rooDial a Wireless Volume Knob for Roon with Microsoft Surface Dial

Enno14 · February 11, 2023, 8:36pm

I overlooked your and @RBM posts, sorry and thanks for answering. I am will give it a try again.

I enjoy the precise volume control very much, especialy with my Auralic Altair G2.1.

gTunes · February 11, 2023, 8:47pm

No worries - I hope you figure it out. I wish I had a theory for what’s going on for you - it doesn’t seem that the downgrade itself can be an issue, nor does it seem that there is state left behind in the dial given that it’s blinking and which means that it’s in pairing mode. Sorry I can’t be more helpful.

Richard_Dalemark · February 12, 2023, 8:28am

This is done. But how does rooDial see that the key is in the rooExtend License Manager? Do I have to paste the key into rooDial before I save to SD card?

DrCWO · February 12, 2023, 8:36am

I can’t get your question so hopefully dropping these line will be useful for you:

I expect you have a fresh install of the rooExtend SD-Card image (either 2.x.x. or 3.x.x.) and have setup your Pi correctly.

After that open Roon and go to Settings/Extensions. In this dialog you find the rooExtend License Manager.
Open the settings dialog of the rooExtend License manager
Click on the “+” in front of rooDial and you see the field where you can enter the License Key you bought for rooDial.
Press “Save”
After that rooDial gets started and you will see the rooExtend License Manager PLUS rooDial.
This means entering a valid License Key enables rooDial and you are ready to pair the Microsoft Surface Dial.

Hope this helps.
Best DrCWO

Tony_Withers · February 12, 2023, 11:06am

I am using RooDial version 1.5.3, rooExtend version 2.3.2, Raspberry Pi 4. It works, but I have a feature request that I think would be of interest to many users.

Could we have an option to specify an arbitrary URL as a button action, something that could be passed to curl? I would want an input field in the settings for a string, possibly containing a bunch of arguments, to be passed directly to curl. No need to check for a response.

Specifically, I would like to use a long-press to trigger an action in my home automation system. I have a rather power-hungry amplifier that I switch off at the end of the day. I use home assistant, which plays nicely with roon, and I can use other input devices to control roon through home assistant. With the other devices I can trigger my switch-on/switch off automation in addition to all the other roon controls. I would like rooDial to able to do this too!

Plain language translation: if you have a home automation system, like home assistant for example, it is possible to trigger an automation via a web address. I could, for example, have a long button press start my rock server in the basement, switch on my amplifier, and, once roon has started, set the volume and start playing.

DrCWO · February 12, 2023, 11:21am

I will put it on my feature list I plan to work on starting March

But for your amp there is already a free solution it is called rooControl available in v2.3.3. or in v3.1.0.

It controls a GPIO pin of the PI or if connected to an external USB HUB the USB power of some of the ports. I use it to turn On/Off my amp.

rooControl can be attached to an output device of Roon in the device settings. You can find out more about it in the Quick installation guide in my Download area…

Tony_Withers · February 12, 2023, 12:47pm

Super! Thank you for the quick response!

Yes, I am aware of rooControl and it is potentially a very useful feature. In my case the amplifier (rega elex-r) is rather primitive, so I would have to introduce more hardware to interface with GPIO. A hardware sensor attached to GPIO would provide an alternative interface with a home automation system. I use a homematic switch to power down the amplifier, and the roon core can optionally be started or stopped with the amplifier via wake-on-lan, though most of the time I leave the core running. A solution that doesn’t involve additional hardware would be wonderful.

DrCWO · February 12, 2023, 12:57pm

On the roadmap of rooControl is also an inclusion for ShellyPlug S. There plugs can be integrated in local WiFi without the need for a cloud connection. My plan is to discover those and offer them as output devices in rooControl.

Might be an alternative for you but also not yet available

Best DrCWO

Tony_Withers · February 12, 2023, 2:28pm

I have a few shelly devices, but I try to limit the number of WiFi IoT devices I use owing to the 1.5 W idle power consumption, so it’s mostly Zigbee or Homematic for me. Shelly hardware works well, and I can see many people being interested in that as a useful new addition to rooControl.

gTunes · February 12, 2023, 4:22pm

Hi, @Tony_Withers.

Several of us have previously proposed Home Assistant integration of rooExtend extensions. @DrCWO proposed doing this with MQTT events. In practice, this would be a set of events such as press, long press, volume up (rotate clockwise), volume down (rotate counter clockwise) for rooDial and possible additional events for the other controllers.

Is it fair to say that this would more than address your scenario and would actually be a more flexible and complete approach?

DrCWO · February 12, 2023, 4:30pm

I probably will offer both as Shelly Plug is much easier to use for uneducated people…

gTunes · February 12, 2023, 4:43pm

I was commenting on @Tony_Withers’s request for outbound http calls to user-specified addresses. I suspect he wouldn’t need those if he had the option of having rooDial generate MQTT events.

Enno14 · February 12, 2023, 4:53pm

There are some great ideas here. I would like to have support for Zigbee (for Hue Smartplugs) or even better a support for OpenHome for controlling my Auralic unit (input switching, e.g.).

A solution for Logitech Harmony would be nice too.

Roonie · February 12, 2023, 5:58pm

This is a great feature. But, the Amazon Basic hub models you mentioned are no long sold. They have been out of stock for almost a year. Is there any other model that you could potentially incorporate to RooControl?

Tony_Withers · February 12, 2023, 6:31pm

Well, sure, MQTT events work too. I suggested the curl method because I imagined it would be very easy to implement on the rooExtend side and, while being sufficient for my purposes, would open possibilities for other creative uses. But of course MQTT events would, as you say, be a more complete approach.

Enno14 · February 13, 2023, 1:35pm

Hi,

I tried a new SD card and voilà, it works withe Beta 5. It makes no sense to me but hey, I don’t care why it runs now.

Thank You.

Enno

nquery · February 15, 2023, 5:05am

I have been using RooDial with Surface Dial for a good week now. Waiting for the dial to wake up after a minute or whatever it is of inactivity makes what is otherwise a good idea pretty unusable in my opinion. how do you quickly pause/play or change volume when you first have to press the thing and wait some indeterminate number of seconds before taking real action? I don’t know how you all manage to deal with it on a day to day basis and not get frustrated.

PixelPopper · February 15, 2023, 6:00am

It certainly is frustrating and the period to “wake-up” seems to have got much longer in recent months.

DrCWO · February 15, 2023, 7:22am

Hi @nquery,
this is a known issue caused by going from 32Bit Linux to 64Bit ARMv8. I understand that you are unhappy with it and apologize. The workaround is to use the v2.3.3 release that still can be downloaded, until I hopefully have fixed it at the beginning of March.

It is Highest priority on my To-do list but I have to travel the next two weeks so I can start working on it at the beginning of March.

Maybe also this helps a bit: If connection got lost don’t press the Dial but turn it a bit to the left. Two seconds after that it will work as expected. This helps not accidentially interrupting the audio playback.

Best DrCWO

nquery · February 16, 2023, 1:33am

Thanks. I did try a search before my post but didn’t see anything related to the 64 bit release.I will downgrade for now.