[Announce] New Max2Play Image for Raspberry Pi 4

Right Library read of 50049 tracks took 17 minutes so not bad as you only really do this for the first run . I have now fully loaded the Rpi 4 and set it going as my LMS server . Music started straight away and is playing as I am typing this. Response and reaction to requests is very quick and much smoother than before .

So far working very well and all the normal additions I use with LMS (Material Skin , Radio Paradise , BBC iPlayer ) all seem to be working well . I only use this Pi as a server so no hat or sound card loaded so not able to say how that function is working . So far so in my view very good . I hesitate to add this as it is a very subjective thing but I feel the sound quality has also improved and seems more solid and stable than before .

Hi Heiner

I think when I set up the RPi 3 + as server it took around 19 minutes to do a full scan and that was probably a year ago so my Library was smaller (I buy CD’s and rip them to the Library at a rate of around 10 – 15 per month) . So I feel the RPi4 is quicker on this aswel it is just that it always take a while if you have a large Library . Full scan using a Windows 10 Lap top takes about 15 plus minutes so givne the differnce in pwoer the Pi4 is still okay and you only really need to do this when setting up after that it is just a scan of new files when added which as I just added 2 x CD’s just now is super quick compared Rpi 3 so all good .

Hi Heiner,
This is a follow up on my „No Hifiberry digi+ card after upgrade to Buster“ post.
So yesterday evening I installed this beta package on a clean SD card and ran it on my 3B+ with the Hifiberry Digi+ board.
It installed just fine and everything seemed to be ok and I’m pretty sure (but not 100%) I saw the digi+ was detected by Squeezelite.
At that moment I could not test the audio output as „the boss“ was using the receiver 😉
This morning I thought I would do a quick test. Unfortunately now Squeezelite had a status of not started again and the soundcard was on jack again. The PI was not turned off during the night btw.
I selected none in the Hifiberry interface and restarted, now Squeezelite was auto started but with one of the bcm2815 settings again.
Selected the Digi+ in hifiberry interface and restarted, again the jack output was selected and no hifiberry choices availablein the list.
When I re-installed my Stretch SD card the Digi+ was again detected and working.
Maybe its just me, but I feel something is not 100% for the 3B+ with this image or rather Buster as an upgrade from Stretch to Buster resulted in the same problem for me.

Is there anybody out there with an older Pi and a HifiBerry board running Buster successfully???

Hi Heiner,

The text on the board is Hifiberry Digi-Pro HW1.2.
Apparently I have a Pro board not a plus sorry about that

Hi Heiner,
I think I figured out where it goes wrong for me. I tried installing the image again from scratch but this time I wrote down what I did as I went along.
Turns out that enabling lirc support seems to be the cause. After enabling lirc on the rasberry settings page and rebooting the audioplayer does not start and the jack is selected in the advanced settings. Disable lirc and reboot and the hifiberry is back.
Below my shorthand notes of what I did.

– Burn Image
– First startup
– On first webpage load select hifiberry
– Select digi/digi+ and save
– Reboot
– Select audioplayer advanced, hifiberry is selected
– reboot
– check – ok
– activate license
– install squeezebox 7.9 nightly
– install raspberry pi touch display plugin
– select 7″ touchdisplay and start install. During this the following is displayed
W: –force-yes is deprecated, use one of the options starting with –allow instead.
E: Unable to locate package tslib
– reboot
– check – ok
– select rotate display and hide mouse pointer – save
– reboot
– check – ok
– start jivelite and check autostart and autohide
– add -v to audioplayer setting
– map network drive
– reboot
– disable bt/wifi and enable lirc
– reboot
– check – error, jack is selected

– disable lirc – save – reboot, hifiberry is back

Hi Heiner,
Sorry for the slow response but I did not see your post was edited.
That did it.
Strange thing is that this did not stop the hifiberry driver from loading on stretch, but it does probably explain why I never got lirc to work 🙂

Good Afternoon All

Beta version of Max2play has been running for a few weeks on my RPi 4 and with some minor hiccups it has been a very positive experience . The Rpi 4 is the computer card we have all been waiting for . It has the speed and memory it really needed to run the LMS server at the speeds and response times we would all wish for. It is possible that Heiner will be able to get some more out of the RPi 4 when he has the chance to work with it for a while but I am more than content with what I have now . Sound is really great , the server is rock solid and response times with Touch Screen players , Apps and controls from a PC are all very precise and instantly responded too .

