In planning to buy, setting up, and using an IdPi I gathered a lot of random information and made a number of mistakes. Along the way I frequently wished for a single information source to refer to. This is an attempt at creating that source.
Buying it: Initially, I couldn’t find a place to buy it. But as I stumbled around on the Internet I learned about rpilocator.com, which checks all suppliers. First, I filtered on the regions and devices I was interested in (US, Pi 4). Second, I opened tabs for all of the SKUs/vendors who had recent “Last Stock” information. Third, I signed up for any that required advance proof of non-botness (so I could purchase quickly). Finally, I refreshed the tabs whenever I thought of it. When one showed “in stock”, I bought it – for list price.
Accouterments: I bought the Rasberry Pi power supply with the Pi, as I thought this might save me shipping and as a reward for the Pi supplier. I wanted a passive case and settled on the Geekworm P173, primarily because of its heat sinks that attach to most of the heat sources. After I had all these pieces and tried to start it I learned that I needed a micro HDMI to HDMI cable, so that arrived a couple of days later.
Starting it: I brought up an LCD screen, wired keyboard, and wired mouse from our spare parts in the basement and hooked it up adjacent to my PC (this is when I learned about the micro HDMI to HDMI cable). When I inserted the mSD card I put it “next to” the socket, not in it. So I had to open the case to put it in the socket properly. This caused me to mentally thank the designers as the socket is on the other side of the Pi board from the stuck-on heat sinks. After I had connected everything to the Pi I plugged it in. However, I wasn’t sure which of the two micro HDMI sockets to use and I guessed wrong. When I didn’t see anything on the screen I moved the cable to the other socket and could see the scrolling on the screen.
License: When I first entered the license I used lower case for the letters and omitted the dashes. One or both of these resulted in the registration not being completed. I deduced this when the GUI interface kept showing “User Input Disabled” and I couldn’t access anything in the usual GUI interface. Re-entering the license
exactly as shown, including the dashes fixed the problem.
Assigning an IP: As I’m compulsive, everything on our network lives behind a pfSense box. Experience has taught me that stand-alone boxes (e.g. Roku & TiVo) don’t get along with pfBlockerNG’s DNSBL filtering. The solution to that is to bypass DNSBL using Python Group Policy; this requires a static IP. So I had to create one. The instructions I followed are:
- Choose JRiver IdPi Main Menu Option 13
- Choose a network (ours is wired) and press [Properties] (I turned off the Id’s wifi too)
- Check “Use Static IPs”
- Enter the desired IP, Netmask, and Gateway – the latter two were automatically filled in when I tabbed out of the IP field. I left “Use global DNS servers” unchecked and pressed [OK].
- Closed the window using the corner “X”.
- Reboot or shutdown the Pi using the appropriate Main Menu option
I shutdown the Pi and used the MAC address to set the IP in pfSense. (I had found the MAC address in pfSense and checked it against the “11 - Show network information” JRiver IdPi Main Menu option. An additional benefit to the static IP is that Remote Desktop remembers the IP.
File names: We keep our music on a NAS. However, as it’s been a looong time since I used anything but Windows, I’ve gotten in the habit of using spaces in my folder names (e.g. “Ripped CDs”). Linux doesn’t like this (I knew, but I’d forgotten) so I had to rename anything in the path to Id’s target folders that had a space in the name (there’s no problem with folders downstream). This caused me to modify the syncing program that we use for backup and to rebuild the Media Center library.
Synology NAS: I’ll list the steps I took on the NAS, I suspect other NAS’s would be similar:
1. Open File Station and navigate to the Id source folders
2. Right-click on the folder and choose “Share”
3. Accept the default settings and press [Save]
4. Do 2 & 3 for all of the Id source folders
Mounting media folders: Main Menu 20
Menu 10
Path to the share: //X_NAS/X/Ripped_Cds/FLAC
Directory name: FLAC
Is <path> on a Windows computer? N
Should FLAC be Read-Only r Read-Write (ro/rw)? rw
Access <path? As the guest user (y/n)? n
Username for <path>? Username
Password for <path>? Password
… Access successful
Hit ENTER to continue
Note: As our NAS is only accessible from within our network we use the same (simple) username / password for all uses, and I used it again here.
Initial Settings: Collected from various places; all were set as below on my Id when I received it.
Turn off the spectrum analyzer
switch tracks: gapless
do not play silence: UNchecked
use gapless for sequential album tracks: checked
use gapless for manual track changes: checked
seek: standard
stop: immediate
pause: immediate
Importing music: The names provided under “Mounting media folders” are what you use to configure the import; they are case-sensitive. They are input in this form: “/mnt/FLAC” and “/mnt/OS_All”. Initially I typed the “All” as all-caps, and MC wouldn’t accept it. The import – including scanning – took about twice as long as on my PC – 10 minutes vs 5 for 11,000+ files – so I consider it fast.
