I am attempting to troubleshoot a dropout issue in my freshly built Pi4B Ropieee.
The config is:
Mac Mini Roon Core with SSD as the data store → WIFI → Ropieee → Denafrips Ares II DAC.
I have the Ropieee in front of me when listening to a song and it doesn’t appear to reboot/restart which I have confirmed through uptime in the OS. The Ropieee endpoint however disappears from Roon which I am monitoring through Roon installed on a Macbook. The Ropieee endpoint reappears in Roon 5-10 seconds later.
Ropieee is connected via wifi through the same network as the Macbook and prior to the Ropieee build I was using the Macbook as the Roon endpoint connected to the same Ares DAC and was not experiencing the dropouts. The Pi is being powered of the USB C port on the Macbook.
I am trying to pinpoint where in the chain the heart of the problem lies. Are there logs I can place a tail on, processes in Ropieee I can check for a restart etc. A bundle has been sent through to Ropieee HQ - 05995b5283c4ec84.
I had similar problems with Pi4B in the past. The cause was always a bad WiFi connection.
First try to start / update Ropiee via an ethernet cable. If this works then you know for sure that the Pi4B is OK. If not, you will need to reinstall Ropiee.
After that you probably need to improve the WiFi connection between router and Pi4B. (In my case, the 5GHz band gave the best results.)
Thanks for the reply Jan. updating the Pi through a wired connection works great. The Pi is sitting next to the MacBook both using a 5g wifi network. If the wifi drops out this should be logged somewhere in the Pi. On other Unix OS types this would have appeared in a syslog or messages log. I don’t see these on Ropieee but am assuming the OS tracks these events somewhere. I have looked around a little however having the log locations for this would make troubleshooting easier.
An official Pi power supply is on the way. I have been advised there is a known issue in the Denafrips Ares II that did see the MacBook hang once or twice which is fixed through a DAC firmware upgrade. I guess it’s possible this is coming into play. Is there a way to determine if a Ropieee service or the USB interface itself was upset at something the DAC has done?
I left myself to the fate of the DHCP gods when it comes to configuring the WiFi net other than supplying the network to connect to and the pass phrase.
Thank you for the reply. I have not used the ethernet connection while the DAC was connected. The DAC location does not have a readily accessible Ethernet port and testing the ethernet DAC dropout scenario hasn’t occurred. I have sent through a bundle from the Ropieee/Pi to the Ropieee guys and referenced it here in my initial post.
RPi is not renowned for its WiFI , I appreciate the geography may not fit but I would try and run an ethernet cable just to try it out for elimination.
The other option I have used is a WiFi extender (TP Link in my case) close by then an ethernet cable to the device , a bit like a BIG aerial .
Its a process of elimination but as @Jan_Willem has pointed out network issues are normally the reason
Thanks @Mike_O_Neill, @Jan_Willem I’ll try and find a cable that reaches. I am not certain that it is losing its network connection. It is my understanding that if the DAC is not connected then Roon does not recognise Ropieee as an endpoint. My thinking is that if the DAC has an issue intermittently that interrupts its communication with Ropieee its “Roon” connectivity breaks and then resumes a few seconds later. To rule out the network dropping I have a script running ping to the Pi while I am listening to music, hoping to correlate the loss of the Roon endpoint with a loss of the network…or not. Either way it will tell me something about the behaviour.
To tidy up what I hope is the endpoint for the thread. Changed the DAC the Pi was feeding and it has been rock solid ever since, no disappearing as a Roon endpoint. The Denafrips Ares DAC, while not conclusively proven, looks to have a USB related hiccup that upsets the Pi. My gut feeling is that the same problem in the driver that causes the Ares to upset a Mac also upsets the Pi. There is a driver update for the Ares that fixes this. Unfortunately I was unable to test it or a windows box available to install it in the time I had borrowed the DAC.
