WiiM Plugins

[SoFluffy]

I'm curious if the WiiM team has entertained the idea of allowing community plugins. This could expand the devices' functionality for niche features that the WiiM dev team may not have time or priority to implement. Docker maybe?

For example, it is frustrating that the WiiM Ultra is perfectly capable of AirPlay (from my understanding), but missing the magic MFi chip so cannot be certified. I for one don't care about the certification if it just works.. Having a "plugins" option could allow users to bring back AirPlay (potentially via Shareport-Sync) albeit unsupported and not advertised as such for legal reasons.

Or another example would be a Samba (SMB) or even FTP plugin, allowing the ability to add/manage music files on an attached USB drive. I'm sure other smart folks could think of even more use cases.

I know it would be trickier to implement this than it might seem on the surface, especially from a security standpoint. But I'm still just curious if the concept of plugins would ever be considered, and if WiiM would ever release an SDK to assist with such.

Thoughts?

 

[Burnside]

I imagine you and similarly attuned users would already have implemented Airconnect as discussed here https://forum.wiimhome.com/threads/...p-sonos-chromecast-players-using-airplay.4644

Re Samba, I’d imagine WiiM could expose a share without having to go down the community plugin route.

They do have a published HTTP API that some have used, but I realise this may not be sufficient for some needs.

Given the amount of development effort can sometimes seem to exceed their resources, I would doubt very much if they could divert some of those resources to allow community plugins and to provide all the necessary documentation.

 

[needslipo]

Reworking their stack to allow for community plugins would be an investment that is worth the development effort. Take projects like unraid for example - the community has built up that product far more than the development team could ever have hoped to do on their own. It also allows for features outside the skill or expertise of the current dev team.

 

[Burnside]

I think WiiM is in a different market - more consumer than hobbyist if that's the right term...

 

[needslipo]

Not sure why that matters. The developer community would be contributing features for the "consumers" to use. Imagine if Apple followed that same logic and never rolled out an app store. Also, building an audiophile system component by component, setting up a nas, or configuring plex, etc. all sounds pretty hobbyist to me...

 

[maricn]

I would like to be able to integrate a NewPipe extractor or a tighter Jellyfin integration, or some other sources for audio, for instance. It would be a bit of work initially for WiiM to give us a platform, but after that point their development effort goes down, and others take over the dev effort, and they just profit from the plugins they get "for free". The benefit is most definitely reaped by everyone, and I don't see how consumers would be negatively affected if the hobbyists are given a way to play with the device they "own".

 

[Burnside]

I guess you need to consider that WiiM devices (the mini apart) only have 512MB ram, and given the load of features that they already support, I can’t imagine there’d be much room to accommodate plugins…

 

[rccarguy]

I guess you need to consider that WiiM devices (the mini apart) only have 512MB ram, and given the load of features that already support, I can’t imagine there’d be much room to accommodate plugins…

yeah 512MB isn't much, it's a linux OS- not a stripped down picoreplayer type OS.
Plus opens up the system to hacking, access to the OS etc with plugins if you can side load them.

Plugins is more on server side, and plenty of options for that, and if you want tons of plugins hardware for that ie 8G pi5

 

[maricn]

RAM has absolutely nothing to do with this, wiims music services don't all run at the same time to have to all fit into RAM.. Android phones used to function perfectly well with less than 512MB of RAM and many apps, because they don't all run at the same time.. I've wrote apps and plugins for devices with 16MB of RAM.. the ability to have 3rd party code running on a device (on modern cpus and os system (like linux)) is completely independent of the hardware specs in such a way..

and it running on a stripped down version of Linux can only be positive for making such a feature easier and more secure..

 

[maricn]

access to the os is managed through user privileges, and Linux is a beast at that task, tbh..

sideloading is a process that is a very diy/development approach.. once an app or plugin is in a store, there would be no need for sideloading.. also, whoever is sideloading anything should pretty much be aware of the consequences they're messing with..

and regarding having access to the OS - I paid for this device, "hack yeah" i want access to everything, and ofc. they wouldn't open full system access by default.. not that they would open any at all, i have no delusions, hehe, but creating a safe and secure system for such functionality is a matter of having clean internal code and the API for using it wouldn't come too hard.. judging by their development capability, they might be mature enough to actually do this soon..

i would very much enjoy getting some attention on this topic from someone at wiim that might actually have adequate inside info, rather than spend energy here speculating and starting flame wars for nothing..

 

[pieterv1]

Any kind of customizability would be very welcome - not just functional, but also the GUI