ANNOUNCE: piCorePlayer 7.0.0

[chincheta0815]

Hej there,

following my previous posts concerning the visibility of shairport-sync I got some feedback from mikebrady the dev of shairport-sync. He says that it seems that tinysvcmdns has come to its limits making propagation of airplay error prone.
He asked if there is any avahi support on piCorePlayer. As of now it seems that there is just tinysvcmdns compiled into shairport-sync on PiCorePlayer.
Here is his comment on the issue on github: https://github.com/mikebrady/shairpo...ment-783501488


Is there the possibility to have an updated pcp-shaiport extension that uses avahi to get rid of the propagation issues?
TinyCore seems to have an avahi extension already available. Its use could also take the task of pcpmdns...

[Patricia P]

Thanks everyone for your thoughts on this.

The rpi3 uses ethernet cable
Both rpi have different mac addresses

"Can we assume you aren't using any type of access control on your router that would block an unknown IP address?"

Correct it's a very simple modem/router set up that assigns ip addresses by DHCP.

I am no longer getting a ip address on router for the rpi3. Just one green and one red light
I'll re download the zip file tomorrow and try again.

It definitely was given an ip address, yet would not open the picore web page. That was the odd behaviour.

However the router will not give it a ip address at all now, so I am inclined to think that the hardware is the problem.

[Greg Erskine]

Hej there,

following my previous posts concerning the visibility of shairport-sync I got some feedback from mikebrady the dev of shairport-sync. He says that it seems that tinysvcmdns has come to its limits making propagation of airplay error prone.
He asked if there is any avahi support on piCorePlayer. As of now it seems that there is just tinysvcmdns compiled into shairport-sync on PiCorePlayer.
Here is his comment on the issue on github: https://github.com/mikebrady/shairpo...ment-783501488


Is there the possibility to have an updated pcp-shaiport extension that uses avahi to get rid of the propagation issues?
TinyCore seems to have an avahi extension already available. Its use could also take the task of pcpmdns...

Hi chincheta0815,

We haven't done much to shairpoint-sync over the years because we recommend you use the LMS plugin instead.

I think this means, you only have to setup once for all your devices.

BTW: You can disable "Broadcast .local" on the [Tweaks] page if it is interfering with shairpoint-sync.

regards
Greg

[pputzer]

We haven't done much to shairpoint-sync over the years because we recommend you use the LMS plugin instead.

I think this means, you only have to setup once for all your devices

Which is nice for some use cases, but also suffers from the drawback that it doesn't allow playback to be synchronized with a video source.

So you can route your iPad's sound to the pCP while viewing YT, but then video and audio will drift apart more or less instantly. If you instead use shairport-sync, they'll stay, well, synced.


Gesendet von iPad mit Tapatalk

[chincheta0815]

Hi chincheta0815,

We haven't done much to shairpoint-sync over the years because we recommend you use the LMS plugin instead.

I think this means, you only have to setup once for all your devices.

BTW: You can disable "Broadcast .local" on the [Tweaks] page if it is interfering with shairpoint-sync.

regards
Greg

Hej Greg,

the shaiport-sync of piCore is not too old to be honest. Its version 3.3.7 so one of the latest.
It also works well, the only issue there is with mdns...

Using the LMS Plugin does not help if there is no possiblity for an LMS due to performance and complexity.
If one just needs an "Airplay speaker" with all the possibilities of piCorePlayer this would be better.
Having all the different options for Player instances makes PiCore the best image for music player purposes for Raspberry Pis.
Different media packages are far complexer, bigger and not working out of the box as PiCorePlayer - even though they sometime charge you...

Disabling broadcast .local does not help at all. There is an issue with tinysvcmds that is bult into shairport-sync.
Without solving this issue in shairport-sync it seems feasbile to either drop support for shairport-sync in picore or build it with avahi.
That is at least how I understood the shairport-sync dev Mike.
The latter would make it work (at leat it does on a plain RaspberryPiOS) and maybe makes the system leaner and stable as there is a proven avahi as one service for all mdns (shaiport, broadcast .local, etc.).

[ralphy]

Hi Ralphy - that's nice :-) It's been a asound.conf edit for me always, so this will make things easier to maintain. One question (since I know this requires careful tweaking of asound.conf) - can you use this setting with the equaliser? My single speakers setups are small, so need a little help from equaliser settings. I'm guessing if this is a squeezelite setting, it's separate to the equaliser changes in asound, but just thought I'd ask....

You should be able to use it with the alsa equalizer, but I haven't tried it.
The mono downmix is performed in squeezelite before sending the audio to ALSA.

[psketch]

You should be able to use it with the alsa equalizer, but I haven't tried it.
The mono downmix is performed in squeezelite before sending the audio to ALSA.

Hi Ralphy

I just tried the new mono mode with Squeezelite v1.9.9-1356-pCP, pcp 7.0.1 and the latest LMS 8.2 nightly, but when I select Mono in the Audio settings, I get no output at all. Setting Both or Left I get just the left channel as I'd expect. I've taken a default asound.conf and turned off equaliser at the moment, so I think it's just back to a default config. Could anyone else give this a try and see if it's working?

pete S

[paul-]

Avahi will not be included in the base image, it is a horribly bloated package. Ralphy maintains shairport-sync for us, if he wants to transition it back to avahi, I'll leave it up to him.

