When did ropieee become a bridge rather than an endpoint … not showing any audio device distal to the ropieee
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Its primary Roon purpose is to serve as a host for Roon Bridge. Your raspberry pi unit itself, on the other hand, if it has a DAC HAT, can be an endpoint.
Of course, Ropieee can do many other things.
To be clear, the Pi has USB ports, so you can connect USB DACs to it already without any HATs. I guess the Pi itself won’t be an endpoint in that case, but that’s just semantics.
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It’s always shipped with the code to download and install Roon Bridge. It’s a streamer, but needs a DAC hat or USB DAC attached to the RPi.
Roon Bridge installed …
USB connected DAC plus DAC hat on same RPi …
My Chord Qutest has been connected to Ropieee for years … after a lightning strike this week I had to replace to Raspberry Pi 4 as the ethernet port was fried …
New R Pi … recognized as a bridge but no Qutest seen distal …
Previously the ropieee would show in the audio devices tab when it was connected to my Oppo.
Not sure … now wondering if the strike fried the Qutest … would not be surprised as it smoked a total of 7 boards ,… on AC sytem, alarm system, sprinkler controller, ONT and modem a switch and maybe 30% of our LED lights in home and a bunch of wall plugged power supplies.
Just trying to recover to pre-storm systems
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Pulled the Qutest and no USB at this point … moving back to the Oppo and
will hopefully be able to use the optical on the Qutest … unless it is a larger failure.
Now running to the Oppo 105 … recognized and working in Roon …
The Qutest … another good man down … nothing like 500,000 V to mess
with your day …
Thanks for the input … can close this thread …
And he limped off towards the horizon …
These are not cheap
These are much cheaper Ethernet Surge Protector - Ubiquiti Store
Hard to know what to get, but worth investigating in your situation. I live in Northern California, where thunderstorms are pretty rare, so I’ve not dug into this much.
Thanks
Mouser Electronics carries these and just ordered 3 … hopefully will cover my distribution needs.
But aren’t they just inline magjacks (ie. magnetic couplers, with built-in pulse transformers)?
And ethernet devices (even cheap ones like the Pi) already have magjacks.
So aren’t they already electrically isolated?
(assuming that you don’t use a screened cable).
What am I missing? Are they rated for higher voltage than a standard magjack or something?
Yes, as required in some medical uses – F
Specs here suggest AC Dialectric Strength at 5Kv …
Fiber is a good way to isolate your high-end gear as well. The fiber to RJ-45 Ethernet adapters are good. I wish I would have done something years ago before my house got struck by lightning and lost equipment. The magnetics on an RJ-45 jack are rated to only 1.5kV RMS so not protective for lightning at 6kV. Especially important to isolate cable and dsl modems since they can bridge the inside and outside connections.
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Anything that you plug in will only be of very limited use as a form of protection from a lightning strike. In order to have actual protection, call an electrical service company, tell them that you want to have a surge arrestor installed in your main electrical panel. In the USA, the surge arrestor for a typical (modern) 200A panel will cost around $850 USD. The installation cost with a 30A double pole breaker installed in the panel and wiring it all up will add another $400 USD. So, when you compare that cost to a UPS battery surge protector, line filter or isolator unit that only has 8 - 15 plugs per unit, the panel surge arrest protects every electrical device and circuit in the entire house.
Cheap insurance if you ask me. Oh, and if you want to add a generator and an auto transfer switch, and add the surge arrestor at the same time, it would probably be about $250 or $300 USD less expensive, since they have all that other labor to do at the same time, and they have to open the electrical panel in order to connect the transfer switch and possibly a sub-panel. (of course, it would be an extra $12-15K USD for the generator and transfer switch…but I digress 
)
Sorry you had to go through that frustration. I had it happen about four years ago…so the pain memory is still fresh.
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It’s a conflicted decision … our strike hit the roof propagated over multiple wires distal to the panel and destroyed a bunch of stuff
Electrician said the panel was untouched … all the ground wires are still good and he agrees that the damage was potentially from induced current through the roof …
Now without gas as we had a catastrophic leak which did not ignite but will need to be investigated and repaired
Thankfully the Chord service center will look at my Qutest and be able to repair it
After a number of hours I have a new Sonicwall firewall installed and running
Appreciate all the knowledge experience and suggestions … hopefully this event will be my last
All of my audio hardware on the network is on fiber or WIFI to ethernet bridges. I have a lot of surge protection as well. We’ve had one direct strike and 2 near misses over the past 20 years, and lost a bunch of stuff the first time, been lucky since.
Nothing provides guaranteed protection against a direct hit so I would not feel too bad. I would see if you can put in a claim for the damaged equipment.
Anything connected to the mains supply is most at risk during a strike. Ethernet is just another route, so mains protection at the consumer unit should be the priority. Lightning struck somewhere on our estate about 10 years ago and it blew up the ISP modem/router, TV and AV amp. Nothing else was damaged. The ISP fitted a surge arrestor of some sort inline with the new modem when they got round to fitting a new modem. The technician said he had spent two weeks fitting these locally and replacing damaged modems due to the strike.
Hate to say it but the only safe way is pull everything out of the mains and network if there is any copper left in the circuit, I was assured that fibre was safe.
I sympathise , a few tears ago my neighbour’s palm tree took direct strike which then worked its way back along the ADSL copper wires and blew most of my kit even when it was unplugged from the mains !!
We even had a nasty incident where a lightening storm dropped our Earth Leakage and hence the mains. We were on holiday and came back to a house we couldn’t get into (we always use the garage door) and 2 very smelly freezers. Brute force we broke a window !!
I power down and unplug all sensitive stuff (computers , hi fi TV etc) every night and at the first sign of a storm. Once bitten twice shy.
Sunny Johannesburg 
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