An Alternative to Raspberry Pi for LMS (now called Lyrion)

Recently I came across this post in the Slimdevices forums about a cheap little server box called the Inovato Quadra. 

Installing the Squeezelite and Lyrion/LMS software

Note: These instructions are for a "headless" installation. They do not include WIFI setup and assume you can connect a Quadra directly to a router via Ethernet.

Connect the Quadra to your router with an Ethernet cable. Plug the Quadra power adapter in and wait for the blue light. Check the router to see the DHCP address that was assigned. Make this a reserved address in the router's IP table.

Connect to the Quadra via SSH at the assigned IP address from a computer using a terminal emulator. This will ensure connectivity over your local LAN. The initial password is "1n0v@t0". Once logged in, change the password to something better, using the passwd command.

Setting up Squeezlite

Install Squeezelite:

quadra@inovato:~$ sudo apt install squeezelite

The Squeezelite install should complete without errors.

Setting up a USB DAC

The next step is to configure Squeezelite to use an external USB DAC. The default for the Quadra is to use HDMI, since it is a television accessory. You can use the HDMI audio with a splitter, but better sound will be obtained with a decent USB DAC.

Plug in the DAC to the rear USB port and run the following command:

$ /usr/bin/squeezelite -l

This should result in an output resembling the following:

Output devices:

  null                           - Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)

  default                        - Playback/recording through the PulseAudio sound server

  lavrate                        - Rate Converter Plugin Using Libav/FFmpeg Library

  samplerate                     - Rate Converter Plugin Using Samplerate Library

  speexrate                      - Rate Converter Plugin Using Speex Resampler

  jack                           - JACK Audio Connection Kit

  oss                            - Open Sound System

  pulse                          - PulseAudio Sound Server

  upmix                          - Plugin for channel upmix (4,6,8)

  vdownmix                       - Plugin for channel downmix (stereo) with a simple spacialization

  hw:CARD=sun9ihdmi,DEV=0        - sun9i-hdmi, SUN9I-HDMI PCM i2s-hifi-0 - Direct hardware device without any conversions

  plughw:CARD=sun9ihdmi,DEV=0    - sun9i-hdmi, SUN9I-HDMI PCM i2s-hifi-0 - Hardware device with all software conversions

  sysdefault:CARD=sun9ihdmi      - sun9i-hdmi, SUN9I-HDMI PCM i2s-hifi-0 - Default Audio Device

  dmix:CARD=sun9ihdmi,DEV=0      - sun9i-hdmi, SUN9I-HDMI PCM i2s-hifi-0 - Direct sample mixing device

  usbstream:CARD=sun9ihdmi       - sun9i-hdmi - USB Stream Output

  hw:CARD=D10s,DEV=0             - D10s, USB Audio - Direct hardware device without any conversions

  plughw:CARD=D10s,DEV=0         - D10s, USB Audio - Hardware device with all software conversions

  sysdefault:CARD=D10s           - D10s, USB Audio - Default Audio Device

  front:CARD=D10s,DEV=0          - D10s, USB Audio - Front output / input

  surround21:CARD=D10s,DEV=0     - D10s, USB Audio - 2.1 Surround output to Front and Subwoofer speakers

  surround40:CARD=D10s,DEV=0     - D10s, USB Audio - 4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers

  surround41:CARD=D10s,DEV=0     - D10s, USB Audio - 4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers

  surround50:CARD=D10s,DEV=0     - D10s, USB Audio - 5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers

  surround51:CARD=D10s,DEV=0     - D10s, USB Audio - 5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers

  surround71:CARD=D10s,DEV=0     - D10s, USB Audio - 7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers

  iec958:CARD=D10s,DEV=0         - D10s, USB Audio - IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output

  dmix:CARD=D10s,DEV=0           - D10s, USB Audio - Direct sample mixing device

  usbstream:CARD=D10s            - D10s - USB Stream Output

In this example, the line of interest is:

"hw:CARD=D10s, DEV=0          - D10s, USB Audio - Direct hardware device without any conversions". 

Your USB sound device will be different unless you are using the same DAC.

Edit the Squeezelite default config file:

sudo nano /etc/default/squeezelite

Add this line to the file (adjusting for your particular device):

SL_SOUNDCARD="hw:CARD=D10s,DEV=0"

NOTE: I have found that software updates may wipe out this setting, effectively disabling the output device! If your streamer stops playing, check this entry!

Save the file, exit, and reboot the Quadra. At this point, the player software should function. If you have an external LMS server on your network, the player should automatically be visible to the server. If you have not yet set up an LMS server and want to install it on the same Quadra (or a separate Quadra), follow the steps in the next section.

Setting up Lyrion Media Server (headless)

In preparation for Lyrion Media Server installation, populate a USB flash drive with music library files on a computer. The flash drive should be formatted with FAT32 (this is preferred but VFAT works as well),. Insert the drive into a USB slot on the Quadra. Connect the Quadra to an ethernet router or hub - these instructions do not cover getting WiFi to work, although that is certainly possible either through the Quatra desktop GUI (with a monitor and keyboard connected) or configuring the WiFi supplicant files via SSH.

Reboot the Quadra using:

quadra@inovato:~$ sudo reboot

Once the reboot is finished, login again and find the UUID of the flash drive:

quadra@inovato:~$ sudo blkid

The output will resemble:

/dev/mmcblk2p1: UUID="0d670df7-8023-43f0-b38f-454f1441f3f7" BLOCK_SIZE="4096" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="a65f4efe-01"

/dev/zram0: UUID="415a7703-41e9-4fcb-b290-dba3228e8ed8" TYPE="swap"

/dev/zram1: LABEL="log2ram" UUID="a24e5192-ec3c-42d0-95eb-34ef5ff33622" BLOCK_SIZE="4096" TYPE="ext4"

/dev/sda1: LABEL_FATBOOT="EFI" LABEL="EFI" UUID="67E3-17ED" BLOCK_SIZE="512" TYPE="vfat" PARTLABEL="EFI System Partition" PARTUUID="e6d77340-19cb-4dc9-9635-611dbf500733"

/dev/sda2: LABEL_FATBOOT="CRUISER" LABEL="CRUISER" UUID="8A5F-1220" BLOCK_SIZE="512" TYPE="vfat" PARTUUID="a68fd920-adce-47ba-8124-cac7b996c448"

In this example, the flash drive is "/dev/sda2". The label is "CRUISER" and the UUID is "8A5F-1220"

Make an entry for sda2 (or whatever your drive ID happens to be) in the /mnt folder:

quadra@inovato:~$ sudo mkdir /mnt/sda2

Then edit the fstab file :

sudo nano /etc/fstab

Add the following as the last line in the file (using your unique UUID and drive name) - be sure to use tabs, not spaces:

UUID=8A5F-1220          /mnt/sda2  vfat  defaults,auto,users,rw,nofail,noatime        0  0

Note: make sure you use the correct file system type as specified in the blkid output - in this case vfat.

Save the file and reboot.

Install Logitech Media Server. Find the latest deb ARM install package here:

https://lyrion.org/downloads .

Download the ARM deb file using wget and by pasting the link (this is an example - the actual file name may be different):

quadra@inovato:~$ sudo wget https://downloads.slimdevices.com/nightly/8.3/lms/1fc6a152c41af651d592bca6d553f545217047fd/logitechmediaserver_8.3.1~1669673720_arm.deb

After the download messages indicate success, check that the file is present in your home directory:

quadra@inovato:~$ ls

The result should be something like:

Desktop  Documents  Downloads  logitechmediaserver_8.4.0~1669875672_arm.deb  Music  pi-apps  Pictures  Public  Templates  Videos

Unpack and install the package - copy and paste the exact file name shown in the directory:

quadra@inovato:~$ sudo dpkg -i logitechmediaserver_8.3.1~1669673720_arm.deb

This may take a few minutes.

The package will install with errors because perl is not installed yet. Install perl as follows:

quadra@inovato:~$ sudo apt install libcrypt-openssl-rsa-perl

This should run with a suggestion to fix the install, which is required:

quadra@inovato:~$  sudo apt --fix-broken install

Answer "Y" to the question about continuation. Installation should complete with the fixes applied.

At this point, Lyrion Media Server (LMS) should be running. Point a browser to the IP address or network name of the Quadra combined with port number 9000. The LMS webpage should display. 

LMS will be in setup mode. Skip the invitation to log into mysqueezebox.com (note that this will be removed in an upcoming version of Lyrion). LMS must then be pointed to the mount point for the flash drive holding the music library. In the folder list, select /mnt/sda2 (or other name specific to your case) for both the music and the playlist locations and click finish.

Check that LMS "sees" a running Squeezelite player - look at the upper right on the LMS web page - the default name will be "Inovato" if you installed Squeezlite described in the other post.

Enter LMS settings. Initiate a scan of the library. Once complete, check that LMS sees all the content on the flash drive (albums, artists, etc.).

At this point, the combined Squeezelite/LMS package should function correctly. The LMS server and player(s) can be controlled by external devices running software such as iPeng or a browser pointed to the Quadra. It also works well with the "Material Skin" plugin (which must be selected in the plugin tab in LMS settings).

One potential issue for removable USB drives is that I could not get them to auto-mount. This would make it difficult to build a music server for other people to use or to install new USB drives with music libraries. Various web sources indicate that the most up-to-date solution for Debian is to use udisks2:

apt install udisks2

I was not sure this solved the issue, so I also installed autofs and usbmount, which together seemed to solve the mount problem:

sudo apt-get install usbmount

sudo apt install autofs

Note: the latest Inovato software appears to have solved this issue because my latest attempt at building an LMS server (see below) works fine - the USB drive is mounted after a reboot, so skip the last part.

T95 Max Experiments

As mentioned above, I also got a "T95 Max" TV box from Amazon. It is pretty generic with no links to support or downloads for re-flashing. But it was only $27 shipped so an inexpensive sandbox. This is just one of dozens of Chinese TV boxes, most of which run Android OS and have an ARM chip inside. The user guide is written in broken English and is not of much use. The molded plastic case is rather nicely done and has a quality feel. This box has some advantages over the Inovato Quadra: it comes with an IR remote and has TOSlink output.

These are rather curious devices. If you own a smart TV or an older dumb TV and added an Amazon Fire TV or a Roku device, these are really superfluous. I think the numerous Chinese shops making these (and they seem to be near clones of each other) will soon cease production for that reason. Unless - there is something more malevolent going on - see my comment above about potential malicious software being pre-installed on these devices. Could they be Trojan Horse devices waiting for a signal from state-sponsored bad actors? For safety's sake, don't connect them to your network until you boot up another distro.

I did find this link which may or may not work for re-flashing this particular box back to its factory Android OS: https://chinagadgetsreviews.com/download-android-pie-9-stock-firmware-for-sunvell-t95-max-tv-box.html

The Armbian folks have pretty much given up trying to support all the variations of these devices, so people who want to try it are on their own. 

After verifying the box works with a TV connected via HDMI, the next step was to investigate whether the box could boot the Inovato distribution. According to some posts in their forum, if an HDMI monitor is connected, the box will attempt to boot from the SD card slot. If no monitor is connected, it will attempt to flash internal memory from the card (assuming it has an image). Also in that post is a suggestion to override this behavior by editing a file to always boot from SD card regardless of the presence of a monitor. 

It turns out that this particular box will only boot from the SD card (no monitor attached) and not perform a flash operation with the Inovato firmware on an SD card. The manual (such as it is) that came with the T95 says to use the toothpick method to flash. 

This link on the Inovato site has some details for getting the Quadra firmware flashed on T95 devices: https://www.inovato.com/article/install

Other posts regarding generic boxes suggest the "toothpick" multiboot method: inside the AV port there is a switch that can be depressed with a toothpick or similar tool. The switch must be held down while applying power, at which time it will try to flash from the SD card. 

Another possibility is to install a version of Armbian. This link has a guide to installing: https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_Getting-Started/#legacy-or-current

They recommend that if the SD card has been used previously, a complete factory format should be done using this tool: https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter/ . This is the "official" formatter recommended by SDcard.org. An overwrite format on a 128GB card took about 12 minutes on my Macbook Pro.

The Armbian downloads are here: https://www.armbian.com/uefi-arm64/. You can choose between a CLI or desktop versions (CLI is much smaller).

So far, I have not been successful in flashing the internal memory, but it will boot the Inovato code OK from SD card. I was able to install Squeezelite and get it to output to a USB DAC. However, I had trouble getting the TOSlink output to function correctly. I tested it with the optical input on my Edifier speakers, but got a weird half-speed playback effect, indicating a lack of synchronization or the wrong sample rate. More troubleshooting will be required. 

Another low-impact, low-cost way of connecting to an external sound system would be to use Bluetooth, which I may try soon, but Bluetooth audio does not really interest me.

I have tried an Armbian distro variant created by a coder named "awawa". His repo is here: https://github.com/awawa-dev/build and he has a pre-built image available. This boots and runs OK from SD and seems tailored to this specific T95 box. He claims to have fixed the flashing issue, but I have not had time to check it out.

Update (Sept 2023):

 I decided to try a T95 Max box as strictly an LMS server on my main home network. I used the procedure documented above (minus the Squeezelite part). It boots the Inovato/Armbian OS from an SD card and I installed a USB stick with all my albums loaded - I removed this from my most recent streamer project and removed the LMS software from that box so that it would have less load on it. It now just runs piCorePlayer with Squeezelite and connects to the T95 box via WiFi. The T95 is hard-wired to my main router with Ethernet so is pretty fast streaming over the internet (mainly Qobuz). I also have it controlling my older streamer and that works fine as well. I'll give this setup a few months to see how stable it is.

I was experiencing occasional stutters when streaming hires Qobuz music, but removing LMS from the boxes cured that. Since my streamer boxes are using Raspberry Pi 3Bs, they are a little constrained in terms of what the USB ports can handle, so it seems to be a good solution. Plus, having a media server costing less than $30 is very satisfying.

Update to the Update  (October 2023)

After almost a month of running LMS, the T95 box became unresponsive. I could SSH into the server, but when I did a df command, I noticed that the root directory,  /, was 100% full. Not good. So that appeared to be the problem. Since resizing the root directory on a running Linux instance is not possible, the easiest thing to do was to re-flash the SD card with the Inovato image and re-install LMS.

A fresh install revealed another issue - the root directory was already 96% full, so it was apparent that the Inovato distro had a lot of excess baggage. This was a surprise to me.

This was using a 32GB SD card. Perhaps the situation would be tolerable with, say, a 64GB card, but I did not have one handy, so I decided to troubleshoot the issue.

One quick way to regain some disk space is to do an "apt clean" command, which throws out old Linux packages that updates have left on the disk. However, this only got back a few percent.

While I was futzing around with Linux disk usage, I came across a great little utility called ncdu. It needs to be installed with an apt-get and you can invoke it thusly:

sudo ncdu -x /

This gives you a sort of graphical (but in a character terminal sense) view of all your directories sorted by size. You can drill down into any of them recursively and see what is chewing up your disk usage. I could see stuff like X11 and locales were huge users of space.

The next step was to eliminate the X11 bloat, since I was running the little box headless, I did not need a graphical interface. The magic incantation was:

sudo apt-get purge libx11.* libqt.*

This removes almost everything concerning X11 and results in significant reclaimed disk space. It also removes GUI-related packages such as Firefox.

I also did a

sudo dpkg-reconfigure localepurge

This command allows you to remove all locales other than your own. Since there are many locales available in Linux (like every country on earth), each with its own language set, this saves a lot of space. I followed these up with a few apt clean commands.

At this point, the root directory was down to a more reasonable 71%. I will keep monitoring this over the next several months to see if it creeps up again. I may turn off automatic updates as well.

I may ping the Inovato support folks about their disk partitioning assumptions since a 32GB SD card should be adequate, but clearly, they need to allocate more of the disk to the root directory. 

As with all things Linux (or any other OS) YMMV.