Squeezelite Lyrion “in a box”

[Burnside]

Rather than getting a Raspberry Pi and undertaking some DIY, is there a pre-configured “Lyrion in a box” solution akin to the Home Assistant Green box that’s pretty much plug and play that relatively non-technical users could just connect to their network, point to their local library/streaming services and quickly get running? Isn’t there a market for such?

(I note that you can run Lyrion under Home Assistant but I wouldn’t buy a HA Green box just to run Lyrion)

Home Assistant Green

The easy-to-use, versatile, and trustworthy smart home hub for everyone.

www.home-assistant.io

 

[rccarguy]

Not that I'm aware of. Most simplest would a NAS capable of running LMS, that means Docker, so the more expensive Intel based chips if looking at Synology (which no longer works on Realtek based NAS's)

Also they'd probably have a high markup for something you can do yourself. Plus a PC would require windows then LMS rather than picoreplayer which is basically cut down Linux, rather bloaty full windows/full linux.

Pi with USB HDD is probably the simplist solution, probably install LMS on a another drive in case it dies and you need to wipe it.

 

[rccarguy]

Option2 - pCP

www.picoreplayer.org

Go for that? Picoreplayer on a Microsd, then USB HDD for your music

I have picoreplayer on a 2.5" 64GB SSD so ideal reusing a older ssd that's now useless on a desktop.

I guess you could have picoreplayer/LMS on partition with remaining space for music partition but a couple of times LMS has died so had to restore it...safer to have music elseware.

 

[Burnside]

Yeah, I was just pondering if HA could do it with their Green box, why couldn’t Lyrion. I have piCorePlayer on one Pi, and HA on another and might have considered the HA Green box had it been available back then.

If you had a similar Lyrion, affordable, pre-configured “everything in a box solution” without faffing about with MicroSD cards etc that you could just plug in, stick a usb drive into (or point at your NAS) and be up and running, I’m sure that could be attractive to some users.

 

[r5yk5]

without faffing about

In my experience, half the point of Lyrion is the faffing about. I don't mean that negatively, rather that it's plugin based. So you faff about setting it up, with the particular set of plugins you require.
Do you want Qobuz or Tidal? Do you need the upnp/dlna bridge or the airplay plugin to use your wiim mini's. Do you want podcasts?, BBC iplayer? Custom tags?, dynamic playlists? and so on and so on and so forth.
Of course one it's set up it's solid, just that setting it up is, by it's plugin based nature, a faff.

 

[jfbuk]

Zero experience of this company or the products they sell but they may have something

https://theaudiostore.co.uk/product/audiostore-mite/

There used to be Vortexbox but that is now defunct

 

[simbun]

Yeah, I was just pondering if HA could do it with their Green box, why couldn’t Lyrion.

I'm sure they could but there's just not the demand: https://lyrion.org/analytics/

Note: The numbers reflect those with the analytics plugin enabled, which is promoted during installation but disabled by default.

 

[hoohoohoo]

On the HA Green Box, HAOS uses Docker under the hood. It would be an easy addition to put Lyrion on there.

GitHub - home-assistant/operating-system: :beginner: Home Assistant Operating System

:beginner: Home Assistant Operating System. Contribute to home-assistant/operating-system development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

 

[rccarguy]

In my experience, half the point of Lyrion is the faffing about. I don't mean that negatively, rather that it's plugin based. So you faff about setting it up, with the particular set of plugins you require.
Do you want Qobuz or Tidal? Do you need the upnp/dlna bridge or the airplay plugin to use your wiim mini's. Do you want podcasts?, BBC iplayer? Custom tags?, dynamic playlists? and so on and so on and so forth.
Of course one it's set up it's solid, just that setting it up is, by it's plugin based nature, a faff.

It's a bit more complex than LMS on a NAS, I couldn't get it to map to my NAS for some reason, but now since I have it working I use a spare 64GB SSD to make a backup, if it dies I just clone from the old image

Does need bit of knowledge, burning off with rufus, accessing over IP, extending partition in PCP, set network/local share, install LMS then setup LMS

 

[Burnside]

In my experience, half the point of Lyrion is the faffing about. I don't mean that negatively, rather that it's plugin based. So you faff about setting it up, with the particular set of plugins you require.
Do you want Qobuz or Tidal? Do you need the upnp/dlna bridge or the airplay plugin to use your wiim mini's. Do you want podcasts?, BBC iplayer? Custom tags?, dynamic playlists? and so on and so on and so forth.
Of course one it's set up it's solid, just that setting it up is, by it's plugin based nature, a faff.

Fair enough, but you could still have a single box already assembled, with Lyrion and a core set of plugins (Material Skin, BBC Sounds, Radio Paradise, Music & Artist info for example) already installed that would more quickly get you up and going than purchasing a Pi, case, power supply, micro SD cards, downloading and burning a piCorePlayer image then going thru its setup. Even as an aged techie, I still found that a faff. And adding plugins etc is no more a faff than say using the WiiM app to log in to Qobuz, or setup a SMB share etc.

 

[Burnside]

On the HA Green Box, HAOS uses Docker under the hood. It would be an easy addition to put Lyrion on there.

