Posts by AllanK

Hi All

I've got an S805 OTTO TV box (MXQ 5g) ---
I'm only using it as an audio endpoint. Currently running with a snapclient, but I will probably add Kodi if I only want to listen to audio in that room (or more the point if my wife does... I'm okay with muting the other systems)

I've got Libreelec on 2 TV systems, and would be happy to swap out armbian for this image - BUT I want to know if the snapclient plugin is supported on this version - and if it includes the newer improvements that when the Kodi audio player starts it allows that to take over, using ALSA not Pulse - I had issues with that on another system)

Hey SN33KY

There's a lot of mislabelled MXQ devices.

I suggest the easiest way to check is install one of the Hardware INFO apps from Play store to show you what is really installed (this is the easiest)..

I ended up with a RK3128 with only 4GB of storage and 1GB of RAM, even though Android itself reports 64GB and 4GB respectively.

I have installed Kodi from Android and Snapclient.. which does what I want (as I just want a music player, either playing from the local library standalone, or playing everything via Mopidy).. SO - I don't trust the device and it is not allowed to make calls out to the internet.

I will probably create a VLAN for all my media devices anyway to restrict the ability of these devices to talk to each other..

Hi ilmich

Still haven't got my hands on a 3228 or 3229.. but the people who sold me the 3128 refunded the money but let me keep the unit. It's pretty light on.. 3128 with 1GB of RAM and 4GB storage ... But I only plan to use this as a headless Kodi for local music only and a snapclient when we have people around.

So... I'm happy to beta test any images for 3128 when you get around to it.

No hurry here..

Quote from ilmich

There is no libreelec working yet for rk3128.

But basically it's similar to rk3228a (just no 4k and no vp9 hw decoding).

I'll try to do something for sure but I need some time.

Ah.. that's what I suspected..

We'll see if I hold on to it.
Otherwise there seems to be plenty of 3229 boxes.

Hi ilmich

It's a 3128 (advertised as a 3228A) ..

I can't find any evidence of a librelec build that will work..

It has a horrible ground noise problem when trying to use the internal DAC.. Which doesn't give me great confidence in the unit. However if the seller fails to issue the return mail slip, I'll be happy to hold on to it and test anything you do.

Quote from ilmich

Welcome AllanK

my goal is to have a stable build. I have 3 boxes, one of which is used regularly as a media center without any problem.

Clearly supporting all existing variants is complex, and user support is key to solving problems that I can't test.

But libreelec mainline is the future.

So in the best case, your board will run smoothly and you will be satisfied. Otherwise, you have to be patient and help me figure out how to solve problems.

edit: Take a look here too, Tanix TX2 RK3229 MPD DAC Hi Res Audio Bitperfect. A user has turned his rk3229 box into an audio system.

Cheers

Michele

Display More

As is the way with eBay - I got sent a device with a RK3128 - with only 2GB of flash...
So tried just to get Android Kodi and snapclient to work, using shared database and was going to run some cron jobs on a vm utilising adb to keep kodi alive AND periodically clean the cache..

I even blocked it from reaching out to internet and internet reaching it (unless one of my other devices get owned)

BUT The audio output was screwed.. terrible ground noise coming out it.. I've ordered one of those silly 3.5mm to RCA spdif cables.. but I don't trust it and am processing the return.. I'm hoping they can send a 3128a or 3129 and will see how it goes.

So the solution was messy but may have been okay just to play audio..

I have a backup plan if it takes a while to get one, or it is not supported again.

First thing to improve the issue was to co-locate the snapserver and mopidy ..

Reduce the load on the bridged network interface on the hypervisor.

Addendum -

For autostart.sh.. to get the correct sink and card issue the following ..

pactl list cards

The output will look something like this

Card #0
    Name: alsa_card.pci-0000_00_01.1
    Driver: module-alsa-card.c
    Owner Module: 17
    Properties:
        alsa.card = "0"
        alsa.card_name = "HDA ATI HDMI"
        alsa.long_card_name = "HDA ATI HDMI at 0xfeb64000 irq 48"
        alsa.driver_name = "snd_hda_intel"

giving the 0 for this line in the autostart.sh

pactl set-card-profile 0 output:hdmi-stereo

and then

pactl list sinks short

which outputs something like this

1    just_a_sink_1    module-null-sink.c    s16le 2ch 44100Hz    SUSPENDED
2    alsa_output.pci-0000_00_01.1.hdmi-stereo    module-alsa-card.c    s16le 2ch 48000Hz    SUSPENDED
3    alsa_output.pci-0000_00_14.2.iec958-stereo    module-alsa-card.c    s16le 2ch 44100Hz    SUSPENDED

That gave me the 2 for this line in autostart.sh

pactl set-sink-formats 2 "pcm; ac3-iec61937; dts-iec61937; eac3-iec61937"

Hope this helps someone else sort this out.

Ok

Thanks awiouy for this awesome addon.

I've sorted this out, I'm leaving my solution for reference BUT also a request first (based on the solution to make it easier for others)

Here's the feature request first

1. Please allow selecting of player option .. (e.g. choose between ALSA and pulse , and probably pipewire at some point)
I needed to edit service snapclient.service to replace the term snapclient with "snapclient --player pulse"

Then when a particular player has been selected, list soundcards according to the player. (see step 3 of my solution)

Here's the solution ..

The problem - plugins not able to play audio if snapclient had been playing music.. (even if stopped at the time)

Summary - move to pulse as audio "backend"/abstraction layer to prevent locking of the audio device..

