rooDial a Wireless Volume Knob for Roon with Microsoft Surface Dial

@drcwo, Can you recommend a Raspberry Pi to go with your setup? I have never purchased one before and have no experience with them. Thx!

Robert sure you can!
In this case you have to install one Raspberry Pi for each Surface Dial in your house which also means that you have to license each of them. I implemented this concept because the raspberry Pi should be not too far away from the Dial because Bluetooth is not inteded for very long distances.

In this case in the Extensions-Dialog you the will see multiple entries, one for each Dial.

Each one can be setup as normal. At the moment these instances cannot be distinguished easily. You can distinguish them by spinng one of the Dials and see which Extension reacts (content in the brackets in the status line). Then you can configure this for the zone needed.

In the screenshot above you can see one, where the name is extenden with ā€œTESTā€. This is my development setup so I can distinguish which is my productive Dial and which is for testing :wink:

Well, I see there is a need for individual names for each Dial. I will put it on my wishlist for the next version so an individual name can be entered within the roon dialog that will be displayed in the list afterwards like the ā€œTESTā€ mark above.

Christopher,
If you like to spend as few money as possible get the ā€œRaspberry Pi zero wā€. With this you run rooDial completely wireless. This means you only have to connect the Raspberry to an USB power adapter and hide it anywhere in your listening room and forget about it. But this is nice for rooDial only!

If you like to be future proof being able to use more of my rooExtend modules to come, a ā€œRaspberry Pi 4ā€ would be a better choice. For rooDial it also can be operated wireless. If you like to use rooUPnP that is coming soon you should connect it to an ethernet cable.

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Thanks so much for your feedback!

I got a question regarding privacy policy. I updated my website to offer this in english too.

To make the long story short:
If I like i can get the customer data from sellcodes with name, mail, date of purchase, license number and so on. This data is only hosted at sellcodes. I donā€™t do anything with it. If you will get a mailing offering an update you will get it via sellcodes.
The rooExtend device itself doesnā€™t send any data to me or someone else. It is a plain Raspbian with the additional node.js code I created. With it I use the official API from roon. There is a chance that via this connection data may be sent to roon. But these mechanisms are out of my reach and subject of the roon privacy policy.
Best Charly

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Have you tried this here:

Seems to be the solution and if you can control via roon then you also can control via rooDial :slight_smile:

I have the older version, the NDX (without 2) and there is no volume control.

Apologies if this isnā€™t relevant (I havenā€™t read the entire topic yet), but my Naim Mu-so Qb 2nd gen works with the volume control set to ā€œDevice Volumeā€ in Roon audio setup.

Yes, the newer NAIM devices can and so they also can be controlled with rooDial. Tankā€™s for your Input

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I have followed the youtube videos to get my MS Dial set up for controlling the volume of my Lumin D2 with roon. I did verify that the dial is connected and licensed. The L and R do to change in the rooDial extension. But the volume in roon does not change. In extensions if I open the settings roon crashes. Thanks for any help.

I will send you PM to find out what happend there.

Hi
It looks great!
Can it work on Ethernet instead of WiFi?
Cheers

Sure, either with a Pi4 or with this hat for the Pi zero w: Ethernet/USB HUB HAT Expansion Board for Raspberry Pi 4 B/3 B+/3 B/2 B/Zero/Zero W/Zero WH with 1 RJ45 10/100M Ethernet Port 3 USB Ports Compatible with USB2.0/1.1 | Walmart Canada

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Thanks,
Sorry if already asked but would that work with a pi 3? (I have one at home).

My first guess was no, but now I saw in wikipedia (Raspberry Pi ā€“ Wikipedia) all of the Pi 3 also have at least Bluetooth 4.1 LE on board. So just give it a try and please report the result.

Thanks for your answer. :smiley:
Finally I will go for a Pi Zero W setup.
Looking forward to receiving everything and giving it a try!

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@DrCWO

So far as Iā€™m aware, yours is the first Roon Extension which has a fee attached. Have you discussed charging a fee with Roon and obtained their consent ?

Good Point, I have not, should I?
I read the roon API is distributed under Apache license that said " You can use any Apache License 2.0 licensed software in your commercial products for free."
But there is one point I agree:
I should have added a link to the apache license to clarify that and I have to say, that I use the roon API which is owned by roon.
Thankā€™s for the hint I will add this statement in the next version coming soon.
Did you think more has to be done? I am not a loyer so I will be happy for any input.

Thanks for clarifying. The Apache 2.0 licence is included in the Roon API docs on Github and permits commercial use. The notices you mention sound appropriate.

Just to be clear, the mods arenā€™t Roon employees, just volunteer users, so we donā€™t talk on behalf of Roon and donā€™t always know how things fit together.

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rooDial is up and running. I posted a problem with my setup and DrCWO was determined to get it fixed. His support was exemplary. I donā€™t have any experience with raspberry pi, but after watching his video tutorials I thought Iā€™d give it a try. Somewhere I messed up and DrCWO got me going. I enjoy listening in the dark and opening my laptop to adjust the volume was a disruption. I like the simple style of the Dial, and itā€™s action is very smooth.

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