How to integrate a rasp pi multiroom (with hifiberry amp)?

Setup, Configuration and Use Beginners
1

Hi, i want to start with a multiroom system.

*) I first want to start with the bathroom. There is a hole with 20cm for a single speaker (mono).
*) I want to buy a raspberry pi 3 and the hifiberry amp2.
*) I want to play webradio-streams and music from my server - i have installed a plex-server already.
*) My idea was to install max2play on the raspy.

Is this a good decision? Can i integrate this into openhab?

I want to have some knx-sensors (switches) in the bathroom, where i can change the volume and where i can change some defined weradio-streams or playlists.

I have only android-phones/tablets, no iphones. In future i want to add another bathroom, wc and maybe some other rooms.

2

i have a multiroom solution with 2 raspberry + hifiberry amp+
take a look at piCorePlayer Software, it connects to a Squeezebox Server (=logitech media server), so you can play webstreams and local music.
So with the Squeezebox Binding you can integrate the Players perfectly into openHAB!
You can control the players with openHAB visu, KNX switches or smartphone (android, iOS).

i can’t tell you about max2play as i haven’t used it!

3

Thanks, will have a look at this. max2play has a squeezelite server included already.

So my plexserver is useless for raspberry?

Which raspberry should i buy? Raspi 2 nad 3 is nearly the same price. So i think raspi 3? Or is raspi 2 a better solution?

4

Go for PI3, there is no real reason to go for the older one. You get higher performance plus WIFI & Bluetooth on board.

5

if max2play has a squeezelite server and runs also a client it’s just the same.

6

I’ve got a Pi Zero W in the kitchen with a JustBoom Zero amp running Squeeze lite. I can start playing and control either a mix of all music on my squeezebox server or internet radio from a selection list in HabPanel on my tablet.

7

I am running Logitech Media Server with a bunch of Squeezebox Radios, SqueezeBox 2, etc. and 1 (soon 2) Raspberry Pi with Hifiberry Amp running Squeezelite. On my android phone i use SqueezePlayer as a client.

I would suggest just install a simple Raspbian (openHABian is fine as well) on your Pi, install Logitech Media Server (=Squeezebox Server) and squeezelite and your done. On your next Pi you can just leave out the server.

Max2Play is just a preconfigured similar system.

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8

I have an esxi server running too (DELL T20 with Xeon-CPU and 32 GB RAM). There i have some virtual machines, for example openhab on debian.

Is a raspi pi 3 fast enough for a logitech media server or should i better install it on my esxi server?

9

A pi is ok, but a machine with more ram and power is better. Although i could use a pi, i prefer running LMS from my real server (ubuntu) , since all media is there. Use your real server!

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10

When you get this running a tutorial would be awesome. :wink:

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11

I already have this running for years. (With Squeezeboxes, the Pi with Hifiberry was added about 10 month ago).

What kind of tutorial are you interested in?
Installation is pretty straight forward.

12

Lots of people come to the forum starting from nothing and want to build a multi-room audio system. So a start to finish tutorial showing how to build it and integrate it with OH.

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13

There is a good tutorial in german language with pictures, but with no smarthome integration and only iphone control.

https://knx-user-forum.de/forum/öffentlicher-bereich/knx-eib-forum/diy-do-it-yourself/1176280-bericht-multiroom-audio-mit-hifiberry-amp2-und-apple-airplay-unterstützung

This was the intention to start building a multiroom in my house.

14

I glanced through this, this tutorial looks like Apple-only. A tutorial like this, for Logitech Media Server is not that difficult. I would have thought, the net is full of them. :wink:

Here are a few screenshots of my openHAB integration, this is a work in progress and not polished yet:

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15

When i was planning my house, i was thinking, ceiling speakers are only usefull in the bathroom. So i only installed empty cases in my concrete ceilings.

Now i live in my house and i´m very sad, that i didn´t install empty cases in all my rooms into the ceilings. It would be usefull in the dining room, kitchen, kids rooms, … Everywhere.

Has anybode a good looking idea how to integrate this? Without buying a sonos speaker? I want it the DIY way.

How have you done this in the rooms with no installed speakers?

16

I’ve got a small squeeze box system up and running. I had built a house wired for in ceiling speakers in every room and was starting to build out a system, then we decided to move. I can just imagine a rack of pis sitting in the wiring closet running the whole house. Oh well…

I have a Linux server running Logitech media server on docker. It works flawlessly. I think it has pretty low resource requirements. Since you already have a Linux server I would definitely recommend installing it there either directly or in vm or container.

I have one pi3 with a hifiberry amp+. It has picore player installed on it. I remember when I was first setting it up that I had a hard time finding a tutorial for exactly that setup and tried a number of different options that I couldn’t get to work for various reasons. Picore player, once installed, has an option for hifiberry in its web interface and couldn’t be easier to configure. You could use other distros, but if squeezebox is the only thing you’re using a particular pi for, you can’t beat pi core player.

I just checked the hifiberry website and it looks like they have an amp2 product that is better for the same price as amp+. Probably should go for that one if you haven’t purchased yet.

I have a second pi3 running picore player. This one is connected directly to a cheap $10 set of USB speakers. This works great just like the first one. Since the USB speakers have the DAC chips, there was no need for hifiberry and it was a lot cheaper.

