I hope @Jan_Koudijs doesn’t mind me making this a separate thread but I think it needs not to be “lost” in the random play thread. I had asked how to thank him for his excellent work and spurred him on to this -
As I said on the other thread Jan’s Roon extensions have really made a difference to my Roon experience. Pause and random album are used daily.
.sjb
Hi @Sloop_John_B,
Sure I don’t mind this separate thread (although I initially thought to have it somewhere a bit hidden to see if it picks up anyway 
).
Thank you for being so clear in showing your appreciation for what I created, and for getting me into this donation thing 
, let’s see what it brings.
For those that prefer a direct link:
Entry points is exactly what I needed to finish off my Roon system, thank you for making it great! I just donated, I hope more people do to!
I would like to use this thread once in a while to share what my plans are with the received donations (as I’m not planning to use it all just for coffee). So here is my first report.
A favorite topic within this Roon Community is to share what we are playing. The popularity of the “What We Are Listening To” thread is that big that we now have monthly renewals to keep it within acceptable limits. But I have to admit that I do not participate in it myself, probably because:
So some time back I stumbled on two online services that allow you to share links to the different streaming services with others, these services are Songlink/Odesli and Songwhip. It made me wonder if it would be possible to use the Roon API to get the Now Playing information and convert that into a shareable link using the mentioned services.
Quite some research followed, but now I can report that I created an extension that does just that, getting the Now Playing information from the Roon API and converting it into a shareable link.
During the research I found out that for this to work I need a back-end in the cloud that accesses the different third party services, reason is that such services use application specific tokens that cannot be distributed as part of an extension.
Now the thing is that resources in the cloud come at a price, and, to get to the core of this post, this is where the donations come into play.
Another unknown in this story is the possible user base of the extension and how much traffic they will generate, also these third party services have rate limits that might be hit. For this reason I want to ramp up slowly and therefor decided that at first only those who donated on Buy Me a Coffee can use the extension. This might change at a later time.
I named the extension Sharoon and it can be found in the new Social category within the Extension Manager. If you provide the email address, used on Buy Me a Coffee, in the extension then you receive an email with an activation link. The help text in the extension should lead you through the process.
The email address is only used for verification against the BMC administration not for any other purposes.
To finish off, here is a short video that demonstrates Sharoon:
Thank you Jan that seems like an excellent return for buying you a coffee 
I look forward to trying this out as I often post links to friends to listen on WhatsApp etc.
Hi Jan,
Trying out Sharoon, perhaps there is something I’m simply missing. When I click on the Sharoon link it takes me to The Appgineer is creating Roon extensions and not the web interface running locally on my Pi on 5501. I received the activation token without issue.
I’ve ‘logged’ to the buy me coffee page and now clicking on Sharoon link just stalls trying to load…same behavior regardless of the service I choose.
Please advise,
Have you selected a zone in the Settings? If so, then you play a track in that zone and then click the link, it should then redirect you to the track page. As long as there is nothing played it defaults to the BMC page.
I had a streaming radio station playing…thank you.
Thanks Jan
Took a little time to work my way through it (and remember that I had not updated my Extension manager as it previously failed)
It works nicely for sharing with people on different streaming services.
Good that you bring this up. Live Radio is not supported because the metadata that is provided by the stations doesn’t have any standardization, it can even be that there are no artists and titles provided at all.
Sharoon now has a dedicated thread:
No, unfortunately Buy Me a Coffee dropped paypal support last December.
Time for an update on what has been done with the received donations, but not before I have thanked all of my supporters.
Since I accept donations (the day this thread started) I have received 66 cups of coffee from 21 supporters.
For the development of the Librespot Entrypoint I had a Spotify subscription for two months, a necessity to make it happen. As response is low I have cancelled the subscription for now.
And today I ordered a Raspberry Pi 4B 2GB. Not easy to get your hands on these days but there was a batch delivered to Kiwi Electronics (my tip of the day 
). When this is in I have a Pi2, Pi3 and Pi4 so a good set of boards for developing and testing Roon extensions.
As there will always be something next, the possibility to donate remains!
Thanks Guys!
Great tip - just bagged a Pi4. I’m ready for whatever goodies you send our way.
Thanks again for all your work and hopefully you’ll get a few more coffees 
.sjb
