Thanks for RoPieee!

Just wanted to say thanks to Harry for a year of completely flawless operation since the migration to the new codebase - I really am incredibly impressed at its stability, and have migrated all my non-integrated endpoints accordingly. Sent some more beer money - Cheers :beers:

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Yep, 100% agree. Harry is doing a great service for the community. It’s foundational.

I’ll admit, I do cheat a little bit by using RooExtend as a simple Roon bridge on a couple of Pi 2 Zero W’s because you can do a complete headless WiFi-only install (on a unit that doesn’t have Ethernet). But that doesn’t dull my admiration for and complete dedication to what Harry has done.

Thank you thank you thank you. Transformational.

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That’s on the list :wink:

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@spockfish I know you tirelessly build for the community… I hope it’s not rude of me if I ask how far down the list the idea of a “headless install” is? I have a handful of headless RPi3A+ RooExtends that I use for nothing but RoonBridges because I don’t need a monitor/keyboard to set them up. And I love my RooExtend box, but I’d rather use that just for my RooDial and leave my “this is just an endpoints” all be RopieeeXL’en. It may be a small distinction - but I sure would love to have this capability.

Again, many thanks for all you do!

I presume you mean specifically the WiFi setup right? Because RoPieee’s installation process is headless…

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Sorry, you’re right precisely - what I call headless means “I plug it in, it updates for a while, then creates its own WiFi network which I join, navigate to Ropieee.local or whatever and then provide credentials for my WiFi network, it then reboots and is on my WiFi network and then I can find its IP and configure as normal” (What RooExtend does currently).

It’s all these devices that don’t have RJ45s, and I’m finding them very fussy about working with Ethernet dongles - I don’t want to keep buying more Ethernet dongles that might or might not work. First class problems, eh? In one sense it’s great because the things in stock are exactly the ones I need for RoonBridges and no more so I’m saving some money and not over-building. But… these devices are a little more hassle to set up. And you’ve spoiled me by making everything so easy :slight_smile:

It is actually high on the list. Some building blocks are in place (specifically setting up the WiFi network). But the thing that’s missing is the webpage being served.

High on the list does not mean it is in the next release: I work parallel on quite a few different things (keeps it interesting for myself) but I agree this is missing functionality (hence I already started working on it).

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Fantastic, many thanks for the insight. No guarantees on timing expected or implied. Nice to know it’s already in process (even if in process can last a long long time)! Many thanks again.

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Just coming back to this as I’m trying to get RopieeeXL onto these 3PiA+'s… finally managed to get one to recognize the Ethernet dongle I have after 5 reflashes. Now trying to get the other (theoretically identical). Definitely not “headless”, sorry for the confusion. What I want is “Ethernetless” - which is hard to say - or WiFi-only.

UPDATE: Finally, after maybe a dozen total reflashes and three hours of bugging out, got my two RPi3A+s to recognize the USB dongles and get WiFi configured and get these set as proper RopieeeXLs. I’m definitely not looking forward to doing that again, so I hope that either (a) upgrades don’t require me to do a reflash at any point, or (b) you get to “Ethernetless” installs.

Thanks all for listening! And if anyone has any idea why these Ethernet dongles work sometimes but not most of the time, I’d be fascinated.

Harry, thank you, your new code base is really amazing and stable from day 1.

I had the pleasure to join the beta test and during this time it was always promising. I never

saw so minor flaws during beta testing before.

Great work!

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