WiiM Mini Streamer

[Music1969]

Roon is so easy to add. I can make a RPi a Roon Bridge endpoint with a few lines in Linux terminal.

LinkPlay/WiiM have bigger fish to fry.

There's 200k Roon users

There over 400 million Amazon Music, Apple Music , Spotify users.

So those will always be priority.

If Spotify HiFi happens later this year you can imagine that Roon will again have to wait.

Same if hires Airplay happened.

I'm ok with that even though I have Roon Lifetime license since they started..

 

[amper42]

I use Audirvana 3.5 via UPnP for best experience creating/updating Qobuz playlists and adding new songs to a playlist on the fly. These playlists are saved in my Qobuz account so later if I want to use a phone or iPad as the playback device with the Wiim mini Home app it works fine. That adds a second level of accessibility.

The 48khz Airplay2 playback with multi-room configurations is also a nice touch when using the Wiim mini app. Multi-room is not built-in to my Audirvana 3.5 software. Most the time multi-room playback is not critical listening but party time so it's not a big deal that 192khz is not supported. The fact that multi-room can be setup so easily is more for fun and giggles. ;-)

The Wiim mini Wifi signal is a bit more robust than the RPI4 board level Wifi. When I configure the Wiim mini setup as 5g in a location where the RPI4 wifi is marginal the Wiim reports a higher wifi signal level and has less connection issues. That can be a plus for problem locations.

Once you experience the flexibility the Wiim device and Home app bring with optical connections it's addictive. The Amazon $84 price was a deal. Any new features will be icing on the cake.

 

[morillon]

The WiiM app isn’t a renderer, it’s a control point for the WiiM Mini - you wouldn’t expect your tv remote to show video before sending it to the tv, would you?

ah ok
a bit of a shame...

 

[Ralph_Cramden]

 

[Music1969]

You'd have to adjust the code, as that's a lower rez display. I'm surprised they haven't updated the official display after all this time. This Waveshare is much sharper.

Thanks I'll get the Waveshare to try out.

Do you just have a HDMI cable between your Pi Zero W and your Waveshare?

So it should work even with a RPi3?

Or do you have a different connection between the 2?

 

[Ralph_Cramden]

Thanks I'll get the Waveshare to try out.

Do you just have a HDMI cable between your Pi Zero W and your Waveshare?

So it should work even with a RPi3?

Or do you have a different connection between the 2?

It’s not HDMI, it comes with a hat for any Pi, and the ribbon cables.

7inch DPI LCD - Waveshare Wiki

www.waveshare.com

It’s on Amazon for about $50. Note that it’s not a touchscreen, as I found that I never actually used touch on previous projects (for LMS and others). Also couldn’t get it to work with Bullseye, so had to stick with the more stable Buster distro of Pi OS.

 

[Deleted member 47859]

I finally got an answer regarding the issues with Deezer.

Original request

The support created a ticket and replied:

Hi MichaelS,

Thanks very much for your feedback and sorry for the inconvenient caused!

1. For issue 1, it was caused by Deezer Provider and we need to implement the new api to fix them.
2. For issue 2, this is a bug that we need to fix it.
3. For issue 3, we will reproduce it and check what happened.
4. For issue 4, we will look into it and check how to implement it.

Best,
WiiM Support

As mentioned before Deezer is essential for me. I‘m currently still with LMS having the WiiM Minis waiting for fixes.

 

[Music1969]

It’s not HDMI, it comes with a hat for any Pi, and the ribbon cables.

7inch DPI LCD - Waveshare Wiki

www.waveshare.com

It’s on Amazon for about $50. Note that it’s not a touchscreen, as I found that I never actually used touch on previous projects (for LMS and others). Also couldn’t get it to work with Bullseye, so had to stick with the more stable Buster distro of Pi OS.

Thanks, this was the 7inch I was looking at, because it's assembled in a case with built-in kickstand:

7inch Capacitive Touch Screen LCD (H) with Case and Toughened Glass Cover, 1024×600, HDMI, IPS, Various Devices & Systems Support

7inch Capacitive Touch Screen LCD (H) with Case and Toughened Glass Cover, 1024×600, HDMI, IPS, Various Devices & Systems Support

www.waveshare.com

If you connect your Pi Zero W to any HDMI display via HDMI cable, what do you see?