(My experience with Pulse is usually disable it as much as possible as I do professional mixing and mastering, but here, it's really come in handy).

Configs

1. autostart.sh to ensure the correct sinks are available and some other settings (to allow ac3 passthrough to my receiver)

#!/bin/sh

pactl load-module module-null-sink sink_name="just_a_sink_1"

pactl suspend-sink just_a_sink_1

pactl load-module module-allow-passthrough

pactl load-module module-udev-detect

pactl set-card-profile 0 output:hdmi-stereo

pactl set-sink-formats 2 "pcm; ac3-iec61937; dts-iec61937; eac3-iec61937"

pactl set-default-sink alsa_output.pci-0000_00_01.1.hdmi-stereo

Pretty sure lines 1 and 2 are redundant - but anyway.. it's working
As for the last line, as I don't use the "default" device in my config, so that is probably also not needed.

2. Edit

/storage/.kodi/addons/service.snapclient/bin/snapclient.start

Change the invocation of snapclient to include --player pulse

HOME="$ADDON_HOME" \

nice -n "$sc_n" \

snapclient \

$sc_H \

--latency "$sc_l" \

$HOST \

--port "$sc_p" \

$sc_S \

> /dev/null

To

HOME="$ADDON_HOME" \

nice -n "$sc_n" \

snapclient --player pulse \
$sc_H \

--latency "$sc_l" \

$HOST \

--port "$sc_p" \

$sc_S \

> /dev/null

3. Identify correct output (as the GUI still only displays ALSA outputs)

LivingRoom:~/.kodi/addons/service.snapclient/bin # snapclient --player pulse --list

4: default

Let PulseAudio server choose the device

1: just_a_sink_1

Null Output

2: alsa_output.pci-0000_00_01.1.hdmi-stereo

Built-in Audio Digital Stereo (HDMI)

3: alsa_output.pci-0000_00_14.2.iec958-stereo

Built-in Audio Digital Stereo (IEC958)

In this case my choice is 2, which is in the first line of the config file

/storage/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/service.snapclient/settings.xml

<settings version="2">
    <setting id="sc_s">2</setting>
    <setting id="sc_addr">snapbuntu</setting>
    <setting id="sc_p">1704</setting>
    <setting id="sc_h">livingroom</setting>
    <setting id="sc_n">2</setting>
    <setting id="sc_l">640</setting>
    <setting id="sc_k">true</setting>
    <setting id="sc_a">true</setting>
    <setting id="sc_r">2</setting>
</settings>

4. Make sure that Kodi is also using the same Pulse Audio device.. I did this via the GUI.. but this is from the guisettings.xml

<setting id="audiooutput.audiodevice">PULSE:alsa_output.pci-0000_00_01.1.hdmi-stereo</setting>

I was able to switch between

Movie played by Kodi (AC3 passthrough)
Music played by Kodi (PCM stereo)
Video played by the youtube addon (PCM stereo)

My snapserver (fed by Mopidy) was sending music the whole time and it was being played out to the speakers via my receiver connected via HDMI.

Everything played nicely for everything and the music popped up in between ..

Looking forward to the summer BBQ season.. and if the kids decide to watch a movie when the evening hits, they can do that and all the other speakers in the house will keep playing to the party.

For reference sake - the is on the generic amd64 build

The CPU I tested with is
AMD A10-7860K Radeon R7, 12 Compute Cores 4C+8G

I have the 2 core version and will test this configuration on that too (although not using HDMI for audio, but spdif, and to a 2.1 system)

Hopefully later I'll also be able to test against an unoficial Rockchip build (ordered for another entertaining area), a device I'll be running headless, so that should be interesting..

Snapcast not releasing audio device back to KOdi when Kodi starts playing. another plugin needs to play audio . The sound is silent (snapcast not sending audio) - but the plugin can't play any audio

I had an issue today where my daughter tried to put on a show from YouTube and there was no sound. I had just installd Snapcast client and music was playing from my snapcast server (which is on an Ubuntu KVM on my home server)

BUT the switch to stop playing when a kodi plays was set to true.

The music stopped but the YouTube player couldn't provide audio.
The only way I've got it to work reliably was to go into settings and disable snapclient.

Is there anything I can do to make sure that the audio will come through from other plugins?

(I also put a separate post about setting snapclient latency settings to a finer degree - sorry Ididn't put it in this thread)

Hi,

Love that this is available.

I'm using snapserver on a Ubuntu KVM on my home server.

I'm using mopidy as the media server.

2 of my clients are Libreelec systems on older AMD dozer systems (well and v truly powerful enough for 1080p viewing and audio) , they are connected via a gigabit LAN.

I'm getting pretty frequent dropouts so figure I need to adjust some latency settings. The snapclient add-on seems to only allow the overall latency to be adjusted but not the ability to set the number of fragments and their individual latencies....

Can you please advise if this can be tuned via CLI or if this may come in a later release

I notice the snapclient in Libreelec only has an input to adjust the overall latency

Hi,

I'm expecting delivery of an MXQ Pro in the next week or so .. The ebay post said it was a 3228a version... I know that it is not up to scratch for video, but that's okay... I literally only want a libreelec image for this to be a headless audio player, mostly running the native player, but sometimes operating as a snapclient.

I would prefer to be on the current libreelec, so it can reach out to my common database for playlists etc and also for the snapclient for our monthly BBQ's (not confident the current development is supported on legacy)

I also don't need wifi as I have a cat6 port right next to my amp, and really am not bothered if I have to boot from SD card.

So my big question is - does this seem feasible or do I stick with the legacy version for this device?

cheers from Australia..

Allan