My glitch: When working on it using Remote Desktop Connection with MC in GUI mode I closed the GUI window by clicking the red X. I tried to recover from this by using the Main Menu Option 1 – GUI; it took more than a half hour before I could reach it with RDC. I was mentally preparing myself to ignore the “don’t pull the plug” advice but I didn’t need to. If such a thing happens in the future I’ll wait at least an hour before I try pulling the plug. (BTW, Bob tells me that the GUI would have automatically restarted at the top of the next minute; so the next time I make that mistake -- [12/22/22] or do something that causes MC to crash -- I’ll just wait without doing anything.)
Playlists: My playlists were exported as playlist_name.m3u. Here are my steps:
- Make a copy of each named Id_playlist_name.m3u
- Edit all at once using Notepad++ (free)
- Using Notepad++ I replaced:
1. \\HOOP_NAS\Hooper\Ripped_CDs\FLAC with /mnt/FLAC
2. \\HOOP_NAS\Hooper\Ripped CDs\Other_Sources_All with /mnt/OS_All
3. \ with /
- Run each of these across all open files
- Save the files
- Access the Id with it’s IP: I used \\192.168.5.11 in Windows’ File Explorer
- Choose InternalStorage
- Double-click on media
- Double-click on Samples, this opens the folder where the local music file(s) reside
- Paste the modified playlists there
- Close the File Explorer window
- Using a Remote Connection to the Id in the GUI mode, choose File | Import Playlist… You will see the playlists you pasted.
- One at at time – MC won’t take them all at once – import the playlists
Parallel outputs: I’m using my IdPi to feed both my main system and an amplifier that plays six speakers around the house, each amplifier using its own DAC. The timing between the two isn’t critical as we listen to one or the other, not both. My first attempt was to use a USB-splitter; that didn’t work. So I looked at MC documentation (after everything else fails, RTFM). It appeared that my solution would be found in Zones. I read the few entries in the forum and Wiki and some of these left me unsure it would work, but it was certainly worth trying. Pedantically, I call the zones Big speakers and House speakers. I linked the zones and both worked! This is how I linked the zones:
• “Player | Zone | Add Zone” for each of the DACs, naming them as you wish
• For each Zone, choose the proper output device in “Player | Playback Options | Audio | Audio Device”. Note that the zone you are configuring is at the top of the window.
• Link the zones by “Player | Zone | Link Current Zone” to your choice of the other zones.
Some of the forum comments made me doubt that the link would persist so I’ve tried to test its persistence: First, I used the IdPi Main Menu to check for an update. Of course, MC was shut down and restarted (or at least the GUI portion was, I couldn’t tell from the fast-scrolling commands). Anyhow, the link persisted through this. I neglected to check the current MC version before, but the MC version after is 28.0.106. Second, I rebooted the IdPi from JRemote; they were still linked when everything restarted. So far, so good. Finally, who knows? I’ll edit this when the MC version is updated. [6/9/22] I just updated MC to 29.0.50 and the link is still there, so all is good. Ditto 12/22/22.
JRemote: I installed JRemote on my iPhone and I like it; it’s missing the “Favorites” category that I used so much in Sonus, but I’ll get used to its absence. However, there was one default that I didn’t like: it played the music I requested on the iPhone, not on the speakers. I had to search a bit to find the settings that made it act as I wanted; these are the settings I changed:
• On the main Settings screen: “Autoconnect to last server on launch” should be ON (this may be the default, but I’m not sure so I’ll mention it).
• Click on the circled-i in the middle of the server name in the Server list (just to the left of the “>”); change “Set zone to ‘This device’ on connect” to OFF (it’s default is ON).
It now plays on the parallel (linked) outputs, as I want it to.
Edited 5/23/2022 to add Parallel outputs and JRemote.
REW: I’m beginning to use REW to optimize my speaker placement and maybe to add corrections. I connected a laptop to the USB input on my DAC for the initial REW test and setup (replacing the IdPi USB connection). After I reconnected the USB from the IdPi, MC would only allow 48 kHz outputs (even for 44.1 inputs). After some flailing around in the forum and finding the solution, Bob told me: “If you run MC without the previously selected device attached, it will switch to the default device which is usually locked by ALSA to one sample rate. 48k by default.” [Added 12/22/22. Of course, this isn’t an Id issue, but I’m including it here to put all my gotchas in one place.]