If it's what it should be, then I can probably safely get this 7inch case model.

If nothing comes out of your Pi Zero W's HDMI then I won't get that 7inch case model.

 

[thomasward00]

It's perfectly fine if you just what to search and play.

But for discovery of new tunes, one example is you can't do a 'start track radio' inside WiiM app. API limitation.

So it depends if people are happy to search and play or wanting more discovery.

We're all different

Agree 100%,. The music discovery feature is lacking... But at $89 dollars I'll cut Wiim a bit of slack, as for the Blue sound Node, for $600 I would expect a near perfect experience that I know it doesn't deliver. Products like the Wiim will cut heavily into their market once the bugs are worked out.

 

[Ralph_Cramden]

Thanks, this was the 7inch I was looking at, because it's assembled in a case with built-in kickstand:

7inch Capacitive Touch Screen LCD (H) with Case and Toughened Glass Cover, 1024×600, HDMI, IPS, Various Devices & Systems Support

7inch Capacitive Touch Screen LCD (H) with Case and Toughened Glass Cover, 1024×600, HDMI, IPS, Various Devices & Systems Support

www.waveshare.com

If you connect your Pi Zero W to any HDMI display via HDMI cable, what do you see?

If it's what it should be, then I can probably safely get this 7inch case model.

If nothing comes out of your Pi Zero W's HDMI then I won't get that 7inch case model.

Not quite that simple. It’s using “bare metal” writing directly to the framebuffer. It won’t automatically detect the display and configure it, has to be done manually in config.txt. See the Sonos-HDMI project in my repository for an example of how to do that.

My hope is that WiiM will come out with a display model, so that funky workarounds like mine won’t be necessary.

 

[Music1969]

Not quite that simple. It’s using “bare metal” writing directly to the framebuffer. It won’t automatically detect the display and configure it, has to be done manually in config.txt. See the Sonos-HDMI project in my repository for an example of how to do that.

My hope is that WiiM will come out with a display model, so that funky workarounds like mine won’t be necessary.

Noted thanks, I'll order the same non-touch as yours then.

Looks like RPi3 is supported for that screen. I already have Pi3 and finding Pi Zero W in unavailable anywhere I am

So Pi3 should be fine right? There's nothing specific in your code for Pi Zero W ?

 

[Ralph_Cramden]

Any Pi should work, with 32-bit Buster distro. The 3 will draw the album cover faster.

Edit: Just tested the SD card in a Pi-3A+ I had in a drawer. Working fine, though for some odd reason WiFi didn't come up, had to set country code in Localization Options in rasp-config. No idea why, as it was already set.

 

[Music1969]

Any Pi should work, with 32-bit Buster distro. The 3 will draw the album cover faster.

How is your Pi Zero W mounted to your 7inch Waveshare?

Or it's not mounted?

It would be nice to rig up something where the RPi3 mounts nicely to the back of the display.

Doesn't need to be in a case specifically but something like this:

(but yes, a WiiM one would be awesome - once I get my display set up and send them an email with photo)

 

[Ralph_Cramden]

Not mounted. It’s sitting in a box behind the display, on top of my RME. Hardly ideal, but out of sight. If you have OCD, you’ll hate it, lol.

 

[Music1969]

Not mounted. It’s sitting in a box behind the display, on top of my RME. Hardly ideal, but out of sight. If you have OCD, you’ll hate it, lol.

Not OCD because it's out of sight behind the screen.

It's just a bit better to not have the RPi on the metal rack I have.

I'll just find something non-conductive for the RPi3 to sit on

Or maybe there's a plastic case for the Pi3 with a slot that the ribbon cable can come out of. I'll Google

 

[Music1969]

This should work fine?

 

[Pep2020]

The Wiim home android app update has just happened for me.

 

[Scot_Douglas]

The Wiim home android app update has just happened for me.

To what?

 

[Brantome]

To what?

To include Universal Search (beta)

 

[Pep2020]

To what?

1. New Feature - Universal Search that search across multiple music services (Beta)
2. New Feature - Recently Played that save listening history across multiple music services (Beta)
3. New music service - SoundMachine
4. New Feature - Preferred DNS server 8.8.8.8 option

The above is from the what's new update in Google play. This is just catching up with the iOS release I think