[ralphy]

Hej there,

following my previous posts concerning the visibility of shairport-sync I got some feedback from mikebrady the dev of shairport-sync. He says that it seems that tinysvcmdns has come to its limits making propagation of airplay error prone.
He asked if there is any avahi support on piCorePlayer. As of now it seems that there is just tinysvcmdns compiled into shairport-sync on PiCorePlayer.
Here is his comment on the issue on github: https://github.com/mikebrady/shairpo...ment-783501488


Is there the possibility to have an updated pcp-shaiport extension that uses avahi to get rid of the propagation issues?
TinyCore seems to have an avahi extension already available. Its use could also take the task of pcpmdns...

Hej Greg,

the shaiport-sync of piCore is not too old to be honest. Its version 3.3.7 so one of the latest.
It also works well, the only issue there is with mdns...

Using the LMS Plugin does not help if there is no possiblity for an LMS due to performance and complexity.
If one just needs an "Airplay speaker" with all the possibilities of piCorePlayer this would be better.
Having all the different options for Player instances makes PiCore the best image for music player purposes for Raspberry Pis.
Different media packages are far complexer, bigger and not working out of the box as PiCorePlayer - even though they sometime charge you...

Disabling broadcast .local does not help at all. There is an issue with tinysvcmds that is bult into shairport-sync.
Without solving this issue in shairport-sync it seems feasbile to either drop support for shairport-sync in picore or build it with avahi.
That is at least how I understood the shairport-sync dev Mike.
The latter would make it work (at leat it does on a plain RaspberryPiOS) and maybe makes the system leaner and stable as there is a proven avahi as one service for all mdns (shaiport, broadcast .local, etc.).

Avahi will not be included in the base image, it is a horribly bloated package. Ralphy maintains shairport-sync for us, if he wants to transition it back to avahi, I'll leave it up to him.

The avahi extension available in the tinycore 12.0 repository pulls in the entire x-windows subsystem, which is crazy.

Here are all the extensions loaded just for the avahi daemon.

-rw-r--r-- 1 tc staff   319488 Feb 23 09:57 libevent.tcz
-rw-r--r-- 1 tc staff  1417216 Feb 23 09:57 gettext.tcz
-rw-r--r-- 1 tc staff    32768 Feb 23 09:57 intltool.tcz
-rw-r--r-- 1 tc staff    16384 Feb 23 09:57 libltdl.tcz
-rw-r--r-- 1 tc staff    12288 Feb 23 09:57 libdaemon.tcz
-rw-r--r-- 1 tc staff  2957312 Feb 23 09:57 gobject-introspection.tcz
-rw-r--r-- 1 tc staff    69632 Feb 23 09:57 xtrans.tcz
-rw-r--r-- 1 tc staff    36864 Feb 23 09:57 util-macros.tcz
-rw-r--r-- 1 tc staff   323584 Feb 23 09:57 xorg-proto.tcz
-rw-r--r-- 1 tc staff   192512 Feb 23 09:57 xcb-proto.tcz
-rw-r--r-- 1 tc staff    12288 Feb 23 09:57 libXdmcp.tcz
-rw-r--r-- 1 tc staff     8192 Feb 23 09:57 libXau.tcz
-rw-r--r-- 1 tc staff   266240 Feb 23 09:57 libxcb.tcz
-rw-r--r-- 1 tc staff   966656 Feb 23 09:57 libX11.tcz
-rw-r--r-- 1 tc staff    16384 Feb 23 09:57 libSM.tcz
-rw-r--r-- 1 tc staff   303104 Feb 23 09:57 dbus.tcz
-rw-r--r-- 1 tc staff    12288 Feb 23 09:57 nss-mdns.tcz
-rw-r--r-- 1 tc staff   163840 Feb 23 09:57 libavahi.tcz
-rw-r--r-- 1 tc staff    98304 Feb 23 09:57 avahi.tcz

I don't use shairport-sync these days, so I'm inclined to just remove it from the next pcp release, unless Mike B decides to fix the included tinymdns support.

[ralphy]

Hi Ralphy

I just tried the new mono mode with Squeezelite v1.9.9-1356-pCP, pcp 7.0.1 and the latest LMS 8.2 nightly, but when I select Mono in the Audio settings, I get no output at all. Setting Both or Left I get just the left channel as I'd expect. I've taken a default asound.conf and turned off equaliser at the moment, so I think it's just back to a default config. Could anyone else give this a try and see if it's working?

pete S

Is this with or without the alsa equalizer?

I've had several users confirm that the Both Channels (Mono) support works, as it does for me.

Did you have the pcp squeezelite v1.9.9-1356 synced with another player? That's the only time that LMS enables the Output Left only or Output Right only option.

Only Both Channels (Stereo) and Both Channels (Mono) support unsynced players.

Also, changing the Channel Output Mode only takes affect with the next track change, or stopping and restarting playback.