A hello to all Roon Fans,
I have developed a LCD color touch display device based on a Raspberry Zero 2W, which can display the cover with track informations like zone name, artist, album and title of various music sources like Roon.
Content from Apple Music and Spotify can also be displayed as an option.
With a tap on the cover for the currently played title, you can open a overlayed menu. There are buttons to select a zone (channel) of Roon, Spotify, or Apple Music. For the selected zone, the position in time and the length of the actually played title is displayed.
Playback can be controlled via buttons (next, back, play/pause, random play, shuffle play).
With it, you have the total control over your Music.
The best thing about it: It’s a free maker project too (like my RoonMatrix device project), so it’s 100% free. You can find a detailed description of how to build the hardware by yourself on my homepage. It’s very easy to build.
There is also an app to control the Coverplayer device, which runs on all major platforms: iOS, Android, MacOS, Windows and Linux. This app (Roonmatrix) is now available in new version 1.1.0 on all major app stores, and is also free and without advertising.
You can find more information, pictures, videos, and more on my homepage: https://www.roonmatrix.com
Demo videos for you:
Video of the Hardware: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T51WecL1Wts.
Video of the iPhone app.
Video of the macOS app.
Links to the app:
Have fun with it!
7 Likes
The Android version 1.1 of the app is now available on uptodown.com. The Link: https://roonmatrix.de.uptodown.com/android
Why uptodown?
Here is some information about the reasons.
I have closed my Aptoide account now, because the reaction and support was not good.
After more than 2 months without a solution for my uploading problems (APK signature conflict), i have lost my trust
On Aptoide you can find only the older version 1.0.
My first choice of a good Android App Store was the Google Play Store, but it has too high requirements, in detail the requirement to have 20 testing persons which must test an app for min. 2 weeks. But, this is not possible, because the requirement to use the app is: additional hardware.
That is ultimately the reason for publishing the Android app on uptodown.com.
Version 1.2 of the device firmware and app is coming in the next few weeks.
It’s a big improvement.
Main Feature: You can search for Artist, Track, Playlist, Radio Station, and Genre on Spotify, Apple Music (in own libary, and the streaming service too), and Roon Library.
You have 2 virtual keyboard layouts, one in a more standard layout, but smaller keys, and another option with bigger keys, but special keys beside the space key.
With another key, you can search for the album tracklist of the actually played song.
Click on ‘play all’ or select a track, and boom. Very nice.
This feature gives you full playback control to browse and play all your music sources, in addition to the existing album cover and track information display.
1 Like
Here are a few Coverplayer preview images of the forthcoming v1.2:
The update of Coverplayer in version 1.2.0 is out now! 
New features in V1.2 firmware for Roonmatrix and Coverplayer:
- Support for Spotify Connect.
- Support for USB Bluetooth audio dongles, playback control via Spotify Connect and Airplay 2, as well as Roon.
- Multilanguage support (german, english, french, spanish, italian, expandable for additional languages via ini file, auto-update via web server).
- Automatic location detection or manual language selection via country code parameter (auto, de, en, fr, es, it).
- Automatic detection of Roon server IP and port.
- Support for IPv4 and IPv6, optional network limitation to IPv4 (for DS lite cable internet).
- New webserver PHP and Python scripts to get extended track info via AppleScript.
New features in V1.2 firmware for Coverplayer:
- Search in various categories such as artist, track, playlist, genre, and radio.
- Search in local library from Roon and Apple Music.
- Optional search in Spotify and Apple Music streaming services.
- Auto-restart of the application and UI in case of program error.
- Zone selection buttons with platform icon (Roon, Spotify, Spotify Connect, Apple Music).
- Display auto-wakeup: When changing tracks, the display is turned back on (after optional touch timeout).
- Repeat and shuffle buttons: to selecting the corresponding playback mode and displaying the status.
- Tracklist button: Display the tracks of the currently displayed album.
- Significantly faster display update on track change and status updates (e.g., due to status changes of repeat, shuffle, playback, position).
- Better support for special characters and languages.
- Two options to displaying the virtual keyboard (standard keyboard-like layout or alternative optimized keyboard layout).
- Zone autoswitch option: Automatic switch to another zone when the active zone goes offline.
- Correct display of a cover in png image format.
- Selection of the Spotify Connect output channel via zone button click.
- Extended webserver PHP and Python scripts to searching for artists, tracks, playlists, genres, and radio, as well as title info via AppleScript.
The app is designed to control the following devices:
- Roonmatrix, a free Maker project: a device with a big LED matrix to displaying the music currently playing as a scrolling ticker, to selecting the zone, and to controlling the playback mode.
- Coverplayer, a free maker project: a small device with a square color LCD display to showing the album cover, selecting the zone, controlling the playback mode, and searching the music libraries.
New in V1.2 of the app:
It offers now extended support for the latest features of Roonmatrix and Coverplayer:
- Support for Spotify Connect and direct one-time authorization via Spotify login directly in the app.
- Selection of Spotify Connect output channel, configuration of format and bitrate (BossDAC, USB Bluetooth audio dongle).
- Selection of Airplay 2 output channel (BossDAC, USB BT dongle).
- Multilanguage support (auto, german, english, french, spanish, italian, expandable for additional languages via json file, auto-update via web server).
- Significantly faster display update on track change and status updates.
- Display of device log in color, new log page pagination, with filter to displaying search hits only.
- Configuration of the Coverplayer virtual keyboard with multilingual support and individual key assignment.
- Marking of covers with platform logo in the cover view.
- Improved detection of zone status and display in the cover view (paused, inactive zone).
There is a new video on YouTube about Coverplayer version 1.2.0.
It shows the features in detail and how to search the different libraries of Roon, Spotify, and Apple Music by artist, title, playlist, genre, radio station, and much more.
Here is the link to the video: https: //youtu.be/IAKk_HHU178
