Power cuts and corrupt SD cards

[Quebrantahuesos premium]

Quebrantahuesos premium

26. Januar 2022 at 10:20 #51988

I’m planning a multiroom audio installation with ceiling/wall speakers and I can either install a centralised system with Raspberry PI players and Squeezebox server all in a „data cupboard“ and just speaker wires travelling around the house to the various speakers, or a decentralised system with the RPI players in each room where there are speakers, the players being connected via Cat 6a data cable to the server in the data cupboard.

Everything is to be concealed in dry wall, ceilings or even built-in cupboards and access to the RPIs will often be difficult, making maintenance a problem. I am concerned about the possibility of data corruption in the SD cards due to power cuts (blackouts). We get around 10 per year, although each one can involve the power coming on and off four or five times until power is properly restored. Picoreplayer makes a big play about running on RAM and therefore being immune to this problem. That wouldn’t help the Squeezebox server.

What should I do?
Centralise and put everything on a UPS?
Decentralise and use Picoreplayer, with just the server on a UPS?
Stop worrying?

[MarioM Moderator]

MarioM Moderator

27. Januar 2022 at 10:29 #51997

Hi Quebrantahuesos,

I understand your concerns with the power cuts. In principle, it is true that this could damage the SD cards. And if you don’t have a power button for the Pi, it would be good to always have access to the power supply unit in order to restart the device. So in that sense, a centralised solution with a UPS would be quite advantageous.
The disadvantage of this method is, of course, that you don’t have to worry as much about transmission with cat cables. Depending on how long your cables run to the speakers, you may lose a little power along the way. The cross-section of the cables and the input resistance of the speakers are also important here. You don’t really have to worry about this when wiring cat cables. And they are probably cheaper than (high-quality) loudspeaker cables.
If picoreplayer has advantages in terms of power safety, you could of course run your players with that OS and only run your server on a Max2Play device.
Apart from that, each method has its advantages and disadvantages. Maybe these thoughts will help you decide.