. Version fix not needed when running community firmware.

[Redrum]

Agree with Jim. I had to do the version fix years ago, but wiped all that out with a factory reset when I installed the new community firmware. Version fix not needed when running community firmware.

Hi Gary, does the version compare not persist a factory reset? That makes sense, but I never gave it a thought. Also, isn't it moot with the newer version of LMS, maybe after 8.2? I seem to recall that. I ask because I really don't pay much attention to LMS messages when my players just work.

I have not moved over the the community firmware, guess maybe I should, but I have allot of radios and have setup friends with radios, so it would be a bit of work

Jim

[garym]

Hi Gary, does the version compare not persist a factory reset? That makes sense, but I never gave it a thought. Also, isn't it moot with the newer version of LMS, maybe after 8.2? I seem to recall that. I ask because I really don't pay much attention to LMS messages when my players just work.

I have not moved over the the community firmware, guess maybe I should, but I have allot of radios and have setup friends with radios, so it would be a bit of work

Jim

Hmmm, good question. I would *think* the version compare doesn't survive a faculty reset (and recall, vaguely, that in installing community firmware it is suggested that one do a factory reset first). But it could also be true that new versions of LMS, 8.x.x resolve the problem automatically. But as you say, if all is working OK without community firmware, you must be ok, otherwise you'd be getting error messages.

[zoma]

I'm a little fuzzy on this, but let me suggest, and have others provide more detail or correct me...

You posted in the community firmware thread. If you would like to us it, it should solve your issue. Follow the instructions (post #2).

Thanks for your reply, and everyone. To be clear, I'm trying to upgrade to the community firmware, but I can't seem to get it offered to the device. Additionally, there doesn't seem to be a way to manually update the Radio, at least from my reading.

After posting, I was able to get the Version Comparison Fix offered to me via 7.9.2 - and now I no longer get the warning message. I have two instances 8.4.0 and 7.9.2, I don't appear to be able to get any version of LMS to recognize the player.

Overall, I usually get the bouncing behavior with the Patch Installer, where the applet is installed, but I can't get into the actual patch menu (as described in https://forums.slimdevices.com/forum/user-forums/squeezebox-radio/108655-squeezebox-radio-would-not-connect-to-lms-8-update-required#post1552221)

I had this in storage for a while, and now I'm reviving it.

Logitech Media Server Version: 8.4.0 - 1675097179 @ Mon Jan 30 17:48:13 WEST 2023
Hostname: Carnotaurus
Server IP Address: 172.16.4.30
Server HTTP Port Number: 9000
Operating system: Windows 11 - EN - cp1252
Platform Architecture: 8664
Perl Version: 5.14.1 - MSWin32-x86-multi-thread
Audio::Scan: 1.06
IO::Socket::SSL: 2.068
Database Version: DBD::SQLite 1.58 (sqlite 3.22.0)
Total Players Recognized: 0
​

[zoma]

So for me, the key was that I could only trigger the firmware upgrade from Settings > Advanced > Diagnostics > Software Update not Settings > Advanced > Software Update

