Can't get Roon endpoints to name and work after rebuild

[Mark_Round]

Core Machine (Operating system/System info/Roon build number)

1.7 build 610 on a QNAP TS451+

Network Details (Including networking gear model/manufacturer and if on WiFi/Ethernet)

Wired and wireless

Audio Devices (Specify what device you’re using and its connection type - USB/HDMI/etc.)

Pi3B with Hifiberry Hat(s) (I have 4 of these - 2 x AMP2, 1 x Digi pro, 1 x DAC pro)

Description Of Issue

Ok, so I had a working system, Roon on the QNAP and a variety of SW builds on the Pi’s (Ropieee, HifiBerryOS, Volumio, Mooge and others had all been tried). I wanted to stream from a squeezebox player as well (or something else as we have a large collection of audiobooks and I wanted to separate them from my music - something Roon is not good at!). So I also have Squeezelite installed on the QNAP but pointed at different library folders with the books in them.

after a bunch of playing I thought it time to tidy up my environment and put all the Pi’s onto a single SW build. Candidates were Ropieee and HifiBerryOS with the Roon endpoint, Squeezeplayer, Airplay connections active.

I tried Ropieee and despite it working fine before, Roon decided all 4 players were in the same audio zone and would not let me rename any of them. Tried cold cycling everything to no avail. Also tried the LMS playback and it seemed to have issues. (Ropieee didn’t seem to want to identify the HAT’s properly and work with them)

So I rebuilt all 4 pi’s with HifiBerryOS, disabling all the protocols I don’t need to provide effectively the same functions. HiFiBerryOS correctly identifies all the HATs (it should do - at this point it’s a single vendor solution!) however this has also turned out to be problematic to connect to roon, Roon want’s to forget the audio device settings, won’t let me name them (or rename them) and won’t stream to some. They also seem to have been somewhat unstable themselves and I can’t remove them from Roon and let it identify them afresh. all are running the 20200805 (current) build (although they seem to have got there through different routes, and 2 of the Pi’s show bluetooth support and the other 2 don’t - I assume that’s because there are 2 Pi3B’s and 2 Pi3B+'s)

I get this on the screen - and Roon won’t let me enter a zone name

any ideas/help? please… I can rebuild the images for the Pi’s, and have tried that a couple of times, but Roon seems to be getting very confused and I don’t seem to be able to clear the config. I did a shutdown, rename of the Roon DB and a restart (and it then spends the next day volume levelling all my music!)

[wizardofoz (Mr Fix It aka The Wiz)]

Just to be sure you can’t clone builds so if you have done this then that is your issue

Under the settings about see the device info and make Sigurd all have unique ID’s

[Mark_Round]

Wizard, I’m unsure what you mean by device settings ? where is this ? under audio I can see them as roon endpoints and also as airplay devices (I’ve not enabled LMS support in Roon - so can’t see them that route)

The Pi’s sd cards were flashed from the same image (which is normal), and I used one of the Pi’s to configure them (as they are hidden around the house it’s a pain to connect to each individually) are you suggesting that is what has confused Roon ? the LMS server can see all 4 fine

TIA Mark

[Mark_Round]

So I tried shutting down all 4 pi’s. I reflagged the S&D card for one of them an installed it in one pi and powered it on.

The one shows up as a Roon endpoint, but I still can’t get it to configure. Interestingly all 4 pis show up as airplay devices - and 3 of them have no power!

Something is particularly screwy i think

[wizardofoz (Mr Fix It aka The Wiz)]

when a pi image installs I think it creates a seeded code so if you clone the SD card after that they will all look the same…which is why you cant clone cards…you must install the card freshly flashed into each pi and turn it on then let it install and then add you other options via remote - like with ropieee’s GUI or maybe others have to use SSH

I would suggest that Ropieee or RopieeeXL is best of the old for a Roon Endpoint. XL only if you like to stream other from say Spotify or other sources.

I just noticed I never sent this edit …oh well sounds like you solved it

[Mark_Round]

So, having 1 new SD card in one PI (with the rest switched off) - and a still dysfunctional system, I tried removing the Roon DB and rebuilding - that changed nothing, so I uninstalled Roon completely and then reinstalled it (same version) at that point the new build Pi showed app as I would have expected and allowed me to configure it and use it! I then powered on (one at a time) the other Pi’s and they all showed up properly and worked as they should. Final action was to add the music folders back in and let it go through the volume levelling and metadata collection and I now have a fully functional system again (which took all night!).

One remaining thing to do is to get the IR remote and FLIRC USB adapter working on one of the Pi’s (which was one reason I started with Ropieee - it auto recognises the FLIRC adaptor out of the box!)

My conclusion is that the Pi’s were fine, that something in Roon’s config outside of the DB area was scrambled somehow, this was something not reset by clearing the DB. A more brutal reset was needed!

I may well try going back to Ropieee - the management GUI is neater (the ability to show all Ropieee devices on my network makes mgmt simpler), other than that they seem to provide similar function within the builds, I’m not interested in these pi’s being Spotify endpoints or direct radio endpoints or anything although airplay is useful for friends visiting and I use a separate LMS server to stream audiobooks (the organisation of which is not a Roon strength - and I don’t really want Tolkien interrupting a music session for example)

Thanks for your suggestions it’s taken me a couple of days to sort something that should not be that hard! but I seem to have got there

[nuwriy]

Hello @Mark_Round, glad you got some help here! Please let me know if you have any further issues.