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HQPlayer zone has extra external control that I cannot disable, means other external controls don't work
Unifi UDM Pro, multiple Unifi Switches, Unifi APs, all endpoints hard wired via 1Gb ethernet
The extraneous “external control” is not a big deal generally - it’s just an “extra icon” that appears that does nothing. The link appears whether there’s a live HQPlayer instance at the address specified in “Settings / Setup / Add HQPlayer” or not. If I add a new HQPlayer zone pointing to some random IP address, then that link icon appears.
None of this is a big deal unless you’re trying to use actual external controls. I can add an external control via RooExtend (or various devices come with them, my example comes from RooExtend / RooControl). I can add the external control, but then instead of the power button appearing appropriately in the zone control with Red or Purple depending on the state, there is a grey one. Underneath it appear two link buttons - the “non-functional HQPlayer break link” and the functional “RooExtend power button”. If i click on the RooExtend one, my amplifiers turn off.
None of this would be a huge deal, except I can’t use the “auto standby” feature on the zone - because it depends on there being a single external control.
If I try RooControl with a normal zone/DAC (like my SMSL M500) then everything works perfectly - I get the purple / red power button and it acts exactly like I want it to.
I just want to get rid of the extraneous HQPlayer “break link” button that appears to do nothing, and which the developer of HQPlayer says he knows nothing about.
Continue to play around with this.
Added a “test HQPlayer zone” from Settings/Setup/Add HQPlayer. Pointed it to the IP address of my NAS (which definitely doesn’t have an HQ Player or anything Roon related on it). Sure enough, once I named it, I went to the zone and there was the “break link” icon. I clicked that break link icon, nothing happened.
Question - does this “break link” icon appear for others whenever you add an HQPlayer zone? What is clicking it supposed to do? Does clicking it do anything for others?
I should add for clarity that if I then add a correctly configured HQPlayer zone, pointing to a functional HQPlayer desktop instance (and can play music) that there is also / still a broken link icon, that appears to do nothing. I think that’s clear from above - I’m just trying to explain that it seems to be part of the “create hqplayer zone” code, regardless of what is on the other end.
By the way- my desired behavior is that the extra broken link / external control goes away so that I can control power to my amps with a RooControl associated to my HQPlayer zone. Having an extra control - even if it did something I don’t need - would mess up the functionality I’m trying to achieve, and which I can achieve with any non-HQPlayer zone.
Hi @Johnny_Ooooops ,
Just to confirm, if you temporarily disable RooExtend/RooControl and have only HQPlayer with the zone, does the broken link for HQPlayer still appear?
Hi @noris Yes, if I bring up a brand new HQPlayer zone (whether connected to a live HQPlayer instance or not) the broken link appears no matter what. If I add rooControl’s external control then I have two broken links. And if I then subsequently remove rooControl’s external control, then I just have the one broken link that I originally had.
Sorry if this is unclear - I don’t have a perfect taxonomy or vocabulary for all these bits of UI 
Hi @noris can I ask whether i have the same behavior as everyone else, and it just generally doesn’t bother people, or if i observe very strange behavior?
Thanks,
John
Hi @Johnny_Ooooops ,
Thanks for that clarification. I believe our QA team had HQPlayer profiles, so I’ll check in with our QA team to see if they can reproduce this issue. It may take some time for my request to reach the top of their queue, so thanks in advance for your patience!
Thanks @noris
In the meantime, wondering if those with more HQplayer experience than I (somewhat at random selecting @dabassgoesboomboom and @Rugby as reasonably frequent hqplayer desktop thread posters) see the same “always an extra external control / broken link” behavior as I do? Many thanks.
Yes that broken link is there for me. It doesn’t bother me really since I don’t use Roon with HQPlayer much, I prefer to run HQPlayer’s client or desktop.
Thanks, super helpful. So it’s not just me!
Then the question is whether it’s for a purpose, and if it’s possible to disable it. It’s certainly a hassle for me in my very particularly use case and I’m guessing it’s a bug but even if it is perhaps not one with a huge user base that cares (HQ Player zone with external control of amp power).
Hi @Johnny_Ooooops ,
I wanted to touch base with some good news, which is that our QA team was able to also reproduce this behavior in-house and we’ve opened a bug report with our dev team.
As per policy, we can’t comment on timelines for ticket resolution, but getting this reproduced in-house is a critical step to ensure that we are able to resolve it, so I’ve gone ahead and updated the ticket title with this info.
There isn’t anything else we need from you at the moment, so we’ll go ahead and close the thread until dev work begins, but should there be any further questions we’ll open the thread back up. Please be on the lookout for a bug fix regarding this in a future Roon release and thanks again for the report!
