piCorePlayer Jivelite with Rpi 7inch Touchscreen

[all4music]

I recently got Rpi 4B and official 7inch Touchscreen to create a simple music player solution. Setup was pretty simple and I could get the system up and running in hardly an hour - thanks to all online discussion forums/youtube videos I had gone through before. And connected to a cheapo MUSE USB DAC - music is playing just fine from USB Drive/Spotify/Online Radio.



Excuse the jugaad of router box housing the player, sadly official housing for Rpi Touchscreen is out of stock!


Now, I'm trying to run just the piCorePlayer without LMS. Is it even possible? To try this, I even re-did the whole SD Card image load process and this time I did not load LMS after piCorePlayer and Jivelite install. But this never allows the piCorePlayer to access the local music connected through USB drive [drive is mounted and I can see the contents of the drive on command prompt]. If I click on 'MyMusic' option on touch screen - it asks me to :
- Connect to LMS
- Connect USB Drive
- and something else I don't remember now
I'm not sure if all these steps are necessary in that order or is the player just unable to see the connected USB Drive? If it is the latter, how to make the music folders accessible to piCorePlayer without LMS? For now I'm looking to play just the local music.

Only reason I'm trying to do away from LMS is to make this hardware setup more portable/reliable without having to wait for the system to shutdown each time I want to move the system from one place to other. Is LMS a pre-requisite to play both local music and music from internet? As per my reading so far, I've come across few posts where people of have mentioned about using piCorePlayer alone without LMS but couldn't gather details on how to do it. Can anybody please help me with it!?

TIA

 

[surfatwork]

Without LMS, how are you planning to play the music? Picoreplayer is just the OS - you need something on top.

 

[amitk777]

Picoreplayer is just a player, LMS is required. If you go to the web UI of picoreplayer, you can see the option to install. But it is recommended to have it on another device, like a spare computer or another pi. The idea is to put minimum load on the player. Bluetooth will work though, without LMS.

Nice looking screen, where did you buy it from.

 

[Kannan]

As mentioned by other FMs you need a music player application called MPD.
Distros like Volumio andbl MoOde have integrated music players

 

[all4music]

Thanks @surfatwork , @amitk777 and @Kannan

Picoreplayer is just a player, LMS is required. If you go to the web UI of picoreplayer, you can see the option to install. But it is recommended to have it on another device, like a spare computer or another pi. The idea is to put minimum load on the player. Bluetooth will work though, without LMS.

Probably I got confused with people having LMS running on separate dedicated Rpi. Hence I was thinking how can I make this device portable.

Nice looking screen, where did you buy it from.

Thanks. I got it from Silverlineelectronics.in

 

[surfatwork]

You can make it portable by having
1. Picoreplayer + squeezelite on one raspi
And
2. Running LMS on another server.

The second server with LMS doesn't need to be pcp. It can be raspbian or whatever. But it will need to be properly shutdown.
The first one will run in RAM, so can be switched off safely without shutting down.

 

[premoddev]

If you are not a squeezelite fan, better go for Volumio or MoodeAudio as your sw image. As mentioned by FM @Kannan , both are MPD player images have th capability to stream services like Spotify, Tidal etc.

 

[Kannan]

@all4music I have not used picoplayer before, just checked the site, and see that it comes embedded with Squeezelite player, so what you are trying to achieve should be possible.
No idea if the squeezelite player has library management but it should be able to play files from external media which I think picoplayer should be able to load. Will see around and update

 

[surfatwork]

Squeezelite is merely a LMS client. It can't play anything on its own. However LMS has Plug-ins for tidal, Spotify, YouTube etc.

 

[Kannan]

Squeezelite is merely a LMS client. It can't play anything on its own. However LMS has Plug-ins for tidal, Spotify, YouTube etc.

Yeah...understood...just was reading on it....Sqeezelite is just the back-end

 

[all4music]

The second server with LMS doesn't need to be pcp.

Ok, got it. Thanks!

If you are not a squeezelite fan,

Nope, I liked so far what I've seen - it integrates Spotify nicely as well along with other Internet Radios.

@Kannan
Without LMS, when I switched on the player - the MyMusic option in piCorePlayer asked me to connect USB Stick - probably that was in addition to LMS. That was cause for all the confusion for me I guess.

 

[lithiumnk]

I recently got Rpi 4B and official 7inch Touchscreen to create a simple music player solution. Setup was pretty simple and I could get the system up and running in hardly an hour - thanks to all online discussion forums/youtube videos I had gone through before. And connected to a cheapo MUSE USB DAC - music is playing just fine from USB Drive/Spotify/Online Radio.

