Squeezelite player standalone for Squeezebox

That is great news @ASNNetworks!
Great thank you for the patience to get this running. I’ll merge it into a new release later tonight.

I am not a master of multiroom, but I have 8 old Logitech Squeezeboxes Radio/Booms around the house controlled by HA with scripts (turns on/off by given times). Also adding the plugin “Spotty” into Squeezebox-server makes it great!

My HA server runs speakers on my terrace synched with the livingroom squeezeboxes, never heard any difference between in/out so the sync is good. But I am not an audiophile either, so I don’t mind a little glitch :wink:

Have fun moving, again thanks for the help

1 Like

Thanks for giving this amazing component to the community!

I think the delay is just very noticeable now because I have both speaker in the same room. In the new setup they will all be in separate rooms, so perhaps it’ll be less noticeable. I use Google Cast speakers now. Though I hate the speakers and how group speakers work, they do have syncing done 100% accurate.

Should I delete this version tonight and install using your repo through add-on store, incase you update stuff in the future?

I’ll let you know when to switch “back” to the repro version :+1:

1 Like

I just updated the repro and Squeezelite plugin is now v1.35 that should be working for all architectures.
Thanks for the testing support @ASNNetworks :+1:

1 Like

I uninstalled the previous one, reloaded the repo (just to be safe) and installed it. Everything is running again (just to confirm!). Again: thanks alot for all your work and time. I think it’s amazing how a question/status update on a three month old topic has led to a fully working squeezelite player on HA!

I just ordered a HifiBerry Digi+ Pro for my soundbar :smiley: The proces of moving to LMS from Google Cast speakers has begun!

1 Like

@large Great work on this!!! I’ve still to try this out but I was really hoping for an addon like this one.

@ASNNetworks Please let me know if the DAC will work out of the box.
I’ve an ALLO BOSS DAC that I already use with a rpi3 and squeezelite, and I would like to move it to the one that is running Hassio.
But if I remember correctly I had to install some libraries to make it work.
If that’s the case, I don’t know if it would be possible to install that stuff on Hassio. Maybe an USB soundcard would work more easily.
The standard Out of the rpi is really bad.

1 Like

Thank you for the kind words @infiniteloop

I have always used sound over hdmi and nobody have complained about the quality of the RPi sound.
Of cause the DAC is a better Yamaha receiver so that could be the reason for it :slight_smile:

It is possible to download the addon locally and modify the docker file to suit your needs for the DAC you are trying to use.

Yep, I was referring to the 3.5 mm out.
Probably an USB sound card is the simpler way to go. Usually they are recognized out of the box without any additional library. You just have to indicate to Squeezelite to use that card for output.
As soon as I can try I’ll let you know.

1 Like

So I receiver the HifiBerry Digi+ Pro and connected it to my RPI4. It does show up in my hardware panel:
msedge_NyuXtmgApF

When going in to the configuration of Squeezelite, I now see ‘Built-in Audio Digital Stereo’ twice. Also there now is an input, with also that name. I tried both the the outputs, but I get no audio.

I don’t know if the add-on doesn’t work with the board, or if my soundbar itself is not working as intended with the optical input (I haven’t used that before).

Also Squeelite log shows:

Output devices:
  null                           - Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)
  pulse                          - PulseAudio Sound Server
  default                        - Default ALSA Output (Home Assistant PulseAudio Sound Server)

I’m not sure what to do now: get a different board (maybe DAC with RCA) or just get a separate Raspberry Pi if Home Assistant doesn’t support other audio outputs. Kind of a bummer this.

Edit: so I noticed when selecting the first output, my analog works. But selecting the second one, there is no analog audio. This should mean that the second one is the Hifiberry card. Still no audio though, hmm…

Also I have no audio with RPI4 over HDMI. Tried it with the Spotify Connect addon as well a while ago. I can’t select it (see only the Built-in Audio one) and there is no input/sound on my soundbar on the input where the RPI4 connects to. This was the reason I wanted to get a Hifiberry.

I am currently busy, but I think we can fix this by updating the addon.
Don’t give up the idea that the hifiberry could work in HA :+1:

If we force pulseaudio to select another sink as default it should work, but it theory of cause :slight_smile:
Since each of the addon is runned under a docker, we need to change these settings on each start, so my “run”-script could read a new parameter for sink. I never tried this since I only use HDMI on my NUC.

I’ll look into it on thursday/friday to see if we can get this running.

Edit:
There are integration that should handle this quite well in HA:


Little howto on Rpi4: https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/112954/how-to-restore-audio-output-after-updating-raspbian-buster-on-pi4

Edit2:
Someone with equal challenge as you: HiFiBerry with Spotify Connect on Hassio and they stated that it should be shown in: hw audio

If so it should be available as a output device
My guess here is that the ARM64 for RPi4 could be the reason atm.

1 Like

Thanks so much, you really are amazing for digging into this! I think you are right: 64bit Hassio is in beta, so chances are stuff won’t work properly yet. I think your guess is right. In the meantime, I restarted my RPI while having the HDMI plugged in. This made it work. I now have full audio through HDMI on my soundbar.

