I am happy to be corrected, but I don’t believe the Pi writes to the SD card while playing, so I assume a sudden power-down is not likely to cause any harm.
Slim, the shutdown button looks perfect, thanks. Except that I am not a hardware guy and I am not sure about hooking the switch up to those pins while also having the hifiberry attached (to the same pins). Not sure if it works physically or if the pulling the pin to ground might harm the dac. I will look for one of those switches to try it though.
Zappyroon, Yes I was thinking it might not typically cause issues. However when it gets powered down might not be when it is playing. And I think in general we never know exactly when a linux system is going to be writing data. Some people have mentioned a read-only os partition. That might be a good thing.
Here are a couple of even simpler ways to remotely power down the pi and no hardware mods required!
RasPi Check for Android & SimplePi for iOS
I gave RasPi Check a spin because it’s free and it seemed to work just fine. There are more apps of similar ilk available as well.
Slim,
thanks those look like nice utilities. I have tried SimplePi on my iPhone and it will be useful. I still want to try to get a push button on there though. I have a use case where the little music streamer can easily be carried around and used in different locations, and it just has to be easy and quick to power it down (even without using an app). But the app definitely makes it simpler.
Thanks for the very helpful step by step. I found a slight simplification that worked for me (at least I think it is): after you burn your SD card on your PC or Mac, download the appropriate easy installation script from Roon, locate the /home/pi directory on the card and copy the script there. Then, when you log into your Pi, either by plugging in a monitor and keyboard or by SSH, it will be there. You just need to “chmod +x” it and run it, and you’re done. No big long “curl” command to copy and paste.
For my HiFiberry I ran their installation first, then the one for Roon. It may not make a difference.
Peter, how did you get the meridian explorer to work?
what settings? hardware control for volume?
or just the fixed volume output?
Hello Mark,
I used it on a RaspberryPi 2B with a hifiberry digi+ card running picoreplayer. I bought it as a kit already configured.I changed the output of the picoreplayer through the webbrowser from hifiberry to ALSA.
plugged in the Explorer2 and it worked.
I used the fixed output connected to my amp using my amps volume control.
I can’t look up the exact settings anymore because I deleted the picore image and changed it to Raspbian Lite
running RoonBridge wich worked even better.
At the moment I’m using the hifiberry digi+ card again,and the explorer2 is connected to my HTPC running Roon Bridge.
Thank you! The (for me) sophisticated thing is the hardware volume control as the meridian explorer2 is plugged right into the amp (with no pre).
You need to use the headphone otput if you want to use the explorer’s volume control.
I think Raspberry Pi3 + RoonBridge and output through USB is good enough.
I have a similar setup with a Meridian DirectDAC. But It’s just an out of the box Pi with a case, no other add-ons.
I’m using DietPi and messed with it to get RoonBridge and networkaudiod_3.4.0-32 to make it a NAA for HQplayer as well. The Pi USB is connected to an UpTone Audio USB REGEN and then out to the DAC. The USB REGEN and the Pi are both running on one iFi Audio Power Supply.