Whole house replacement project with raspberry pi's.

[Supernova]

Hello,

I thought I'd share my journey and seek advice and recommendations on replacing my whole house entertainment system. I researched various projects including Roon (I really wanted to use this but there were limitations), Volumino and many others. In the end I settled on piCorePlayer. Before starting this project I had no experience with Squeezebox or piCorePlayer, but after testing it out it seemed like the ideal fit. The system I'm replacing is an ELAN Z series whole house system. There are 8 zones with controllers and each will be replaced with a raspberry pi and 7" touch screen.


The ELAN system controllers are connected with CAT5 Ethernet, but with non-standard termination so each one is or will be re-terminated to standard EIA/TIA-568B wiring. These will all be powered by POE and initial testing has been a success.

Many zones consists of multiple speakers connected to a impedance matching volume controller. II intend to keep the volume controllers.

All of the speaker wiring and controller wiring starts in my office and right now I have a giant spaghetti mess.


To reiterate and clarify:

Each Zone will have a Raspverry Pi B+ with 7" touch screen as a controller only.
Each Zone will have a Raspberry Pi B+ and HiFi Berry Dac+ as a streamer only.
They will be connected to two Dayton Audio MA1260a. I chose these amps for cost and auto sensing power on.

Where I could use some suggestion:

I am thinking of mounting the raspberry pi streamers to chassis via a DIN rail, but I am open to suggestions.
I want to replace the multiple speaker connects that are wiring together with a wire-nut with something like a terminal block.





I have installed two flush mount wall units already and I will provide pictures and method shortly.

[Supernova]

Photo Update

Here's some pictures of some progress and wire mess .


Here we have the wire mess. This is how it was when I found it with the audio cables connected to the amps. Otherwise that's it and I want to clean this up in a big way so suggestions or advice welcome.

Here's how they connected the ethernet.



This was my first test. I used a weather plugin for pCP. I was shocked how smooth and fast the interface is.


Here is the first unit installed in-wall. This is our kitchen dining area.




This is a side profile view of the kitchen unit. I actually ave it more flush now. I know the pain needs touch-up but that'll come later .

[Supernova]

Bar installation

Here's the unit I installed last night in our Bar & Media room.



I had widen the cutout and cut through some of the 2x4. Not quite as clean, but touch-up should make it disappear.

I'll upload what the old controllers looked like at some point.


If you're interested in how the units were wall mounted I found a post from a German guy and used his exact method. It works perfectly and the unit holds very well.

Christian Bleser Install

The main difference is I used POE as I didn't want to go wireless.

POE connector:

[Bear]

Cool project.

[Supernova]

Cool project.

Thanks!

So far I'm quite happy with it. I need to order more pi's and still haven't found a chassis to hold my pi's. I plan to use a din and rail system for mounting them.

I was having issues with playlists because Logitech Media Center is a bit difficult to use them. Well someone pointed me towards a plugins called LastMix and it uses LastFM and your library or streaming service to continually add songs related to whatever songs you initially have in a playlist. So pick 1 to 10 different songs and it'll start filling in related continuously. It's pretty cool.

[Bear]

Thanks!

So far I'm quite happy with it. I need to order more pi's and still haven't found a chassis to hold my pi's. I plan to use a din and rail system for mounting them.

I was having issues with playlists because Logitech Media Center is a bit difficult to use them. Well someone pointed me towards a plugins called LastMix and it uses LastFM and your library or streaming service to continually add songs related to whatever songs you initially have in a playlist. So pick 1 to 10 different songs and it'll start filling in related continuously. It's pretty cool.

This is the old Squeezebox server that Logitech quit supporting years ago? Or has someone picked up that torch?

[Kevin P]

I like this! Very nice. Maybe some day I'll put something like this together.

So each zone has 2 Pis? One for the touchscreen and one to stream? Any reason 1 Pi couldn't do both? Just curious.

Could a single streaming Pi handle more than one zone?

What is the touchscreen you used?

What sources do you stream from? Internet? NAS?

[Supernova]

This is the old Squeezebox server that Logitech quit supporting years ago? Or has someone picked up that torch?

Yes. It's a community project now with lots of plugin development. There's even a squeezebox lite etc. The interface I'm using is called Jivelite which can be installed through PCP.

I like this! Very nice. Maybe some day I'll put something like this together.

So each zone has 2 Pis? One for the touchscreen and one to stream? Any reason 1 Pi couldn't do both? Just curious.

Could a single streaming Pi handle more than one zone?

What is the touchscreen you used?

What sources do you stream from? Internet? NAS?

You could absolutely do 1 pi for a zone. Or 1 pi to be your LMS server, interface and streamer. The reason I'm setup this way is because I'm working with a prebuilt system. I have some rooms that have 8 speakers but they're connected to a central location, not where the screen on the wall is installed. I have found additional CAT5 wiring that I could use for RCA, but the runs are very long.

The controllers can work with multiple zones and synchronize them but if you want to use 1 Pi to stream to multiple zones you have to do that through amplification or use a multi channel pi hat. The Dayton amps allow you to have individual zones or 1 to 2 zones that cover all 6 zones, if that makes sense.

So PiCorePlayer can work as a stand along controller; stand alone player; stand alone Logitech Media Server or a combination of any or all of them.

The touchscreen is the official Raspberry Pi touchscreen and it's $60 at most places. There is an official case too which is $15, but if you put on a DAC Hat you'll have to modify it. A DAC Hat is important as it makes a huge difference in sound quality. You can use the PiZero Dac hat but it dosn't come with built in volume control so be aware of this. I use the HiFIBerry Dac + which has built in volume controller so I can use it with ALSA etc. However if you use hardware volume controllers like I do then you don't really need software volume control and the Dayton amp has (what I thought were gain controllers) volume controllers on the back. So you could definitely do it cheaper.

I steam from my library or internet. It supports most services (spotify, tidal, quobuz, pandora etc), but like many players you have to subscribe so I use just internet radio and my library. One cool thing is there is a plugin that uses Last.FM to generate playlists from a list of songs you create and could be just 1 song. It does an excellent job of staying with tunes that sound like or are in the genre of your selection.

It does support NAS etc. Unfortunately the PCP documentation online is lacking but the GUI is self explanatory and has web access. Once it boots it loads everything into memory so you're not hitting your microSD card.

[Supernova]

Also you don't have to use a HAT DAC, you can use a USB DAC of your choice. You can also get a digital out interface DAC and use a DAC that had digital in if USB is not your thing.

[Supernova]

Can anyone recommend a 3U or larger vented chassis or case. I'm going to house a din rail and about 8 or Pi's in it so I need some air flow.

Thanks

Peter

[Scottg]

https://www.protocase.com/products/electronic-enclosures/rackmount.php

[Supernova]

https://www.protocase.com/products/e.../rackmount.php

Thanks for the link very cool. After searching I think it's a bit too rich for my blood. I've seen single jobs range from $150 to $1400, but great if you need a specialized component build. I used modushop for my amp with custom cutouts and I think this would beat it on price, but not on looks.

What I'm thinking of doing is using a PC case and attaching a rail/din within it. It already has cooling I'll just have to come up with a power supply. https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E1681155...82E16811553031

[Kevin P]

Just a heads up for Supernova... I am thinking of using a Pi with the touchscreen to stream music in my home office. I'm going to start a thread in Digital Audio about this. I'm thinking of something like you did, but with just a single Pi that streams music either from my Linux server or from streaming sites like Amazon Prime, Spotify etc.

Just posting this here in case you don't see my thread to chime in.