GitHub - home-assistant/operating-system: :beginner: Home Assistant Operating System

:beginner: Home Assistant Operating System. Contribute to home-assistant/operating-system development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Yeah, I mentioned that in my opening post, but that would still need you to setup Lyrion almost from scratch. I’d like it to be possible for someone to say, here’s a box you just plugin, open the Material skin interface on your browser, login to Qobuz or point at your music library and off you go. Guess a sort of Lyrion Lite (or Lyrion EZSetup ) to get you going and as you get more experienced, you can add more plugins etc.

 

[castalla]

In my experience, half the point of Lyrion is the faffing about. I don't mean that negatively, rather that it's plugin based. So you faff about setting it up, with the particular set of plugins you require.
Do you want Qobuz or Tidal? Do you need the upnp/dlna bridge or the airplay plugin to use your wiim mini's. Do you want podcasts?, BBC iplayer? Custom tags?, dynamic playlists? and so on and so on and so forth.
Of course one it's set up it's solid, just that setting it up is, by it's plugin based nature, a faff.

The faff is its versatility - you install just what you want. The part which is the most intimidating is setting up local file libraries (mount/dismount, etc).

As time has passed, the list of plugins has grown and there are several which are only of historical value

 

[rccarguy]

Fair enough, but you could still have a single box already assembled, with Lyrion and a core set of plugins (Material Skin, BBC Sounds, Radio Paradise, Music & Artist info for example) already installed that would more quickly get you up and going than purchasing a Pi, case, power supply, micro SD cards, downloading and burning a piCorePlayer image then going thru its setup. Even as an aged techie, I still found that a faff. And adding plugins etc is no more a faff than say using the WiiM app to log in to Qobuz, or setup a SMB share etc.

I can send you a pi with picoreplayer setup.

£1000

 

[Burnside]

I can send you a pi with picoreplayer setup.

£1000

Well if I didn’t already have one and you were talking a similar cost to the HA Green, you might have a market

 

[slartibartfast]

Yeah, I mentioned that in my opening post, but that would still need you to setup Lyrion almost from scratch. I’d like it to be possible for someone to say, here’s a box you just plugin, open the Material skin interface on your browser, login to Qobuz or point at your music library and off you go. Guess a sort of Lyrion Lite (or Lyrion EZSetup ) to get you going and as you get more experienced, you can add more plugins etc.

There used to be this but it disappeared and I think it was difficult to update LMS.

CORE32 Energy Efficient LMS Music Server - Lyrion : Community : Forums

> Good point regarding not needing to register, and i guess to answer my > own question, is that if we continue to include the BBC iPlayer Plug-in > it should work correctly. On this basis, we *-_will__-*investigate the > bug that you have reported. BBCServiceInformation.pm uses LWP::UserAgent...

forums.lyrion.org

 

[hoohoohoo]

Yeah, I mentioned that in my opening post, but that would still need you to setup Lyrion almost from scratch. I’d like it to be possible for someone to say, here’s a box you just plugin, open the Material skin interface on your browser, login to Qobuz or point at your music library and off you go. Guess a sort of Lyrion Lite (or Lyrion EZSetup ) to get you going and as you get more experienced, you can add more plugins etc.

Lyrion's UI isn't ready for the masses. I like your idea of a more focused use case for the audiophile crowd. WiiM could pull this off with a music service based based around HA.

There used to be this but it disappeared and I think it was difficult to update LMS.

CORE32 Energy Efficient LMS Music Server - Lyrion : Community : Forums

> Good point regarding not needing to register, and i guess to answer my > own question, is that if we continue to include the BBC iPlayer Plug-in > it should work correctly. On this basis, we *-_will__-*investigate the > bug that you have reported. BBCServiceInformation.pm uses LWP::UserAgent...

forums.lyrion.org

With docker in HAOS, it's much simpler to roll out the updates.

 

[Burnside]

There used to be this but it disappeared and I think it was difficult to update LMS.

CORE32 Energy Efficient LMS Music Server - Lyrion : Community : Forums

> Good point regarding not needing to register, and i guess to answer my > own question, is that if we continue to include the BBC iPlayer Plug-in > it should work correctly. On this basis, we *-_will__-*investigate the > bug that you have reported. BBCServiceInformation.pm uses LWP::UserAgent...

forums.lyrion.org

Thanks, that was probably along the lines I was thinking. Pity about the cost and its disappearance though

 

[slartibartfast]

Thanks, that was probably along the lines I was thinking. Pity about the cost and its disappearance though

When it came out I thought it was better to just buy a Pi and install piCorePlayer. You couldn't even update plugins without waiting for an update from PolyVection.

 

[Aquaman]

Lyrion's UI isn't ready for the masses.

Neither is that of Minim Server I‘m afraid. But I agree neither the installation of Lyrion in a docker nor its configuration is anywhere near from intuitive. Without the appropriate background you need the genes of a nerd to get through this.

 

[castalla]

Sonos probably came closest to an almost plug'n'play system - screwed up by a management decision to add high-end headphones (which turned out not to be Sonos-like at all) involving a disastrous rewrite of their software which users hated. It almost killed the company which still hasn't fully revovered.

The audio business outside the phone streaming sector is a bit like the Wild West... Frontier companies vying for settlers and a lot of snake-oil sellers. Maybe, Lyrion is a bit Amish-like going its own community way.... with dependence on technological buggies to get around.