Sneak peek time!
Firmware / control devices: I’ve been playing with lots of devices especially from m5Stack. This album has some photos.
- ESP32-S3 4.2inch RLCD Development Board, 300 × 400 Resolution, Supports Wi-Fi & BLE Dual-mode Communication And AI Voice Interaction | ESP32-S3-RLCD-4.2 - this one uses an RLCD that’s on par with greyscale eInk in terms of quality but with typical LCD refresh rates.
- https://shop.m5stack.com/products/m5stack-tough-esp32-iot-development-board-kit?srsltid=AfmBOor4eEtzEPR9XuuxhQZMX1APP4SSX8VakrZoKREvjVYbcJ8pMIQL - outdoor rated. It’s become my go to when I sit on the deck (my favorite place to work)
- https://shop.m5stack.com/products/atom-joystick-with-m5atoms3 this has a ton of possibilities given the multiple joysticks.
- https://www.waveshare.com/esp32-s3-photopainter.htm gorgeous eInk color but with very slow refresh rates.
- https://shop.m5stack.com/products/m5stackchan-ai-desktop-robot-kit-with-remote-control-esp32-s3 - the robot with Kismet inspired expressions and dance moves.
I’ll have a beta firmware for each of these out this weekend (I think). I won’t move them out of beta until I get at least one other tester.
Just as exciting to me: I’ve ordered a USB-C power meter (Fnirsi Fnb-C2) and a Power Profiler Kit II in hopes of figuring out better power savings for these devices. m5Stack publishes libraries (with nifty things like sleep) for their devices so hopefully those do much better out of the box.
On the server side:
- I have HQPlayer controls implemented. For those of you who like to DSP your streams, this is hella cool.
- I’ve implemented Spotify control for Spotify Connect speaker endpoints.
- I’ve implemented Apple Music control. Apple Music requires an iOS, iPadOS or MacOS companion app allow control.
- Home Assistant - Music Assistant control is in early testing.
- All exposed via MCP for those who like to have ChatGPT or Claude up. I expect this will be huge in a few months as ChatGPT starts shipping their own hardware.
Again, only tested by me (aside from Apple Music), so I am reluctant to call anything past beta.
Let me know if you want to help me get anything across the beta-line! Spotify is especially difficult in a self-hosted environment, but I’ll work with you.