What’s your advice? Do you think it’s worth the time to work on the Hifiberry board and dig deeper? Or should I just stick to HDMI (which is fine for me, the only reason I got this board is because HDMI out didn’t work before).

I left a message on that thread just in case.

Edit: I don’t really like the lag HDMI brings compared to analog :confused: Have been fiddling all evening and it’s just not as tight as with analog. Maybe I’ll get the DAC+ and hope that one can work. I experience a lot of audio cutouts right now as well. Not sure if it’s the HDMI cable, the add-on, the RPI4 or something in between. I remember the analog worked very stable (though the sound sucked).

Edit: Could it be the power supply of the RPI4? I have a deCONZ Conbee II stick, ZWave stick and a ssd through sata > usb 3.0 connected. Does audio over HDMI draw out more power than analog? I have the standard Raspberry Pi 4 charger that you can purchase with it. I see it’s a 3.0A power supply.

Edit: I tried boosting HDMI by editing and commenting out a line in config.txt on boot drive. Seems to work for now (fingers crossed🤞🏼).

Sorry for these huge offtopic responses. I figured perhaps someone else runs into the same stuff and can maybe save some time.

I decided to keep HDMI for now on the player running on RPI4 through HA since it works fine (albeit more latency, which I think I have solved through the settings). I also noticed optical on my soundbar is kinda annoying to use/setup. Since HDMI has great sound anyway to me there is no reason to use the sound board on the RPI4 running HA.

I do want to get Hifiberry DAC’s for my PiCoreplayers. But those support them anyway from what I read.

Btw: A tip for people who are new to LMS. Make sure you change the mac address in the configuration settings. If you use the highly recommended Material skin and use mysqueezebox.com for apps (like Tidal and Deezer) then the squeelite player will not show there. This will result in empty app lists when Material skin refreshes.

I changed it to the mac address of the RPI4 the add-on runs on. The player shows on mysqueezebox.com and the apps work as it should :smiley:

@large Hi, I sometimes notice some audio dropouts with the player running on HA. This happens also when the speaker is not playing in sync (so only solo). I’m using it through HDMI btw.

I tried different combinations of my players and it seems only this one has dropouts. The PiCoreplayer running standalone and Squeelite player on PC don’t have this behaviour.

Is this a known issue? I don’t see high CPU usage with my RPI4 while running this addon.

Having only recently setup Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi3 from the hassos_rpi3-64-5.9.img.xz image, I was delighted to learn that I might also be able to use this unit as a squeezebox player for my extensive LMS system. I run piCoreplayer on multiple RasPi units without any issues but sadly I’m running into many problems with this implentation on HA.

The RasPi3 has a FiiO USB DAC K1 and I’m seeing problems very much like “ASNNetworks”. I’ve tried every permutation of input and output, with or without the Anodev’s Hass.IO Addons (not sure if appropriate or not). I get brief, random bursts of quality sound from the DAC then it stops. Analogue sound out directly from the Pi is more stable but not the quality I need. In all my other Pi/Squeeze implementations I’ve never come across “Pulse Audio” so not sure where this fits in. Logs show that stable connections for audio out are not being made

I will continue to persevere, but I’m running out of ideas right now and would welcome any insights or hints.

Chip

A further word on the above. Today, for unknown reasons, I have a stable squeezelite on HA. It’s visible from the LMS server, I can play anything from my system and watch prgress of track and album cover. There’s only one problem - there’s no sound whatsoever from either the USB DAC or the RasPi analogue sound out. Is it playing to HMDI? I can’t test this since I don’t have an HDMI to ausio out adapter.

I’m guessing that the problems arise from the linux implementation in the HA package - I’ve never had any problems like this on Ubuntu, Raspian or the piCorePlayer systems on Raspberry Pi’s 1-4.

Ho hum…it started off so well!

Chip

Hi,
I am very interested in the sqeezelite project. Have been using LMS on a synology for years and operate via the squeeze app on an android device.

I’ve gone through all the steps, but can’t figure out how to get sqeezelite on home screen.
Maybe some tips?

thank you for all your help.
Ingo

I am using this addon with Music Assistant 2.0 (still in beta) acting as LMS. It found two squeezelite players. One is my Raspberry Pi4 from which i get music (also if the volume is really too low). How to know which is the second player?
And more, is there a good amplifier to use with Rpi running HAOS?

I add repository , restart all but still can’t find the add-on to install.
messageImage_1685524296062

I forgot about this little plugin made 3 years ago :slight_smile:
Do not use it anymore (went for Sonos), but a tip is to wait some time.
In my HA it came up after 5 minutes:
image

ah thank you, get it to work and was seen by LMS server now. there is “home assistant squeezelite” in player list now.
one more problem is I can’t hear any sound or music play from device.
I run HAOS on mini PC and just want the connect audio out to the speaker to play music. (I checked sound both from HDMI TV and Audio Jack but no sound)
what I have done.

  • VLC lan telnet, can play song but no sound.

  • Music Assistant not work on new HAOS update

  • mopidy not work as well

  • squeezelite client, I believe it’d work. ( I have tried manually install squeezelite client on RP 1b and it works with LMS but not for my mini PC that run HAOS on.