Installing Roon Extensions on Rock

Have a look at Step 1 and Step 2 of this guide.

I just realized that the PuTTY tool where @Rugby referred to isn’t described yet. You should take these extra actions at the end of Step 1

  • Download and Install PuTTY, it is available for Windows and Linux
  • Get the IP address of the Raspberry Pi via your router or other tool
  • Setup an ssh connection in PuTTY, use the IP address you found in the previous step, set other settings as in screenshot and select Open

image

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Step 1. Understood.
Step 2. I assume I’m logging in to the new Raspberry Pi. Do I need to buy a screen for that too? I’m not ever going to use it for anything else. Also, I assume it won’t recognize my wireless keyboard and mouse. Or can I simply login to some web interface as instructed here for installing PuTTY?
Download and Install PuTTY. I have downloaded both the Windows 64-bit version and the Linux version. Which do I use? I know how to install the Windows version - no problem. Will that then work like Balena Etcher and transfer needed files over to the new Raspberry Pi? Or do I need to install that as a Linux program directly onto the Raspberry Pi? I’m not proficient in Linux. Is there some place I can learn how to do that installation (if it must be by Linux)?

This is a project for a “tinkerer”! There are plenty of help and getting started guides out there, but the basic idea is as follows:

  1. Obtain a Raspberry pi, and 4GB or greater Micro SD card.
  2. Download DietPi
  3. Burn the image to the SD card with etcher
  4. Connect Pi to a TV & USB keyboard, boot from SD card
  5. Follow the DietPi menus to install network and software options

At step 4, an SSH connection (eg, PuTTY) works too, you’ll need an ethernet connection.

  • username = root
  • password = dietpi

Software can be installed via the command line: dietpi-launcher or dietpi-software

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Don’t buy a screen!

Install the Windows version. Run it and set it up as shown in the screenshot:

  • Connection type: SSH
  • Port: 22
  • IP address: [get IP address of DietPi device via your router]

Via SSH (Secure SHell) you connect from your Windows PC over the network to the Pi, you can see it as the command line variant of a web interface.

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I’m trying my hand with a Windows 10 machine before plunking down another $100 or so on a new Raspberry Pi, case, power supply, SD card… So I finally got the Extension Manager to run as a Windows service, and it appears in Roon as “The Appgineer.” I wanted to install Deep Harmony, but The Appgineer only offers an extension known as “Doc Bobo.” That extension does not recognize my Harmony Hub. I have a FLIRC plugged into my Raspberry Pi with a touchscreen. That Touchscreen Pi can and does control Roon music. It shows what’s playing and you can skip songs using it. Not much else. The FLIRC which is plugged into it is as it came from the box. (I have no physical remote to be configured.) The web interface for the Touchscreen Pi “sees” the FLIRC. The Harmony Hub is situated right next to the FLIRC, and it is plugged in.
What now?

You might ask in the Harmony Extension thread. Which if you have not reviewed, it might be a good read.

OK so it seems to me the original point of this thread got lost, installing on ROCK. When I look in my Settings I see Extensions but there are no discovered extensions. So is this because I do not have Extension Manager installed? Seems funny to have the setting but not have it installed. Assuming it comes on ROCK then is there some discovery endpoint that needs to be configured? I cannot find any clear instructions on getting Extensions working on my Intel NUC running ROCK 227 OS, 667 Roon.

Extension manager and the extensions need to be installed and run on a different machine than rock

Hi @Todd_Haugen I have been where you are and will give you the same advice I got.
Roon Rock is a locked down distribution of Linux that you can not add any extensions to.

Get a Raspberry Pi and install a Linux distro on it.
I use a DietPi solution for running Roon extensions and Roon Bridge to allow me to play to other devices (USB DAC etc).
Works great and you can be up and running in 20-30 minutes.
You can download it from the following link and follow some of the instructions further up in this thread

Good luck with this

Regards

Mike

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@Michael_Harris and @Rugby Here is why it is confusing even after having read the threads. There are two pictures show how this should work first this image showing entry points and gateways

then this image showing a single RPi device so I was assuming that either the entry points and gateway can be co-hosted or the core and the gateway. So can the entry point and the gateway be co-hosted or does image 2 need to be updated to show a gateway too?

@Todd_Haugen You are right to be confused as many of us have been and you generally have to read through dozens of messages to get the pointers that it does not work the way we think it does.

If you wanted to install of a Linux distro like Ubuntu on X86 hardware or wanted to run in on Windows then all good. Rock is a locked down distro so you cannot install any other software and the extension manager and extensions are third party.

I am happy with my Rock (Roon Server) & DietPi (Roon Bridge and extensions) combo for my living room, but everyone has slightly different requirements and skill sets.

Regards

Mike

OK so I installed gateway plus extensions on my RPi 3b+ with HiFi Berry Dac + ADC Pro and it is not finding the radio station. I posted to Jan but I thought you might have run into the same thing?

I figured it out, you have to be streaming audio to define the station.

Glad to hear that you got it sorted. I do not listen to radio stations, I am pretty much an album listener, almost exclusively.
Though some Tidal playlists have really caught me recently and occasionally rune radio can also be good

Regards

Mike

Hello everybody - and roon team in special!

I don’t see a useful solution here, buying a additional device and feed it with energy can not be the final solution for using extensions in a ROCK driven environment. I changed my NUC from windows 10+roon to ROCK just today, and now I’m a little bit shocked, how (sorry for the harshness, but it’s the way it is:) stupid the extensions “management” is ment to be on a ROCK. Gives the name a truely new interpretation: as flexible as a rock…

Is there any chance, that there will be the opportunity to run extensions on a ROCK? Without it’roXs! the usage of roon is stone-age-style on any android device.

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I don’t think this will happen.
I would recommend DietPi on a Pi4
Work’s really well.

Regards

Mike

Hi Mike,

a pie lacks the needed power to run DSP functions, so that’s no option. And as said before, running a pie in addition to a ROCK is just incredibly dumb.

You’re misunderstanding how it works: the core does the dsp weightlifting, and sends a data-stream to the endpoint for rendering. Thus, a pi4 is more than capable of performing under all circumstances.

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Hi Mike,

you misunderstood me: I run one core (ROCK) and one endpoint. The core does the DSP, that’ right, the endpoint renders the stream, correct too. So, where is the pi4, which I acutally don’t need in this setup at all?

Why is roon not capable of managing plugins on their own, self-designed server software? That’s the question, and I don’t want to offend anybody, but I think that question only a roon official could answer.

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Not a Roon official, but, I’ll give it a go :D…

Rock is designed to be a closed system, an appliance which cannot be tweaked or modified by the user. By definition, hosting extensions which are written by 3rd parties breaks this design goal.

If you want a two device setup which also runs extensions, then you need to either be able to run the extension manager on the Core or on the endpoint. For a Core, you would use an OS which will allows this, Linux or Windows for the core. For an endpoint, the easiest is to have a Pi running DietPi with the appropriate endpoint HAT to feed your DAC.

Through this tread, I started with using Win 10, then switch to a Pi. However, now I use Win 10 not only because I run extensions (actually I run DietPi as the extension manager under a VM under windows, works great), but, also because I like to monitor temps and have the option to run a quick hardware diagnostic if I want.

Also, the extension manager can be run on any Windows 10 machine that is currently on. It doesn’t even have to be part of the audio chain. The device running the extensions just needs to sit on your network somewhere.