The Sonos Brexit and pragmatic ways past it - ADVANCED APPROACHES



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Wish a Mac guru could help out here!

Userlevel 6
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… and listen-again (Book at Bedtime first broadcast at 22:45 on Monday 3 Feb on Radio 4): - as seen via the Sonos PC controller

 

 

I have a Echo Show 5 wired to Line in Jacks of a Connect Amp; and it shows artwork for all music played from Amazon and Apple Music.

In my NAS, all my CDs are ripped in folders, that also has the album art as a folder.jpg named jpeg. Plus there are iTunes downloads where the album art is embedded into every track’s data. When I play from the NAS via Sonos, I can see album art for both on my Sonos controller apps.

Does anyone know a way for the Echo Show to first access or be supplied music from the NAS, and will it then show album art? Even if that way involves kit with open circuitboards - as long as I don't have to use a soldering iron:-).

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Congrats!

Sadly it won’t work for grouped echos - an Amazon problem, apparently.

A pi solution would likely be easier to set-up (with some finnicking about - but the advantage is that’s there lots of help available).

A low-cost option would be a rasberry pi 3b+  - the newer pi 4 is probably overkill

ps: my O2 Joggler project is continuing … updated pics soon.

And now my posts here are getting red flagged for moderation….

A technical question in it by the way, not even a whiff of being a rant.

 

Sadly it won’t work for grouped echos - an Amazon problem, apparently.

 

But it will work for Sonos multiroom activated via Line In - so all that will be missing is album art in more than one location. And that multi room will also work in one Sonos system as long as the hardware works.

And now my posts here are getting red flagged for moderation….

A technical question in it by the way, not even a whiff of being a rant.

That’s happened to me in the past a fair number of times when I’ve had a large quote history included with lots of interjection etc… sometimes also when I edit quickly in succession as well. May well just be the spam filter getting tripped for some reason.

I will try resending:

I have a Echo Show 5 wired to Line in Jacks of a Connect Amp; and it shows artwork for all music played from Amazon and Apple Music.
In my NAS, all my CDs are ripped in folders, that also has the album art as a folder.jpg named jpeg. Plus there are iTunes downloads where the album art is embedded into every track’s data. When I play from the NAS via Sonos, I can see album art for both on my Sonos controller apps.
Does anyone know a way for the Echo Show to first access or be supplied music from the NAS, and will it then show album art? Even if that way involves kit with open circuitboards - as long as I don't have to use a soldering iron:-).

 

In the past, mine have usually been lost in the void - perfectly acceptable ones.

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It happens sometimes. The filter doesn’t make any decisions based on users and automatically flags content based on past spam posts. I’ve restored yours already.

@Ryan S : Thanks for the prompt action.

Userlevel 6
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I have a Echo Show 5 wired to Line in Jacks of a Connect Amp; and it shows artwork for all music played from Amazon and Apple Music.

In my NAS, all my CDs are ripped in folders, that also has the album art as a folder.jpg named jpeg. Plus there are iTunes downloads where the album art is embedded into every track’s data. When I play from the NAS via Sonos, I can see album art for both on my Sonos controller apps.

Does anyone know a way for the Echo Show to first access or be supplied music from the NAS, and will it then show album art? Even if that way involves kit with open circuitboards - as long as I don't have to use a soldering iron:-).

The MyMedia for Alexa skill will access your NAS.  You need to run a small support program on your network somewhere to index the files. 

See  

https://www.mymediaalexa.com/

https://forum.bizmodeller.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3805

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I will try resending:

I have a Echo Show 5 wired to Line in Jacks of a Connect Amp; and it shows artwork for all music played from Amazon and Apple Music.
In my NAS, all my CDs are ripped in folders, that also has the album art as a folder.jpg named jpeg. Plus there are iTunes downloads where the album art is embedded into every track’s data. When I play from the NAS via Sonos, I can see album art for both on my Sonos controller apps.
Does anyone know a way for the Echo Show to first access or be supplied music from the NAS, and will it then show album art? Even if that way involves kit with open circuitboards - as long as I don't have to use a soldering iron:-).

 

I replied but the post got red-flagged ….  grrrrrr.

@castalla Question re my mediaalexa - if the music is on a NAS, and I don't want my computer to be serving the music, how do I use this? 

If yes, will it show artwork on Show while streaming from the NAS?

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@castalla Question re my mediaalexa - if the music is on a NAS, and I don't want my computer to be serving the music, how do I use this? 

If yes, will it show artwork on Show while streaming from the NAS?

Not sure I understand …

You have to run a small mymedia program on a PC, Pi, or some NAS (which have Docker).  This will index your music files.  It also acts as a dashboard to mymedia:

I’ll take a photo of the echo playing an album and post here later.

@castalla : you have to remember that you are talking someone only superficially knowing these things! What is the meaning of a NAS having Docker? If it has one, can the my media program sit on and operate on the NAS contents?

What if the NAS does not have Docker, whatever that is, but the music files are on the NAS? Where will the my media program then sit?

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Success!!! thanks largely to @castalla - all I did was not give up:-). Highly appreciated, the day into one long night effort.

So now, via the mymedia solution, I have my 19637 NAS tracks made available for the first time to Echos via voice command play, with album art where the Echo Show 5 is present. And wired as it is to the Line In of the Connect Amp, this can continue until the Sonos hardware dies. This is something I ended up exploring only because of the Sonos legacy event and will give the NAS a new lease of life; NAS supplied playlists also won't miss volume normalisation as much as streaming service often do. So, a plus for the Sonos decision in an unexpected way.

At USD 5 a year, it is a bargain, this solution.

I have to admit it took quite some playing around to get it to work, and I can't recollect all I did in the process to various settings. It will mean leaving the Mac out of sleep mode when the music is playing, but will not need any other interaction with it for music to play. At some time I will see if I use this enough to justify a leap into the unknown that is the Raspberry to take the Mac out of the loop completely.

What remains to be seen is what happens if two Echo Shows are grouped, wired to Sonos Line In jacks, and one is asked to start playing from the NAS - will the other one also show artwork? And more important, before the artwork question - will two Echos playing in multi group mode play this source? I have my doubts. Even so, for little money, this is a good solution for single zone play.

I will leave with a picture, of Echo Show 5 playing an album from the NAS, with album art, commanded to start play via voice command, through Sonos Line In. A very neat solution that needs Sonos for just amplification.

 

Unplug your Internet connection and see what happens. I bet it won’t be pretty.

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Okay - I don’t understand Docker use myself so I can’t be much help!

The easiest way to try it out would be to try it out - I think there’s a limited free trial period.  If you have a Windows or Mac PC then you can install the mymedia program on that.   

Here’s a link which explains how to integrate your NAS for indexing:

https://forum.bizmodeller.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3805

 

ps: I’ll get a pic of the echo show later this afternoon.

@arcadelt : Of course it won’t be pretty, the indexed playlists are in the cloud, it is just the music that is local.

It also won't be pretty if I unplug the mains, so I fail to see your point. My internet provider isn't talking of any event in May 2020.