Touchscreen in room while raspberry pis are centralized… HELP!

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  • jeffbeast
    18. Juli 2018 at 22:03 #36670

    Good day!

    I’m currently working on making my own MIY multiroom audio system. Everything is wired. A typical room has 2 speakers in the ceiling and a Cat5 near the light switch. That Cat5 will be used to connect to a Raspberry Pi and Touchscreen display (and will be powered with PoE).

    That being said, I made this BEFORE I actually knew Max2Play existed. Right now, ’say I’d like to have a squeezelite player in each room, I would need the speaker wire to connect directly on the RPi behind the touchscreen… problem is that all speakers throughout the house are doing downstairs.

    Does any one has an idea of what would be the best solution in order to control the music of a room without having the speakers connected to the touchscreen panel?

    Thank you!

    Heiner premium
    19. Juli 2018 at 14:52 #36679

    Hi jeff,

    Thank you for your request.

    Could elaborate on your project a little?

    Generally, we recommend having all players as well as the server connected to the same network. This, way you can have the touchscreen control installed on any of the devices (preferably Pi 2B or 3B) in the network.

    jeffbeast
    19. Juli 2018 at 15:14 #36681

    Hi,

    all raspberry pis are 3B+ and connected to the same network. My point is that I was planning to have a touchscreen in each rooms so I can control music, lights, etc.

    I already have speakers in the ceiling of each rooms. Those speakers are wired to the same location in the basement (because I was initialy planning to buy a multizone amplifier that would be located downstairs).

    That being said, it seems like it would have been better if the speakers would be connected directly on the Raspberry Pi attached to the Touchscreen but it will not be possible.

    The best I can do, as far as I know, is to have all Max2Play Raspberry Pis in my server room in the basement and try to control them with another raspberry/touchscreen in each rooms. The problem is I don’t know where to start and how to achieve that. Is it possible to run squeezelite remotely? (from the touchscreen, remotely connect to the raspberry pi downstairs?). Or maybe you have another solution?

    thank you very much!

    Heiner premium
    20. Juli 2018 at 10:12 #36685

    Hi jeff,

    Situation is not bad at all, you can control all Squeezelite units from any Pi in the network running Jivelite.

    Generally, I would have indeed recommended going for a more modular approach with ethernet cables connecting all Pi’s centrally and perhaps Amp HAT’s used on each for individual setups. But your setup can work fine this way too with a central place for all Pi’s. Just make sure that the connection with long speaker cables does not lose you any quality in music playback.

    But there’s also advantage to your setup. Since you already have the Pi’s with sound card centrally stored and want your rooms with touchscreens, you can use a touchscreen that’s connected directly on the Pi rather than the big 7″ official one by Raspberry Pi.

    We have one with a custom Jivelite skin by watterott that works great, but there are also others out there that work well with Max2Play’s Jivelite.

    I would suggest you check out one touchscreen-based setup in your environment and see if the handling and control of our Jivelite fits your needs.

    jeffbeast
    20. Juli 2018 at 14:44 #36699

    Ok, I’ll try it out for sure! As for speaker wires, no worries, I have 12 gauge speaker wires and no runs longer than 60 feet.

    Do you have any experience integrating Max2Play with Home Assistant ? (it is a raspberry pi-based Home Automation controller). Also, from what I see, JiveLive looks like an Application for Linux. I was wondering if there is something similar web-based? Reason I’m asking is with Home Assistant, I have a web-based dashboard in which I could integrate controls for Max2Play.

    Thank you for your support!

    Heiner premium
    20. Juli 2018 at 14:54 #36700

    Hi jeff,

    Even better, with home assistant you can integrate pretty much any controls of the Squeezebox Server through CLI and HTTP. Check out our Voice Control Alpha Plugin for some furhter info and example commands to implement.

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