Automating Roon

[Philip_Gibson (Philip G)]

I like to listen to Building a Library on BBC Radio 3. It’s broadcast on Saturdays at 09:30 here in the UK. Sometimes I’m not around. Is there a way of programming Roon to automatically start playing the programme and then stop an hour later?

[BlackJack]

Yes it is possible with the help of external, community maintained Roon Extensions.

Roon Extension: Alarm Clock v0.9.1 (current)

Short description: Roon Extension to start or stop playback on a specific zone at a specific time. Description: This extension turns your Roon system into an alarm clock. You select a zone, an action, a time, and a volume and when the time is right playback starts or stops. The main features (in short) are: 5 independent alarms (number can change), all with their own zone, action, day, time and volume A Play or Stop action, allowing for a wake or sleep function A week timer, allowing for an…

Best installed IMHO with …

Roon Extension Manager 1.x (currently at v1.1.2)

I’m glad to announce the release of Roon Extension Manager 1.0! Earlier on I described my plans, and now the working out of these plans is finished! Besides the creation of the software itself and the setup script also the documentation on the project Wiki has been updated to the latest state. A few highlights, before you all start reading the documentation: Improved user experience by providing: Possibility to modify installation settings without performing a full extension reinstal…

[RBM (René)]

Have a look at the Roon Command Line utility:

Ron Record / RoonCommandLine

It can execute the commands you need quite easily – all you need to do is schedule them.

[Philip_Gibson (Philip G)]

Thanks to you both for your quick and helpful responses. I’ve just taken a look at the Roon Extension Manager and Roon Record links you included. TBH, I’m feeling daunted by the installation and set-up complexities of both. I had hoped there might be a more straightforward approach but I guess there isn’t.

[BlackJack]

Depends on what is available to you to run the extensions on. Installing the Extension Manager under Linux in a Docker container seems to be pretty straight forward. Buying a RaspberryPi as cheap Linux machine if you need one may be cheaper than the tinkering, hustle, gray hairs and shortened live time that seems to come often along with trying to get it all running natively on Linux or other OSs.

[Philip_Gibson (Philip G)]

I realised there’s a much easier way to accomplish what I wanted. I have Keyboard Maestro on my Mac so I set it to open the Radio 3 tab in Firefox just before the programme starts. I’ve set Firefox to play audio automatically. I can then have Audio Hijack pick this up for recording as an .m4a for later listening in Roon.