How to best use Volumio 2 and UPnP/OpenHome?

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1

I have 3*RPI (with various audio cards) in different rooms all with Volumio 2.041. One machine also has minimserver installed to provide a upnp server. In addition all 3 Volumio machines mount the minimserver music filesystem as a network drive . Mostly it all works well using the Volumio via its web interface. As the Volumio UI is not easy to use on an IPhone I use the Lumin UPnP control point app on IPhone to direct minimserver to one of the RPis.

I have several questions I haven’t been able to answer.

  1. I have to modify the upmpdcli configuration to setup the OH productroom configuration. I don’t understand the difference between the files
    /volumio/app/plugins/audio_interface/upnp/upmpdcli.conf.tmpl
    /volumio/app/plugins/audio_interface/upnp/upmpdcli.conf
    /static/volumio/app/plugins/audio_interface/upnp/upmpdcli.conf.tmpl

I have made the changes I need by editing the same change into all three but I am sure this is the wrong approach. Please can someone explain how these files are designed to work?

  1. I want to make each Volumio client use the minimserver as the music library ( and so avoid having to make every RPi independently rebrowse the same music update). Is this possible?

  2. I have been trying to configure the RPi network as a multiroom play setup. I see the sc3mpd is installed as part of Volumio 2 but I have not been able to make songcast work via upmpdcli. In other threads I see the Volumio 2 project is intending to use snapcast with a release in 2017. Is this true and is there a target release for this?

Volumio is a great project - Thanks

2

$ ps -ax |grep upmpdcli 509 ? Ssl 0:10 /usr/bin/upmpdcli -c /volumio/app/plugins/audio_interface/upnp/upmpdcli.conf

So /volumio/app/plugins/audio_interface/upnp/upmpdcli.conf is the configuration file read by upmpdcli. You could make changes there. Alas, on every reboot, /volumio/app/plugins/audio_interface/upnp/upmpdcli.conf is overwritten by a copy of /volumio/app/plugins/audio_interface/upnp/upmpdcli.conf.tmpl . So, if you want your changes to persist across reboots, you need to make them there instead.

Yes. This is configured in your OpenHome CP (Lumin.app)

No it’s not (at least, not in 2.0.41). Browsing Github, it looks like it will be installed in the next version.

In the meantime, you can install it with apt-get, following the instructions at https://www.lesbonscomptes.com/upmpdcli/sc2mpd.html. Pay particular attention to discussion of multiroom support at https://www.lesbonscomptes.com/upmpdcli/scmulti.html.

Once you have everything up and running, you should be able to use your OpenHome CP to select which “Rooms” will play a given playlist. I’m not totally sure Lumin.app implements this, but Linn Kazoo does.

I don’t really understand the differences between Songcast and Snapcast (and would love to hear from someone who does), but if you are interested in an OpenHome/UPnP solution for multiroom support, I think Songcast is probably your protocol-of-choice.

3

I finally did get Songcast multi-room synchronized playback working.

While Kazoo (not sure about other CPs; Lumin.app doesn’t work with Songcast multi-room playback) is OK for controlling playback, (with the Songcast implementation in upmpdcli) it’s useless for starting/stopping a Songcast Sender or associating/disassociating Songcast Receivers. For that, you need Upplay.

To start a Songcast Sender, you choose File->Select Source, and then select the (PL-to-Songcast) playlist.
To associate/disassociate Receivers, choose File->Open Songcast tool.

The biggest bother (since I use a Mac) was compiling Upplay from source. Hopefully, I only have to go through that once…