View attachment 48312
View attachment 48311
Excuse the jugaad of router box housing the player, sadly official housing for Rpi Touchscreen is out of stock!
View attachment 48313

Now, I'm trying to run just the piCorePlayer without LMS. Is it even possible? To try this, I even re-did the whole SD Card image load process and this time I did not load LMS after piCorePlayer and Jivelite install. But this never allows the piCorePlayer to access the local music connected through USB drive [drive is mounted and I can see the contents of the drive on command prompt]. If I click on 'MyMusic' option on touch screen - it asks me to :
- Connect to LMS
- Connect USB Drive
- and something else I don't remember now
I'm not sure if all these steps are necessary in that order or is the player just unable to see the connected USB Drive? If it is the latter, how to make the music folders accessible to piCorePlayer without LMS? For now I'm looking to play just the local music.

Only reason I'm trying to do away from LMS is to make this hardware setup more portable/reliable without having to wait for the system to shutdown each time I want to move the system from one place to other. Is LMS a pre-requisite to play both local music and music from internet? As per my reading so far, I've come across few posts where people of have mentioned about using piCorePlayer alone without LMS but couldn't gather details on how to do it. Can anybody please help me with it!?

TIA

Have you tried using gentooplayer (GP)? It is a free linux distribution. It supports Squeezelite-R2, Squeezelite, Mpd, UpMPDcli, BubbleUpnp, Networkaudiod (NAD), RoonBridge, HQPlayer Embedded, HQPlayer, LMS (LogitechMediaServer), Sox-dsd, RoonServer, Cantata (mpd Client), Shairport-sync, Spotifyd, MinimServer.
I am using GP on my rpi4b4gb with ramroot & roonbridge.

 

[all4music]

Have you tried using gentooplayer (GP)?

Thanks for the suggestion! But does it come with local touchscreen UI or just the browser based UI from a remote pc/phone?

Description about the player reads interesting on their website - especially this:
Ramsystem
Possibility to load the system in RAM, and to have a ramdisk to save the music. All this does not require large amounts of ram. It also works on ARM platforms.


Now is this similar to piCorePlayer where the player runs on RAM but it still needs music server like LMS/Squeezelite that needs proper shutdown?

 

[amitk777]

Hi all4music,

I would describe my experience like this :

1. I use a very old laptop as LMS server on Ubuntu which has no battery and I just switch off and nothing happens to it.
2. There are huge benefits in terms of sound quality on having LMS on a separate device. No other software can match PCP's sound quality if you use LMS. LMS can do upsampling even to spotify streams, PCM conversion, buffering and so on. On the other hand PCP can be configured to run very lean with CPU isolation, RAM loading, switching off HDMI and all that. The lesser things you run on the device on which player is playing, the better sound you get.

So , I would recommend this route, if you want highest sound quality.
Else go for Moode. It is simple to setup and comes closest to PCP in sound quality.

 

[all4music]

Else go for Moode

Thanks Amit.. somehow missed your reply. I understand your point. I already have an old laptop which I'm using as a music source connected to a DAC. I wanted to move completely to Rpi based portable system.

Also while discussing with one of the friends, he suggested that I try Volumio - and it runs entirely on RAM and doesn't need to be shut down. Only issue is the subscription based plan of Volumio if we want to access the digital audio out. He is using Allo Digione in his car.

Again my question is if Volumio can run entirely on RAM why not others like piCorePlayer or Moode. Probably I'm still missing something here.

By the way I'm enjoying the convenience the touch screen and ease of integration of music sources that piCorePlayer has brought to my system!
Also, connected the almost portable player system to my car's DSP - sounds so much better than the crappy output of my Car's HU!

 

[surfatwork]

Volumio loads the OS into RAM. For music, it uses mpd, which maintains a flat file database and which is also loaded entirely into RAM. So volumio can run entirely in RAM, with no risk of corruption on power failure.
Picoreplayer also runs in RAM. But LMS uses a sqlite database, which doesn't run in RAM. And hence pcp+LMS cannot run entirely in RAM.

 

[all4music]

with no risk of corruption on power failure.

Thanks Surfawork. Are there any other options where both OS and database are loaded on RAM?
Will look into Volumio for more details. If it were one time purchase would've been simple - somehow not comfortable with annual subscription thingy!

 

[premoddev]

For using with Allo Digione, you don't need any subscription from Volumio. Subscription gives you native support of Tidal and Qobuz, bluetooth etc.

 

[all4music]

For using with Allo Digione, you don't need any subscription from Volumio. Subscription gives you native support of Tidal and Qobuz, bluetooth etc.

So we can use SPIDIF out from from Allo without subscription! That's good to know! thanks

 

[premoddev]

Yes, basic features are free..