Android audio media director

[tedtheothee]

Can an android device run as a media director, say to act as a small footprint audio client? Qorbiter seems to mention only orbiter remote capabilities, however other orbiters run full media director capabilities as well.
Or perhaps another route of achieving the same thing, can LMCE serve Icecast streams to audio clients.
These would allow users to repurpose older android devices as wireless end points and controlled in a Sonos portable speaker scenario.

[sambuca]

Not out of the box, no.

Qorbiter is the new orbiter software, and has nothing to do with the other media director capabilities (like playback). On a standard MD other pieces of software will take care of the playback, with the orbiter simply acting as a controller/remote. How this will be for qOrbiter I'm unsure about. I know some built-in media playback has been discussed for qOrbiter, but if that is going to be the way, I don't know.

Other possibilities for android are DLNA or the "standard" android media player (standard as in every manufacturer are free to add their own...) Anyway, for it to be a complete MD (at least for playing audio) we need some way to control playback from the LinuxMCE.

br,
sambuca

[Marie.O]

If a squeezeslave exists for Android, that's the easiest way.

[lemming86_au]

This is the squeezebox software I use on some old SGS2, works quite well.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.bluegaspode.squeezeplayer

Regards,
Josh

[totallymaxed]

...how about a Rpi running Squeezelite? You can build a very low cost little Rpi box + wifi usb dongle that runs Squeezelite and tuck it behind a pair of powered speakers or a small Amplifier. We've used these on a few installations to ge audio into legacy audio systems etc.

All the best

Andy

[phenigma]

In fact a diskless rpi squeezelite device can be *mostly* automatically created following the Raspberry Pi information on the wiki: http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/RaspberryPi  This is still in its infancy but the basics are there.

J.

[totallymaxed]

In fact a diskless rpi squeezelite device can be *mostly* automatically created following the Raspberry Pi information on the wiki: http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/RaspberryPi  This is still in its infancy but the basics are there.

J.

You do need an SD card installed to boot from ideally. So it's not strictly 'diskless'. As for installing Squeezelite...well it's no different than on any other system.

You don't need to make it an MD at all. Just install your preferred Rpi Linux distro (we like Raspian) on a 4gb SD card and install & configure SqueezeLite.

This kind of application of the Rpi is where it excels.

All the best

Andy

[phenigma]

heh.  You are correct Andrew, the rpi will always have an SD card.  But we only use it to bootstrap u-boot.  The rest of the system starts by tftp'ing the kernel and nfs root mounting the FS the same way diskless MDs PXE boot within LinuxMCE, so this is very different than 'Installing your favourite OS and manually installing and configuring squeezelite'.  Simple, no hassle, minimal config in webadmin (I'm working on eliminating this too), and no on-rpi configuration required.  It is of course very fresh and minimally tested so far but the idea is to remove the manual manipulation and make things *much* easier for users.

J.

[totallymaxed]

heh.  You are correct Andrew, the rpi will always have an SD card.  But we only use it to bootstrap u-boot.  The rest of the system starts by tftp'ing the kernel and nfs root mounting the FS the same way diskless MDs PXE boot within LinuxMCE, so this is very different than 'Installing your favourite OS and manually installing and configuring squeezelite'.  Simple, no hassle, minimal config in webadmin (I'm working on eliminating this too), and no on-rpi configuration required.  It is of course very fresh and minimally tested so far but the idea is to remove the manual manipulation and make things *much* easier for users.

J.

We've found that the optimal solution is often a Rpi on Wifi behind an amplifier or speaker system. Raspian + Squeezelite is incredibly easy to install configure too and will provide a flexible solution.

We used to use pxe booted devices for this in the past though.

Andy

[phenigma]

And this is still possible in LinuxMCE, the auto-creation method is only one option.

J.

[golgoj4]

wow, why is this all the way over here.

qorbiter has an audio player built in to it.

sounds like some wires got crossed somewhere. please bring your concerns to the testers thread in users and we can discuss this more.

-golgoj4