I’m currently using Roon in our living room with a pair of Beolab 5 speakers driven by a Rpi with Allo Digione. This gives much better sound quality for these speakers than you will be ever able to hear in a full Bang and Olufsen setup.
One issue is that you have to switch the speakers on and off using a Bang and Olufsen remote Beo4. And that is basically the only thing I can do with the remote (because I don’t have any other B&O equipment).
Now I could use a IR transmitter in a Raspberry pi to send those 2 commands to the speakers if I had an extension which could do that. But maybe it is much more interesting to go opposite direction.
If I had a Roon extension for a generic IR receiver in the raspberry pi with programmable roon commands for different zones, I could control my entire house audio the same way as B&O does (or did) with their own multiroom control system, and better and more flexible. And you could do the same with any remote.
I’d imagine:
Choosing radio stations with the number keys,
Choosing playlist
Maybe browsing albums
Next, previous etc. etc.
Hi, is possible to get Pi display as a zone with a custom UI? It would be a perfect addition (because the ropieee zone display UI is really bad designed.)
Thanks
@DrCWO - Might it be possible to add any extra data to the website running on the rooExtend Pi? Temperature and uptime would be good examples. The latter specifically as I see occasional Bluetooth drop outs that I suspect may be due to my Pi having an inadequate power supply and restarting, but I’ve no easy way of proving this.
If you have the latest rooExtend image try http:// rooExtend.local/log.html
This gives the logfile of rooExtend. I put temperature and uptime to my list.
Best DrCWO
Just wanted to chime in and say I set this up today. Setup was well documented, everything worked as expected. I now have one dial working and plan to get two more up and running in the next few days.
Wonderful execution for something that really should be part of all music systems.
I have the main roon server/end point in my reference system. In the same room, there is another endpoint and dac for headphone listening and at the back of the room there is an office setup with kef ls50Wii, so was thinking of using the flirc alongside the surface dial and spacemouse on the same PI to control the 3 endpoints.
What is the theoretical limit of remotes that can be used on a PI 4b.
For some reason one of my 3 rooDials has been unable to connect to any of the last few updates. The light just keeps blinking. I had to revert to an earlier build every single time because it refuses to pair. The problem is still happening, but I forgot which version of rooDial it last worked with. My other two rooDials are fine. I have no idea what to do as I tried all of the suggested procedures to no avail.
Hi @Cudifying.
there was a fix regarding pairing in the v.2.1.3 release.
So please retry with this release, it should pair. If you start pairing please shut down all your other PIs running rooExtend before and also take out batteries of your other two Surface Dials. After pairing you can repower them and anything should be fine.
Best DrCWO
Thanks for getting back. I have tried that exact procedure and it still refuses to connect. What’s important to note is that it did work in the past using an earlier version of rooExtend. I have followed the steps you have mentioned to a tee but the light on the dial just keeps blinking to no avail.
Have you ever tried to use one of your other PIs equipped with a fresh install of the current software to pair with that Dial? Maybe the Dial is broken…
I will give that a try after work. However what’s weird is that it worked with an old version of rooExtend without issues. I downgraded before and the same thing happened - worked when I went back to an older version of the software.