[23-02-07 16:15:44.2364] Slim::Utils::Firmware::init_firmware_download (126) Downloading baby.version file...
[23-02-07 16:15:44.2368] Slim::Utils::Firmware::need_upgrade (326) no firmware for baby - can't upgrade
[23-02-07 16:15:44.2376] Slim::Utils::Firmware::BASE (46) Firmware check URL: https://ralph_irving.gitlab.io/lms-community-firmware/update/firmware/
[23-02-07 16:15:44.2377] Slim::Utils::Firmware::downloadAsync (462) Downloading in the background: https://ralph_irving.gitlab.io/lms-community-firmware/update/firmware/8.4.0/baby.version -> C:\ProgramData\Squeezebox\Cache\updates\baby.version
[23-02-07 16:15:44.7882] Slim::Utils::Firmware::downloadAsyncSHADone (524) Successfully downloaded and verified C:\ProgramData\Squeezebox\Cache\updates\baby.version.
[23-02-07 16:15:44.7887] Slim::Utils::Firmware::init_version_done (176) Downloading baby firmware to: C:\ProgramData\Squeezebox\Cache\updates\baby_8.0.1_r16907.bin
[23-02-07 16:15:44.7888] Slim::Utils::Firmware::BASE (46) Firmware check URL: https://ralph_irving.gitlab.io/lms-community-firmware/update/firmware/
[23-02-07 16:15:44.7889] Slim::Utils::Firmware::downloadAsync (462) Downloading in the background: https://ralph_irving.gitlab.io/lms-community-firmware/update/firmware/8.4.0/baby_8.0.1_r16907.bin -> C:\ProgramData\Squeezebox\Cache\updates\baby_8.0.1_r16907.bin
[23-02-07 16:15:44.8234] Slim::Utils::Firmware::init_version_done (196) Scheduling next baby.version check in 24 hours
[23-02-07 16:15:46.1282] Slim::Utils::Firmware::downloadAsyncSHADone (524) Successfully downloaded and verified C:\ProgramData\Squeezebox\Cache\updates\baby_8.0.1_r16907.bin.
[23-02-07 16:15:46.1295] Slim::Utils::Firmware::init_fw_done (228) downloaded 8.0.1 16907 for baby - C:\ProgramData\Squeezebox\Cache\updates\baby_8.0.1_r16907.bin
[23-02-07 16:15:46.1299] Slim::Utils::Firmware::need_upgrade (344) baby needs upgrade! (has: 7.7.3 r16676, needs: 8.0.1 16907)
[23-02-07 16:16:18.3255] Slim::Utils::Firmware::need_upgrade (344) baby needs upgrade! (has: 7.7.3 r16676, needs: 8.0.1 16907)
[23-02-07 16:18:09.8071] Slim::Utils::Firmware::need_upgrade (344) baby needs upgrade! (has: 7.7.3 r16676, needs: 8.0.1 16907)
[23-02-08 12:41:42.9674] Slim::Utils::Firmware::need_upgrade (344) baby needs upgrade! (has: 7.7.3 r16676, needs: 8.0.1 16907)
[23-02-08 12:45:57.1249] Slim::Utils::Firmware::need_upgrade (348) baby doesn't need an upgrade (has: 8.0.1 r16907, server has: 8.0.1 16907)
[23-02-08 12:52:04.8331] Slim::Utils::Firmware::need_upgrade (348) baby doesn't need an upgrade (has: 8.0.1 r16907, server has: 8.0.1 16907)​

[yosherl]

Hi there!

After my two Squeezebox Radio devices began getting ugly the last weeks after >10 years, I started to install the wlanpoke fix. Somehow the wireless infrastructure in the neighborhood must have changed causing the devices to flap with the Wifi without the fix (for reference: Looks like AVM too much Fritzbox 7.50 upgrades will interfere here or some with AX - at least it started after I updated my device and probably others too..) .
Nevertheless I've also given the Community Firmware a try on the devices, but afterwards, the Rhapsody / Napster service stopped to work.
I looked a bit at the LMS server code (running on Logitech Media Server Version: 8.3.1 - 1676361197 @ Fri Feb 17 06:43:16 CET 2023), but couldn't see any direct issues, so I downgraded one of the Radio devices again to the latest 7.7.3.
Afterwards, the Rhapsody streaming was working on this devices again (together with the wlanpoke).
The other one with the newest community firmware works, but Rhapsody is yelling "This player does not support Napster. A Squeezebox2 or higher is required", so the canDecodeRhapsody() function on the server somehow is giving out a 0 instead of 1 - but this seems to be only a side effect. I'm not into the firmware development, but as a developer understand at least most of the perl code.
The device type in the function is correctly identified as baby.
Somehow I suspect, that the device firmware even doesn't work with the Rhapsody implementation anymore?
The album, title etc. is by the way displayed on the radio device. only the mentioned popup message is displayed on the client then.

Devices identited by LMS as:

Player-Modell: Squeezebox Radio
Gerätetyp: baby
Firmware: 7.7.3-r16676
IP-Adresse des Players: 172.17.0.1
MAC-Adresse des Players: 00:04:20:******
Stärke des drahtlosen Signals: 100%

WhiteSqueeze
Player-Modell: Squeezebox Radio
Gerätetyp: baby
Firmware: 8.0.1-r16916
IP-Adresse des Players: 172.17.0.1
MAC-Adresse des Players: 00:04:20:******
Stärke des drahtlosen Signals: 100%

[mherger]

I'm sorry I missed your message, yosherl. The canDecodeRhapsody() is a good starting point: you could try to disable this check (https://github.com/Logitech/slimserv...r.pm#L182-L189). Because as the comment there suggests: I should have verified the need for this... I think that's a left over from when we were still using custom certificates for Rhapsody in firmware. But that has changed many years ago. I'd think this check is no longer needed.