I’m loving using Roon. The only thing I haven’t got sorted is the display. I’m running ROCK and know that doesn’t offer a display so was hoping to use the browser on my Samsung ‘Frame’ TV, except it doesn’t work. I can’t find an alternative browser (which is the suggestion for XBOX) so wondered what the easiest solution was. Airplay is a pain to set up every time. Solutions I can think of are Ropieee with the 7inch display, a google home hub just set up as a display for Roon or chromecast on the TV. I saw a Hifi Rose streamer the other day with a beautiful display but the price is high when I have the audio/storage working nicely already.
Any other ideas or advice on which of the above is a good idea? I’d love it to just turn on when I start listening on the hifi. I have a small stand to display whichever LP I’m listening to - that works fine so I’d like to replicate that simplicity!
btw. while an Amazon Fire tablet might seem like the perfect solution, especially when combined with the ‘Show Mode’ stand, they can be slightly more glitchy to use with Fully Kiosk when remotely unlocking the home screen, compared to a normal Android tablet.
If you want it wake / sleep on playback that’s a bit tricker, but can be done. I use Home Assistant as I’m using it already for the rest of my home automation, if you we’re setting up HA purely for this task it’s probably overkill unless you like tinkering and have a weekend spare. But other than enabling the Roon and Fully Browser integrations it’s simply a case of creating a basic automation to wake or sleep the display when music starts or stops.
A Google Nest Hub would seem like the ideal device but it looks like support is patchy to non existent. Also the Nest Hub Max (which is the model that seems to work) is fairly costly just to use as a Roon display, a used android tablet would come in far cheaper.
I use RoPieee with a 7" display, the caveat being that it is an endpoint and the would only display what is playing through it. It also does not do the lyrics.
The other device I use is a Shield TV, you would need to turn on the TV, turn on the shield, and then tell Roon to “display now”. But it gives you a huge display (whatever size TV you have) and it does the lyrics, if that is important to you.
The issues I have had with trying to use tablets is trying to make sure they don’t go to sleep after a while. I have never tried Fullly Kiosk Browser, does this solve the sleeping problem? Or is it a setting that needs to be changed somewhere in the tablet (android in my case).
But how well it works does depend slightly on what Android device you use. Fully seem to have gone to some lengths to allow these sorts of configuration as it’s main use is in commercial kiosks in museums, galleries and trade shows, where you don’t want the device falling back to an Android Lock Screen.
The basic Google Chromecast used to be a great solution for this, but, unfortunately, Google is now bundling Google TV (and other services) with the hardware purchase, driving up the cost:
Edit: I should add that I have an Nvidia Shield TV on all of our TV’s. This device has Chromecast support built-in. It’s quite a bit more expensive than Chromecast, but much more capable as well. May be worth the investment if you’re buying something anyway. When I configure one of these as the Roon Display for a zone, the Shield TV will wake up and turn the TV on automatically when music starts playing. If only it would shutdown once the music stops. LOL.
Thanks everyone for the answers and information. The android tablet does sound like the best option - this was how I was imagining using the Pi with the screen, so I think it would work. Although artwork on the big tv would be great… I’ll have a think!
I don’t like to use Amazon (tax issues/workers’ rights/Jeff Bezos going to space for fun) so the Fire was probably not on the shortlist, but thanks for the heads up anyway!
I’ll let you know if/when I get around to it.
Enjoy whatever music you’re listening to this evening!
A RoPieeeXL Display would be my recommendation. I have 2 that I use only to show metadata. One with the MA X-SABRE 3 and another with a Bluesound NODE.
I agree the RPi + 7" Display is a nice solution, especially if you’re after a little evenings project.
The one downside of the Ropiee display for me is that it isn’t quite as polished (design wise) as either the official Roon ‘now playing’ web page or Roon app itself.
I was going to say that the other advantage is you can also use an android tablet as a remote and I thought I would use mine more that way, but in actual fact it hardly ever gets moved off the stand. The screen does wake up and dim whenever music starts or stops playing (I do this via Home Assistant as per above).
Here’s what the Roon ‘now showing’ webpage looks like on mine, along side a rather sad looking plant
As soon the Roon end point stops streaming, the RoPieee Display shows a clock. That’s called Screensaver function and you can program it to kick off at any time after you stop streaming. Mine is set to show the clock after 3 mins streaming is stopped. You can also change the clock’s color.
@Enrico_Castagnetti’s stand looks a little more “polished/refined” from what I can see of it, though. As apposed to the one I used that has a lego block built right into it…
