Indigo Domotics

I came across this and wondered if a pi with an audio hat running this software would be a cheap option to get music to ceiling speakers that have been waiting years for me to be able to afford a sonos amp for them. I cant drop £1000+ on 2 amps to get music to 2 bathrooms that only occasionally need it.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/view ... p?t=239964

with

https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/interfac ... -(GB:Whoop!)+Interface+Development+Kits-_-PRODUCT_GROUP&matchtype=&pla-333115658150&s_kwcid=AL!7457!3!429003103808!!!g!333115658150!&gclid=CjwKCAjwvZv0BRA8EiwAD9T2VbGUQgoq1e9LNbKmIe-9aXNNPRPT-YHNH9CdKFjGQ6X93NO3CSM8FRoC7pkQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

I wondered if anyone had tried this or has other similar solutions

Thanks

I built a Pi (Model 2 or 3 I cannot remember) using https://www.runeaudio.com with a cheap amplifier powering some ceiling speakers. Or application is a long loop of ambient forest sounds (the staircase has massive prints of giant redwoods in our office) but it also can be used as an airplay speaker. About once every year I need to reboot it but other than that works a treat.

The amp was something like this one https://www.amazon.co.uk/SA-50-TDA7492-Stereo-Amplifier-Adapter-Silver/dp/B008Y7S198/ref=sr_1_50?dchild=1&qid=1585912546&s=electronics&sr=1-50

I had been doing this for a while using a pi running ShairPort Sync. Previously I had an Airport Express I was using, but went to this solution mainly because I wanted access to the metadata. To that end, I also wrote a plugin which can read that metadata and publish to other plugins and also transmit play controls back to the server (or is it client? Whatever. The device streaming the music). http://www.indigodomo.com/pluginstore/144/ .

I've since retired that pi from my system due to improvements on other fronts that made it unnecessary - which means it's also unlikely that I'll be making any updates or anything to it. Feel free to take it over if you'd like.

I ended up getting a HiFiBerry Amp2 and a Pi (bought a 4 as cheaper than a 3, but think it runs on a pretty basic board), and its working great.

https://www.hifiberry.com/shop/boards/hifiberry-amp2/

Took barely longer than the time to flash 650Mb onto a SSD card to be up and running. A quick configure to rename airplay device and it was up and running. Interested to know if I could run it on a device also running say pibeacon, especially as its a Pi4. Would save a few pennies in setup costs, but still much cheaper than a Sonos Amp!

+1 on using shairport sync.

Here are the steps I followed to install it on a headless pi. https://appcodelabs.com/7-easy-steps-to-apple-airplay-on-raspberry-pi

I also added a kiosk mode to it. No desktop on the pi, just chromium which boots directly to a control page. https://die-antwort.eu/techblog/2017-12-setup-raspberry-pi-for-kiosk-mode/

These are all original AirPlay (not AirPlay2), right? So. multi-room playback from iPhone not supported?

I've seen references to AirPlay2 having been cracked, but not seen it around.

The old Airport Express supports AirPlay 2.

They do say airplay 2 but agree, it doesnt seem to support multi room.

siclark wrote:

it doesnt seem to support multi room.

I've always used Airfoil Satellite on my iOS device to do multi-room.

siclark wrote:

Interested to know if I could run it on a device also running say pibeacon, especially as its a Pi4.

My Pi3, when running an indigo control page and while streaming music is running at around 30% on 1 of 4 of the processors..... So I think there is plenty of pi power to run the beacon. But only about 50% of RAM available. Pi4 can be purchased with more memory than a 3.

For anyone using HiFiBerry their latest software out in the last week, which your device might not have picked up yet, now supports Airplay 2 for proper multi room audio.