Back when I had the house wired for whole house sound, the hifiberry looked like the best option, although I remember it looking like it would be $100+ per room so I was just going to gradually build out the system. Thr rooms just had wiring, no speakers, so I had to purchase a speaker when wiring a room. Monoprice had a decent inexpensive speaker that I was going with. I think if some rooms just have one speaker, it’s theoretically possible to use a single pi with hifiberry amp+ to run two rooms using the left and right channels separately for two instances of squeeze lite, but I didn’t have enough pulse audio configuration skills to make that happen. That could bring the per room price down. I’d recommend considering the USB speaker route if a room isn’t already wired with speaker wire and you want to add a whole house speaker.

I have plex but never really used it for internet radio or local music. If you already use it for that, Logitech media server might have a plugin to connect. If you don’t already use it, I would recommend just going through Logitech media server/squeezebox.

I use an android app called squeezer to control swueezebox. It works well.

I don’t do much with the audio in openhab as far as selecting sources. We’re primarily using it as white noise for our two babies. When either of their bedroom doors close, a single white house track is started on repeat and the volume is set to the proper level. When the door opens, the sound turns off. Works flawlessly.

Hope that helps!

17

Just to add my support for logitech media server (aka squeezebox). I am using to for a number of years, 6 pi’s (some with HifiBerry of various sorts) connected to some shelf speakers and cheap class T-amps) in various rooms, all works like a charm. My server is now in a VM that I am running of a NUC, but a rp2 or 3 is just doing fine (except that I needed to setup my server with a new SD card every 6-12 months). I have a music collection on my NAS, but mostly use streaming services to be honest. Setup is easy and if you are willing to look at Max2Play it is an absolute no-brainer, they really make it easy (otherwise it can get a little tricky depending on the DAC). Spotify works well again since there is the Spotty integration (an app for the squeezebox), airplay works pretty nice too, and it integrates into OH2.
The ability to flawlessly sync across some or all players is of particular interest to us and I have not yet found another system that convinces there (and is cheap).
The downside is that this system is unfortunately very much at its end of live. The webinterface of the server looks pretty dated, there is only one app on iOS left that still works (which is not free); once in a while there are problems with updates as you may need to keep old libraries on your linux system, or something else breaks and does not work anymore for a while (spotify integration was such an issue a year back or so). There are still forums etc available where you can get advice, but as an opensource project, development seems to slowly but surely stop.
I am actually not sure if you could start specific spotify playlists from OH2, and I don’t know how easily you could pick channels when using streaming servers with various channels (e.g., SomaFM, JazzRadio) as they are running through squeezebox apps. The setup looked to complicated and as there is already an app for that, I never bothered to integrate these functions. But the basic player functions are easy to add.

18

Hi,

I currently have a system using mopidy instances as backend. A Motu 24Ao for distributing the different mopidy instances to different rooms with each room having a separate amplifier. I wrote a custom kivy UI for my RPI 7" TFT screens installed in every room. It is still a work in progress. I was looking on integrating mopidy in openhabian, but it doesn’t look really straight forward. I also want to try to write a kivy frontend for openhabian. But that looks not so easy either. I would like to integrate all systems with openhabian in order to orchestrate all events. I have loxone with knx as domotics installation. Loxone works already with openhabian so that is a plus.

An example of integration is when I enable a player on a RPI screen it should do 3 things, I was wondering if this is possible:

  • Start mopidy instance (through ssh command)
  • Enable relay that switches amplifier on
  • Starts playing playlist or web radio selected on screen

Currently the integration is directly to the mopidy instance, but I would like to route it (partially) through openhabian. In the ideal case each RPI TFT device connects to openhabian supplying a room Id. The openhabian sends the screen layout to the RPI in json or something else and kivy parses the json and renders the UI. I don’t know if that is feasible but that looks the most versatile way.

I’ve looked at habpanel, but that requires to start a web browser on the RPI and that suffers from poor performance. Kivy is much more fluent in the RPI than a web browser, so my preference goes out to kivy.

Regards,

Tom

19

Does mopidy support daapd commands? It might be worth looking into and I’m sure I’ve used a binding for it in the past.

20

Hi guys,

I hope it’s okay to post here as a one of the people behind Max2Play.

I read your request and thought I might link to the great, detailed tutorial on setting up a Multiroom System with Raspberry Pi’s and their HAT sound cards. The example is for 5 rooms: kitchen, bath, living room, patio and bedroom

I also translated it based on a German version, in case there are people here preferring German.

You can use it as the jumping off point for implementing OpenHAB.

English Version

Furthermore, we have a beta plugin that lists some of the more popular and useful HTTP commands for implementation in Home Automation systems. Since Max2Play’s configuration runs on a web interface, most commands can be utilized in other software easily. Additionally, the LMS obviously comes with a lot of options for remote control that are also included on there.

Voice Control Plugin

If somebody around here might be interested in collaborating on an article on the implementation of OpenHAB, I’d be happy to translate to German for more visibility, format any all texts and screenshots/pictures required and help out in any other way. Obviously, the tutorial should be specific to Max2Play, but otherwise there are no requirements, really.

You can let me know via private message here or contact Max2Play via email directly. It would be great to have a detailed tutorial for a good home automation solution! :slight_smile:

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