New member here, first post. I wanted to take the opportunity to introduce ourselves to the community and ask for your input.
HiFiBerry is a leading developer of high resolution Digital to Audio Components used in both DIY and OEM applications to build streaming servers, add high resolution capabilities to legacy and new gear, and build distributed (multi-room) audio systems.
Our boards conform to the Raspberry Pi HAT standard, and are supported by our own open source HiFiBerry OS, and also third party open source distributions. Depending on the distribution you choose, our endpoints will appear as Squeeze players or DLNA devices, so the bindings are already built into OpenHAB.
Weād like to hear from the community about how you use your home audio gear with OpenHAB, what sort of features youāre looking for, and what products youād like to see that our current line does not fulfill. Weāre always looking for new ideas and how to better serve our customer base.
I use the Logitech Media Server to stream audio from local sources (large mp3 library) and remote sources (Pandora, Spotify, etc). I have a few of the DAC+ Pros that I use with my piCorePlayers. This is all integrated into openHAB using the Squeezebox binding (which I also maintain).
Your stuff works really well, but I wish it wasnāt so expensive. It actually costs more than the Pi.
Per the post from Mark, our own OS (along with other distributions from 3rd party developers) will appear on the network as a Squeeze player, so the binding is already supported for OpenHAB. For our HiFiBerry OS, it will also appear as a ROON client. Some others will appear as DLNA devices. So weāre already OpenHAB compatible in that sense.
ETA: Iām going to edit my original post to highlight your point. Thanks!
Another way to look at it is that itās not our product thatās so expensive, but the Pi thatās so cheap.
You happen to have chosen our āflagshipā product (the DAC+ Pro, available in RCA or XLR true balanced outputs) which is one of the finest products of its type. So, like a high performance sports car, the price is reflective of that.
In the grand scheme of things, our product, dollar for dollar, offers one of the best price-to-performance ratios in the business. Our +Pro model compares favorably to well known console style DACs in the 4-digit range. So itās a heck of a value.
No real argument with any of that. Like I said, Iām very happy with the product, and the three I have work very well. Of course, I wouldnāt be doing my job if I didnāt ask for it to be less expensive.
As for my wish listā¦
I wish someone would implement a Sirius satellite radio client that would run on a Pi, stream through your products, and be controllable through both a web interface and a RESTful API. Even better would be a Sirius plugin for the Logitech Media Server.
Thanks for engaging with our community! You probably wonāt find much of use from my reply beyond perhaps some use cases.
Personally Iāve fallen down the Google Assistant / Home / Chromecast hole, though Iām pretty happy. I do have an old radio I tried to set up as a GA and speaker I could stream to but gave up on the project for now as there is no way Iāve found so far (havenāt looked recently) to make it work like a full up Google Home speaker or as a Chromecast receiver.
Controlling and managing media has never been a huge concern of mine. I have almost none of it integrated with OH. About all I need is the ability to say āHey Google, play J. S. Bachās Wachet Auf on main floor groupā and have it actually play it (most of the time). We pay for a streaming audio service so with that and the Chromecasts we are set.
Setting up speaker groups is important for us though. Last week when we did a āclean all the things!ā session, we had all the speakers and TVs in the house blasting out some cleaning music. It was pretty cool actually. Usually we have the speakers in groups by floor and on each floor there is at least one higher quality speaker we can use if we want to listen to higher quality audio than the Home Hub or Home minis can produce.
I do have the Chromecast binding installed so I can tell when the little one is messing with one of the Google speakers and make sure something he shouldnāt be accessing makes it through the parental filters. But beyond that Iām happy.
Iāve no experience with Squeezebox yet. I just havenāt had the need though I have been intrigued by all the cool stuff Iāve seen people do with Markās binding. Iāve a lot of past experience with DNLA but itās just enough more of a pain to lose out compared to Chromecast. Bluetooth only works for one speaker at a time, and itās even more of a pain than DNLA. For our family, ease of use wins out over lots of other parameters like flexibility or quality of the audio.
We donāt even create playlists for the most part. We mostly just seed a randomized radio station and let it play.
Canāt offer any suggestions for improvementsā¦I am happy as a clam with your products. I see that you offered more case choices than last time I checked (which was before HifiBerry OS, also a great addition). I have a few of the DCA+, an AMP(+?) (and maybe a pro too, donāt remember exactly). What I like is that they are absolutely rock solid and do not need any kernel hacks. Thanks much!!!
Much like @mhilbush said, Iāve used PiCorePlayer to build a SqueezeBox for each of my 2 daughters, this is integrated via the Squeezebox binding. Control is mostly limited to making sure the devices are stopped at night and the odd āget up lazy bonesā announcement.
General announcements are made via a Google Home that makes use of the Chromecast plugin in LMS itself that then allows me to use Squeezebox binding.