Hi DrCWO,
Wondering if you’re still planning on offering the customer covers for the Rasberry Pi 4 Flirc case for sale.
If so, do you have an estimate of when the sellcodes will be available on your site.
Thanks,
Mark
I bought a Nuimo through DrCWO’s Sellcodes and am running rooExtend of a rpi4 using its native Bluetooth.
I’m not sure if my findings have already been discussed, but I didn’t really find an answer.
Findings (the good):
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Setup was straight forward following DrCWO’s procedure (thank you!
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Play/Pause/Swipe and Volume controls work well (the latter only when on a hard surface though). This makes our morning routine a breeze (listening to a predefined radio-station).
Findings (the “am I missing something”):
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To be honest I’m a bit underwhelmed by the Bluetooth range, i struggle to get 4-5m. I already put the rpi4 on the amp instead of tucking it away. Can the range be improved by using an external Bluetooth dongle?
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I find the Nuimo not very responsive and it doesn’t work well at all from the coach’s armrest, better on a hard surface.
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Engaging short touch or long touch predefined actions doesn’t work well at all for me? Am I missing something?
Thank you for your feedback & thoughts!
HI Doc, Just a quick question, my curiosity getting better of me! I have a NUC that I put together for my ROCK server, and a RPi 4 with RooUPnP on it - is it not possible to put RooUPnP (Extend) on the NUC on a separate directory?
Sorry no, rooExtend is a complete SD-Card image for the Pi. Why not use it instead of Ropieee?
I guess next month I will integrate the application manager and you will be able to add a display.
So why use Ropieee?
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The bluetooth range is really a bit short. I had a customer that says it got worse with the Linux update I did in v2.1.3. I tested and found out that in my case a Boot-Rom update for the Pi helped me. (Pi4 rev 1.4) Next release I will go back to the elder Linux that works better in this respect.
Some users reported that using a USB BT dongle improves the situation. BT uses the same frequencies (2.4GHz) as WiFi. If you are in a crowded place with a lot of WiFi around lowers the distance. What you also can try is to connect the USB BT dongle to a long USB cable and place it elsewhere.
Regarding the long-press actions. It is not a press it is a touch. So if you touch one of the sensitive areas long or short triggers these functions.
Best DrCWO
Thanks for the feedback.
I’ll try with a BT dongle and cable.
For the short and long press, I did meant touch. I’ll fiddle around with it some more…
I have a radio station (Radio Swiss Jazz) on a long touch left and it works reliable if the Nuimo has a good BT connection.
My Nuimo lives on the arm of my chair. The arm chair is in the middle of the loudspeakers distance approx. 3.5m from the Pi and it works like charm…
I’ve noticed this too that sometimes the touches don’t seem to register. That’s regardless of whether it is a short or a long one.
I thought it had something to do with the heartbeat mode which I switched off initially, but even after switching it on again I encounter the same difficulty to engage the short or long touch correctly.
I’ve had it before the heartbeat mode even existed. Not entirely sure how I get the touches to register again once the issue occurs.
Beta testers wanted!
This is a call to everyone who has an Apple Watch and wants to use it to control Roon.
We (@DrCWO and @Klaus_Engel) decided that the remote-control possibilities on the Apple Watch (offered by the Roon App via the iPhone) is far not good enough. So we are proud to offer rooWatch soon, a real Apple Watch App to control Roon.
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rooWatch consists of a free Apple Watch App and the rooWatch Roon Extension running on a Raspberry (you have to license)
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Full Cover Art display
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Supports different gestures
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Nice hapics
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Supports browsing in your Roon library incl. selection of Radio stations
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Supports management of playback Zones
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Runs completely independent of the iPhone and Roon running on the iPhone.
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It directly connects via WiFi to the rooWatch instead via BT to iPhone
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It needs the rooExtend SD-Card image running on a Raspberry Pi
I will publish a beta of rooExtend v2.2.0 this week and the Apple Watch App is already available via TestFlight.