Only real issue I had (which is nothing to do with Max2play) was that the CPU on the RPi 4 was running very hot . In original form when using the RPi 4 as an LMS server only it was around 70 – 72 when idling and given that at 80 the RPi 4 CPU will start to throttle back that is not much head room. This is a known issue of the Pi 4 and the makers have issued a firmware update to address the issue . Using Putty you can SSH in to your Pi 4 and put in the following lines

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

This will change your Pi to the latest firmware and any other updates that are current . Result after this was that the temperature dropped to around 60 – 64 which is good but for me still a little too close to the top limit . I purchased a Flirc Case for Raspberry Pi 4 and this arrived today . Very nice case which looks sleek main body is made of an aluminium casting and also nice and simple to put together you stick a patch of heat paste to the CPU case and this is attached to a rectangular post cast in the case. Put the plastic case bottom over the SD card input and just drop the whole pie in the case , four screws keep it very firmly attached .

Then did a reboot of Max2play and started LMS server and started the music playing , which it istill doing now as I type this . A check of the temperature shows a nice cool 41 which stays steady even with three players all playing in different rooms . This means my RPi 4 will stay working well within its specifications and there should be no issues . Would recommend this case as being a very effective passive solution to the heat problems .

Now that we have the option for more RAM along with the faster CPU with the Pi4’s has anyone investigated at what size LMS libary we should start looking at the 2G or 4G model? Will the OS allow the LMS database to utilize the additional RAM effectively?

I am approaching 90k tracks stored on a remote FREENAS file system, so I am also interested in the faster network speed during file scan’s etc.

Thanks

Scott

PS Great work BTW!

I wanted to test this out on my Pi 4 with 4GB RAM.

It works and I hooked it up to a blue tooth speaker and worked real good.

Went to bed and got up the next morning and went to play some music with it but it did not.

Said to connect to the blue tooth and it say’s connected and in about 3 sec. Say’s disconnected.

I did this like 10 times. Turn off and on the blue tooth and right away says connected then disconnected right after that.

Did all I could think of removed it and connected it again. Just did not reboot the Pi 4 I guess should do that.

Here is some info copy and past from it.

Agent registered
agent off
Agent unregistered
agent NoInputNoOutput
devices
Device 27:3A:57:40:2B:F5 T2
Agent registered
trust 27:3A:57:40:2B:F5
Changing 27:3A:57:40:2B:F5 trust succeeded
pair 27:3A:57:40:2B:F5
Attempting to pair with 27:3A:57:40:2B:F5
Failed to pair: org.bluez.Error.AlreadyExists
connect 27:3A:57:40:2B:F5
Attempting to connect to 27:3A:57:40:2B:F5
Device 27:3A:57:40:2B:F5 Connected: yes
Name: T2
Address: 27:3A:57:40:2B:F5
Icon: audio-card
Class: 0x340404
Paired: 1
Connected: 1

#### Bluetooth Installation ####

#### Bluetooth Dongle ####
hci0: Type: Primary Bus: UART
BD Address: DC:A6:32:07:7E:85 ACL MTU: 1021:8 SCO MTU: 64:1
UP RUNNING PSCAN ISCAN
RX bytes:157803 acl:331 sco:0 events:17345 errors:0
TX bytes:16760504 acl:33441 sco:0 commands:344 errors:0

#### DEVICE T2 ####
[27:3A:57:40:2B:F5]
Name: T2
Alias: T2 [rw]
Address: 27:3A:57:40:2B:F5
Icon: audio-card
Class: 0x340404
Paired: 1
Trusted: 1 [rw]
Blocked: 0 [rw]
Connected: 1
UUIDs: [SerialPort, AudioSink, AVRemoteControlTarget, AdvancedAudioDistribution, AVRemoteControl, Handsfree, PnPInformation]

#### BLUEALSA RUNNING ####
1

-Raymond Day

• This reply was modified 5 years, 3 months ago by Raymond Day.

Yesterday I finally received my Raspberry 4/4GB. I installed a fresh copy of this image did an upgrade plus kernal upgrade and installed Squeezebox server.
Now I am trying to gain access with Winscp but strangly enough it does not work. I can login neither as root nor as pi.
Anybody else run into this?

I re-imaged the sd card. After booting I just selected „skip“ in the audiocard selection and selected the „Advanced: A real multiroom audio player that integrates in a Squeezebox environment with powerful options for high-quality audio and a lot of features.“ option and rebooted.
Again I can’t login using winscp/putty using pi and password raspberry or root with password max2play like I could with the pre raspberry 4 images.
What am I doing wrong?

Thanks Bencat57 tested and works!