Roon Bridge on an Asus Tinkerboard

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I currently am successfully running DietPi/Roon Bridge on a micro usb card plugged into my Rasberry Pi 3 Model B SBC. I am considering updating from a RPI to a Asus Tinkerboard to hopefully improve my audio quality ie; resolution, soundstage etc. Can I just plug my DietPi/Roon Bridge micro usb card into the Tinkerboard to hopefully get Roon up and running or is making this SBC change out more involved? Any help here would greatly be appreciated.
Thanks,
Bill

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DietPi specifically for the Asus Tinker Board is on the DietPi download page. I would download it, flash the image to a USB stick and boot the Tinker Board to install DietPi.

Steve

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Thanks Steve, been a while since I installed Roon Bridge for my RPI so My brain needs some refreshing. If it’s not too much of an inconvenience, would you explain the steps as to how get Roon Bridge up and running after I install DietPi on the Tinkerboard. Oh, and can’t I just burn the Dietpi image on a micro sd card, insert it into the micro sd slot on the Tinkerboard, and boot the Tinkerboard up?

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Hi William:

You need to burn the image using a program like Etcher. This makes DietPi bootable on the Tinkerboard. I create it on my Mac, but there is also a Windows version of Etcher. Oh, hopefully you have a keyboard and monitor hooked up to the Tinkerboard to do the install. Once it boots DietPi will pretty much guide you thru the installation. You reach a point in the install where you get to install optional software. There is a long list, and Roon Bridge is on the list. You select it by hitting the space bar. You continue and you will get back to a screen where it says install software. This will initiate the install of the software you have selected. From there it will eventually reboot and Roon Bridge will be running. It gets installed so that anytime you reboot the Tinkerboard it will auto start. Hope this helps. Will gladly try to answer any other issues that may arise.

Steve

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One question. You originally said you are trying to improve sound quality. How are hooked up to your DAC from the RP3?

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Is this the Tinkerboard or Tinkerboard S? If it is the latter then it has onboard emmc. Burning the OS to that gives me better uptime and performance.

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Thanks Steve. Your instructions jogged my memory as to how I installed Ron Bridge on my RPI. I already use Etcher and I remember connecting my laptop to the RPI so the installation should not be a problem. Thanks again. You’ve been a great help.
Bill

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My RPI is connected to the Explorer 2 DAC via an IFI usb Silencer 3.0 and a high quality usb cable.

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It will be the Tinkerboard S that I buy.

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Hi,

I tried the Dietpi image on a Tinkerboard and installed the Roon Bridge software. Unfortunately, I cannot see the Tinkerboard within Roon…it’s just not there. The Network seems to be busy, but that’s it. I had no error message during installation.

Anyone an idea what went wrong?

Best regards

Karl-Heinz Fink

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Don’t see Asus listed here would stick with a Pi or Sparky/USB Bridge:
https://roonlabs.com/partners.html

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…had it running in the past. And DietPi offers to install it.

ATB KH

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No doubt but if not officially supported it isn’t tested when new versions come out and it could break.
Hopefully you get it resolved.

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It isn’t the hardware that matters but the software. So long as the op isn’t doing anything wrong in Roons settings then support should be pursued with DietPi as it is they who make RoonBridge part of their package.

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Hi again Steve. I am just about ready to buy a Tinkerboard S based on our discussions so that I can install Roon bridge on it. I do have a concern though in that a couple of people on my site have raised concerns about running the installation, i.e. Karl-Heinz Fink and Jerry_B. Have you heard of any problems in that area?

Also, do you have any instructions as to how I would go about installing the DietPi OS onto the permanently installed Tinkerboard S emmc card instead of the removable micro SD card. The emmc card is supposed to be faster.
Thanks Steve,
Bill

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Been running Tinkerboard with no issues several months now. I use the USB output to a DAC.

Procedure:

  1. Connected the board to my mac via usb

  2. Burned Volumio image to the emmc using etcher

  3. Disconnect board from mac and connect to your LAN

Then the following: (Substitue local.volumio with the LAN address)
http://local.volumio/dev to turn on ssh password is Volumio/volumio
ssh volumio@local.volumio
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install bzip2
curl -O http://download.roonlabs.com/builds/roonbridge-installer-linuxarmv7hf.sh
chmod +x roonbridge-installer-linuxarmv7hf.sh
sudo ./roonbridge-installer-linuxarmv7hf.sh

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Hi Steve, it’s been a while since we talked last. My Tinkerboard S has been working beautifully until the other day. All of a sudden it stopped working. I tried all the steps suggested on the web and on forums to reactivate the Diet Pi and Roon bridge to no avail. The last suggestion I tried was to reposition the jumper from the park position to the Maskrom position so I could use the SD card, flashed the Diet Pi image to the SD, then flashed again to get it on the EMMC card. When putting the jumper back to the park position and booting the Tinkerboard up, I got nothing. You’ve been a big help in the past so any step by step suggestions would be greatly appreciated. If the board is toast, I may consider the new Rasberry Pi 4. I don’t know if this would be a better Roon music server than the Tinkerboard though.
Thanks,
Bill

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