Setting up Bluetooth Speaker with piCorePlayer v3.5.0 optimized for audio

[Grumpy Bob]

When running bluetooth, squeezelite will not start until a valid speaker is paired and connected. Once it is connected, pCP will automatically restart squeezelite if needed.

This is the behaviour I'm seeing with pCP 4.0.0, but not with 4.1.0.

Robert

[sbp]

This is strange I get the same behavior using pCP 4.1 as I do with 4.0 so it is working fine for me.
Have you tried to start from scratch using 4.1?
I remember it was a little difficult to pair the Bluetooth device initially, but once it succeeded I had no issues.

[Grumpy Bob]

This is strange I get the same behavior using pCP 4.1 as I do with 4.0 so it is working fine for me.
Have you tried to start from scratch using 4.1?
I remember it was a little difficult to pair the Bluetooth device initially, but once it succeeded I had no issues.

The problem wasn't with pairing the BT headphones, which works well, but that I couldn't then get Squeezelite to start after the pairing was successful.

I tried a second time with 4.1.0 with a freshly flashed card with the same result - no real problem pairing the BT headphones, but that Squeezelite wouldn't start. I then reformatted the card and flashed it with pCP 4.0.0, and everything worked as expected.

I wonder what would happen after an in situ update to 4.1.0?

Robert

[sbp]

If you can see the player from within LMS, what happens if you select an album to play?
For me it starts to play and squeezelite goes active.

[Grumpy Bob]

If you can see the player from within LMS, what happens if you select an album to play?
For me it starts to play and squeezelite goes active.

Well, using 4.1.0 and after pairing the headphones, Squeezelite refused to start, so the player never showed up in LMS.

Using 4.0.0 everything worked as per my previous experiences with piCorePlayer - the headphones paired, Squeezelite started, and the player appeared in LMS and music can be played.

Maybe this is an issue with the specific BT headphones I have.

R

[Grumpy Bob]

Well, using 4.1.0 and after pairing the headphones, Squeezelite refused to start, so the player never showed up in LMS.

Using 4.0.0 everything worked as per my previous experiences with piCorePlayer - the headphones paired, Squeezelite started, and the player appeared in LMS and music can be played.

Maybe this is an issue with the specific BT headphones I have.

R

I've used this Pi Zero setup with 4.0.0 for a couple of weeks now, works well. Last night I did an in situ update to piCorePlayer 4.1.0, and everything still works as it should. I've no idea why the two attempts to set this up from scratch with 4.1.0 failed.

Robert

[RobbH]

I've had a very similar experience to what Grumpy Bob reported. With piCorePlayer 4.1.0 on a Pi Zero W, bluetooth would connect once, and it would play for some time, on one occasion more than four hours. But at some point, it would fall silent, although LMS continued to show that it was playing. Sometimes the speaker's indicator would show that it had disconnected, sometimes not. Either way, pCP still reported that it was connected. Eventually, LMS would throw an error, apparently while attempting to adjust synchronization on another player, and the system would freeze. (This was usually with eight players synchronized.)

pCP would not reconnect to the speaker. Power cycling the speaker made no difference, but everything would work again after rebooting pCP.

I have now switched to 4.0.0 and so far it's working. It's been 23 hours with no issues.

Unlike Grumpy Bob, I haven't yet worked up the courage to try an in situ update to 4.1.0.

[RobbH]

....Unlike Grumpy Bob, I haven't yet worked up the courage to try an in situ update to 4.1.0.

Following up on my previous report, in case somebody stumbles across this thread, as I did, while looking for a solution.

After months of hesitation, I finally tried an in situ update to pcp 4.1.0, but without success. The earlier problems returned, so I went back to 4.0.0. Even with the earlier version, things weren't perfect. The player would still sometimes fall silent, while LMS still showed it as playing, and the bluetooth speaker still indicated that it was connected. But, unlike the situation with 4.1.0, this never brought the entire synchronized system to a halt. I found that if I set a cron job to reboot the player every night, the problem only occurred about once a week.

That was the situation until the recent release of pcp 5.0.0. With a clean install, the player is now performing nearly perfectly. Uptime is more than 42 hours and there have been no issues yet. Bluetooth latency seems much improved, too.

Any further discussion of the issue should probably move to the appropriate release thread in the Linux forum.

[edwin2006]

Thanks for the update!

[cpd73]

Does this work with a PiZeroW and a USB bluetooth dongle? Because I'm really struggling to get this to work. I have pcp 5.0.0 installed (clean install), configured pcp for a bluetooth speaker. I can see the speaker/pcp in LMS, and can play music for about 1 minute. After that the audio gets very jittery, and after a few seconds just stops. If I'm ssh'ed into pcp at the time, then the connection is painstakingly slow. I guess something is hogging the CPU, but top updates so badly its hard to tell. During initial playback, squeezelite is only consuming 5-10% CPU.

Am I doing something wrong? Or does USB bluetooth + inbuilt WiFi on a PiZeroW just not work?