You are invited to join my beta test program for rooWatch if you fulfill the following prerequisites:
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Own an Apple Watch
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You are willing to install the Apple TestFlight App on your iPhone
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Own a Raspberry (Best with wired Ethernet)
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Are able to copy the SD-Card-Image of rooExtend to a SD-Card with balenaEtcher
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You are willing to share your AppleID (e-mail) with us so we can add you to TestFlight for the Apple Watch App
If these prerequisites are fulfilled please mail to me at info (at) definiteaudio (dot) de
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Your name
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Your AppleID (e-mail)
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Your username here in the forum
with subject “rooWatch betatester”.
If I got a certain amount of testers I will open a private thread for all of us where me and @Klaus_Engel will answer questions and offer support for you.
Best DrCWO
4 Likes
Done , but you knew I would be in 
1 Like
@DrCWO If I am using usb stick for saving license, do I still have to revoke license before burning a new version to sd card?
Revoking is ONLY necessary if you change the Pi device. Burn the new version to the SD-Card and reboot with the USB-Stick inserted. Remove it if the status line of the License Manager asks you to do so and you are fine 
rooDial and rooNuino with elder PIs 
Caused by the shortage of Raspberry PIs I decided to add USB-Support for for elder Raspberrys.
In the v2.2.0 release of rooExtend (currently in the beta test phase for rooWatch) you can add an BT USB-Stick to Raspberry Pi 2 Mod B and and Pi 2 Mod B+ (Rev 1.1 and above). I tested both with LogiLink BT0037 plus TP-Link UB4A and it worked fine.
In Addition on Pi 2 Mod B+ (Rev 1.1 and above) now Roon Bridge can be used if you connect a USB DAC. Maybe there are some issues with high sample rates. Just try.
Please be patient using Pi 2 Mod B. The SD-Card images takes a very long time for the first boot. Don’t give up until you see the License Manager of rooExtend in the Roon Extension Settings!
If you like to try the v.2.0.0 Beta 4 you can download it here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1A8nEr8o7YAPKeDZZYSUzhtLbd-PKvsNt?usp=sharing
Best DrCWO
I don’t see an option to shut down rooExtend gracefully. As SD-cards are known to corrupt when you just power the device down it might be a useful option to add to the rooExtend web interface?
Hi @M_Polak,
the Raspbian Linux I use under the hood is modified in a way, that it only writes the settings to the SD card (if you change them manually) and nothing else.
This means you can safely power off the Pi without corrupting the SD-card.
best DrCWO
2 Likes
Is anyone else seeing their rooExtend extensions disappearing from Roon at random intervals and then reappearing without any manual intervention when the code on the Pi re-initialises them?
It is happening to me on two devices, one for a Nuimo and one for a Dial and they both disappear at the same time. All I see in the rooExtend logs (on both devices) are messages:
Caught exception: Error: socket hang up
Exception origin: uncaughtException
That seems to me to point to a problem with Roon, but all I see in the Roon server log are apiclient disconnected messages.
Both devices are connected via Ethernet, one directly into the switch that the server is connected to and the other via Powerline adapters, so the connectivity is completely separate until the switch.
It also takes out the Roon Bridge running on on the rooDial device, which is how I noticed this.
I’m not sure when this started happening, but apart from Roon updates, I don’t believe that anything has been changed since it was all working fine. Famous last words, I know… 
Update:
I also run a RoPieee Remote Control extension and that gets disconnected as well, so I don’t think this is a problem with rooExtend.
When the extensions get disconnected, any streams that are playing (apart from the Roon bridge on the rooDial Pi) are unaffected so it doesn’t appear to be a network problem to/from the server either.
@Paul_Hallam,
please reboot your Roon core and observe what is happening.
In most cases this fixed the issue.
Best DrCWO
That is an interesting suggestion. I noticed the extensions being repeatedly disconnected when I was trying to see why my rooDial Roon bridge audio zone kept disappearing when I was using it.
Before I started investigating the cause, that problem magically fixed itself after a reboot, but then came back again, presumably after another reboot.
Rebooting the core or restarting the Roon service does not make any difference now, I still randomly lose the extensions.
Thanks!