rooDial a Wireless Volume Knob for Roon with Microsoft Surface Dial

Audio Gear Talk rooExtend
47

@DrCWO: How is the update Prozess of roondial working?

48

Quite simple

  • Revoke the license so you can license the new version
  • Download the new image, copy it to the SD-Card and plug it in the Raspberry Pi
  • Power on and reenter your license number to licens e it.

All steps (except revoking) you already did before.
Easy :grin:

49

Iā€™m interested in this but when I looked into using the Surface Dial as a volume control there were complaints that it times out in a few minutes to improve battery life and takes a few seconds to come alive. At the time there was no setting to either lengthen or defeat this behavior. Users felt this made it unusable as a volume control. Does anyone know if this has been addressed?

50

Brian you are right with the timeout but NOT with the effect of the timeout.
With rooDial the connection is so quickly reestablished that you donā€˜t even realize it. Thatā€˜s what I recognize using the Microsoft Surface Dial with rooDial.

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51

So whatā€™s the distance like on this for BT will it work on any pi that has Bluetooth?

52

It tested in my house. Works with a Pi zero w with 10m and a concrete wall or ceiling in between. I tested Pi zero w and Pi 4. I expect it will work with Pi 3 also but I have none. Maybe someone else has experience.

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53

Thanks. Will look at this when Christmas has all been paid off. Looks interesting.

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54

I have been using the Dial in this setup for a few days now and I did not even realize it went to sleep - at least to me the wake-up process ist totally unnoticeable.
But thanks for bringing this up: It eases my concerns about battery life. :slightly_smiling_face:

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55

Great job DrCWO! My dial is on its way. Canā€™t wait!
It seems I have always dream about that featureā€‹:joy::joy::joy:

56

Apologies in advance for going off-topic, but this could help me decide whether I want to get the surface dial + rooDial extension.

Can the surface dial be paired with macOS as general volume knob and playback controls (unrelated to Roon)? If anyone has such a surface dial and macOS, would be great if you can test this out!

57

Sorry, but the answer is NO! It only works with roon running on your mac.

58

So if I wanted this to work for two zones in different roons so essentially two dials and two piā€™s I would need more than one license? No way I could get BT to reach the other room so canā€™t run two of one pi.

59

ā€¦and one license per Pi, but the good news is you CAN run two Pis in parallel and even distinguish them by name with the new version :slight_smile:

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60

Try, here it works with 10m distance and a concrete wall inbetween.

61

Any chance that this could be integrated with RoPieeeXL at a future point, so that it doesnā€™t need its own RPi?

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62

I was wondering the same thing. Or it doesnā€™t have to be RoPieeeXL, but would it be possible to add it to a Pie4 already running roon bridge. There are to many little boxes around in my living room already :sweat_smile:

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63

Very interesting! Does the rooDial also work with the Roon Core running from a Synology NAS? If this works I will give it a try.

64

I asked but they are not interested until now :sleepy:

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65

I will add a roon bridge in one of the next releases.

66

It is made to run with a core no matter on what machine it is hosted.
So YES should do :slight_smile: