Currently my Roon Core is located on my PC which is hardwired into my audio system. Despite being ‘non-technical’ with the help of friends and people on the forum, I have got everything working well, including ARC.
My issue is that in mid December I am going abroad for 8 weeks. It would be great to be able to access my library through ARC whilst I am away. However, I would rather not leave my PC running for such a length of time, and even if I did, we have fairly regular power cuts where I live, so I wouldn’t be confident of it staying up for the duration anyway. I don’t have a UPS at present.
What should I do? It seems the options are either to change the PC in a way that I am comfortable leaving it running all the time (including adding UPS functionality); or to move the Roon Core to another device.
Can anyone give me some pointers, particularly on the second option?
I am really going to need handholding if I am to make this leap, so just saying something like “Stick it on a raspberry pi” isn’t really going to help me, because whilst I know things called raspberry pi exist, I wouldn’t have a clue where to source one, how to configure it or how to wire it up…
So I suppose the most helpful reply would be one which recommended an appropriate solution (with reasoning) and then gave me a link to a dummies guide to setting it up…
Hope you don’t mind, but I’ve moved your question from the #support category to the #roon category of the forum, because it’s not strictly a question for the Support team to resolve.
Let’s get one option knocked on the head straight away - you can’t run a Roon Core on a Raspberry Pi, so that’s off the table.
Personally, I would consider moving the Roon Core to an Intel NUC running ROCK.
Yes, it’s a DIY solution, but the guides for recommended Intel NUCs are there with installation instructions, and the community can lend support to help you.
Hacker - my phone memory is just about full, or that would be an easy solution.
Geoff - firstly thanks for moving my post to the correct Forum. Your suggestion of an NUC running ROCK sounds like it could be a good solution. I’ve read the linked article and I think I’m the type of end user this solution is aimed at.
One thing I did notice is when I clicked on the link in the article for the recommended NUC for small to medium libraries, that particular unit is no longer available. Presumably it’s now been superceded by a newer version. Do you happen to know which current NUC that would be?
I strongly recommend the NUC/ROCK core solution too. However, if you suffer an outage, then your system will be down once power is restored. You will need to manually power on the NUC after an outage. Putting it on a UPS might help as long as the power is restored before the UPS runs out of juice.
A low power machine running ROCK would be excellent. Put a UPS on it. Test it boots-up from full power failure. You’ll want to enable automatic updates and then hope for the best. I say hope for the best because there is always a chance it dies and you won’t have remote access to “fix it”. Now, adding remote access to machines is possible. Being an old Sun guy I still refer to it as Lights Out Management. HP calls it iLo. You can roll your own KVM type solution as well.
But, all of this is probably going well beyond what you want to tinker with. Start with a Nucleus or Small Green Computer if you want out the box simple, a supported NuC if you’re ok installing yourself, or go wild with something custom on Linux. All should be stable and can hit a power target you’re comfortable leaving on all the time.
To justify the expense, you have to ask yourself if it’s really an 8-week or a permanent solution.
Given the provided context and without knowing the size and what’s in your library, I’d put the costs on the table and think two solutions.
make a local copy of your library in ARC. You said the phone memory is almost full and ARC does not support external cards. But a cheap smartphone with a huge sd card formatted to extend the phone memory will do the trick. That means you are changing phone for 8 weeks or carrying two devices.
Depending what’s in your library and the access to mobile data, a subscription to a music service should be the most cost-effective solution.
Also, when abroad, will you have access to your home network in case something’s not booted, not working properly, etc?
For less than 3 months, I’ll guess that you can live with just a part of your music library.
As I said, do you want to build something temporary or move to a more robust Roon Core solution?
You don’t say how big your library is BUT …do you really need all of it online and think about the data costs
I agree , just buy a relatively cheap Android phone ( I assume you’re current phone is Apple , if not add a bigger SD card) add a 256 Gb SD card that will give you around 800 albums (44.1 FLAC). View it as a dedicated Digital Audio Player not a phone no need for a SIM Then buy USB Audio Pro which by passes the Android OS , add Bluetooth headphones and good to go.
I use a Galaxy A52 with Sony WH MX4 1000 phones
This is how I provide music for long stays away.
ROCK is a good solution but getting it to restart after a power outage is the question (I cannot answer)
I have never been a fan of ARC even before it was launched .
I can’t get Roon ARC to work one full day after leaving home. Buy, borrow, or rent a laptop and put Roon on it along with your music files and/or put your music files on an attached USB drive.
You wouldn’t need an additional Roon license. You simply authorize the laptop Roon core and unauthorize your at home Roon core. That takes about 15 seconds.
The thing is (under my level of knowledge of Roon and technical stuff related) you want to access to your library remotely for 8 weeks.
If I would do this like you, having (as I have) Roon running under a Pc I would do two things
if scared that the Pc will sure disconnect for ac power loss, I will change in setup power options to last status when power loss. If you leave the Pc on and AC goes out, when back will run again
just for being able to make everything sure and check if all is Ok, Pc running, Ron running, I would install TeamViewer to see and control remotely. Is a great tool with full access to your Pc and has an app to control your Pc from the mobile.
For me the safest and best would be to make a WOL from outside your network everytime you want to use Roon, and then power off when ended until the next usage, but this is a wonderful trick that needs many technical skills and the appopiate router, too. I have been trying out a lot this and, and the end I found the B plan by starting my Roon core through a NAS which is 24/7 running.
Will you be taking a laptop with you for 8 weeks? You could just move your core to the laptop for the trip. It’s only moderately irritating swapping licences between cores. That’s what I do. I have 2TB storage on the laptop for local files that I listen to most and a Qobuz account fills in the gaps. Depends a lot on how you will be accessing the internet on your trip but you can probably get something working before investing the time and money for a longer-term NUC/UPS solution.
That’s not right. There is a bios setting in the Nuc to tell it what to do after a power outage. Mine is starting automatically when the power is back. Pretty sure it was set to do that from factory even.
Because it is not a configuration that is supported by Roon Labs. If you want to try it, then go ahead - and report your findings in the #tinkering category, I think you’ll be the first…
OK Geoff. Seems like this would be an interesting business opportunity for Roon, tho. If Roon provided hosting services for our music libraries (which we could pay for), customers could still connect with many device types and it simplifies the support model. The Roon support model is very hard, with nearly infinite configurations across hundreds/thousands of instances, and usually requires some level of tech skill.
