For me, my NUC running ROCK is an appliance, much like my toaster, refrigerator, or vacuum cleaner. I want to forget it exists, and ROCK does that very well.
If I wanted to tweak, I’d install it on Linux server and I’d tweak the hell out of it. But I work in IT, so I have no real desire to do that at home (it’s akin to a PGA Tour golfer who almost never plays golf for fun).
I do that two ways today:
Big +1 for Roon UI on HDMI.
I use my Nucleus+ HDMI output into my AV Processor for multichannel music. Had to do a crude workaround to get Roon UI to display for this use case using a Chromcast device plugged into a different HDMI input in my TV than the HDMI output of my processor (I’m using a McIntosh MX160). Then with some programming of my Logitech Harmony Remote (which is what I use to control the source switching of my AV setup), when Roon HDMI output is used, it switches the TV to the Chromecast input where I have Roon’s web UX turned on to display. This allows me to get audio via Nucleus’ HDMI through my MX160 with Roon’s video UX displayed via Chromecast on my large screen TV.
Having Roon UI via HDMI output (I’d like it to be toggle-able between system output and Roon UI via settings) would clean up this clunky approach.
Let me first say thanks to the Roon team to have made/keeping Rock available for free.
Is home automation and extensibility supported in the free Rock or only on Roon OS on the Nucleus (+)? If so, adding that to Rock would open possibilities for growing the system for me and possibly others…
Only in the Nucleus/+ systems
I’m very new to Roon, and got a NUC running ROCK right after my 14 day trial had ended.
Audio-wise I’m loving it!
The main thing I’d like to see is password security on the ROCK web UI and network shares. As someone else mentioned, when you have IT-savvy kids in the house, catastrophic deletion of data or ROCK settings is a very real danger!
Everything is backed up to my NAS, but still a pain to restore everything if it were to happen.
Definitely more machine/os stats on web GUI
Definitely something displayed on the HDMI output
If you can do this already, I haven’t found it but, remove all unused endpoints or the ability to “hide” them, every time I go into the audio setup I have to scroll through all of the HDMI ports on the CORE
and my Google devices I won’t use as endpoints because I have other options in that zone, like a RPi (is this a Roon OS thing or Roon control thing?)
Again, not sure this is happening already but, I have a spinning HDD in my NUC for music storage, is the Roon OS utilizing all of the power saving/mechanical wear and tear reduction that modern drives now have (sorry I don’t know what this stuff is called but I think you may know what I mean), like spinning down or going to standby when not in use? I always thought this had to be “enabled” somehow or, do modern drives do this already, not sure…
Keep up the great work, loving my Roon system so far (new user for about a month now)!
For the ROCK related items, enter the BIOS settings on the NUC and disable HDMI Audio, that will remove those available endpoints found by Roon.
On the other devices, they are available to Roon as they are on your network.
I presume they are they disabled. But the ability to hide available but disable end-points, is a Roon Settings → Audio Settings capability and not for ROCK.
Also, if you want a device that has better HDD management, tracks the SMART attributes of the attached HDD, use a NAS unit.
Certainly my ReadyNAS units come with hardware monitoring on the HDDs, spindown settings, managed shutdown controlled by UPS etc.I then mount my library as a network share on the NAS, and let all the scanning, playback be just another network function.
Upload of codec in ROCK WEB interface would be nice.
Also temperature of CPU, CPU load + RAM usage.
This would reduce quite a number of support tickets here.
Excellent idea, a one click codec auto install mechanism 
That might not be allowed for legal reasons. There is a reason they don’t distribute the ffmpeg library. However a user uploading it himself…
That is the point, this leads to massive amount of support - having a simple way of uploading it to the ROCK would lead to a simplified approach for the user to add them to the ROCK. This can not be any more problematic than adding the codec manually the way they currently have to. It is the same thing, just a different approach.
I see you have “more machine/os stats on web ui” in your “on the table” list, and I see a number of replies favoring that. Maybe I can riff on that a bit. I think its one of the most important things roon could do.
I assume we are talking primarily about Roon OS on NUC, or possibly other linux based cores, which hugely simplifies things, making this capability more of a packaging of existing ultilities. For the roon application and heterogeneous machines, some sort of more application oriented snapshot would still be a very useful thing to have, esp for tech support, but its outside the scope of this reply.
web UI or app: you say web UI, and that keeps the clutter away from the roon app.
Hope some form of this comes to pass…
If it incurs a cost in terms of RAM or CPU usage that is not of direct benefit to the Roon Server application itself then I would not be in favour of it.
I have thought at various times that having some stats on the web UI about resource usage might be nice, but have come to the conclusion that I don’t really care. I cant change anything relating to the OS anyway so what does it matter? Save as much as you possibly can for the application. If you really want to get the low down on whats happening in the OS, use Windows, macOS or Linux for your core.
All just IMO of course
the caution is understandable. If it helps, I’m talking a packaging of lightweight utilities that have been used for decades for monitoring and diagnostics, and can be run on demand. Should incur very little cost. Maybe you can’t change the OS, but you can provide information to someone so any problems can be diagnosed and fixed faster.
Agreed! Some sort “now playing” visual over HDMI turns the Nuc/Nucleus into a whole new product.
It is only a dream or really a new version of rock is on the way? When?
The very first post in this thread mentions a plan for “later this year”, but I wouldn’t take that as a hard and fast commitment to a delivery date, if I were you.