LMS and Chromecast Audio - Success!

mprince

Super Member
I have run a Squeezebox or equivalent (Squeezelite on PC's, Raspberry Pi and now a Pogoplug) for several years now. I picked up a Chromecast Audio when they came out more out of curiosity than anything else. Have enjoyed using it, but always go back to my Pogoplug as I can manage everything from one controller app on my tablet or phone (I got spoiled by the convenience of LMS and the many ways to control it).

Did a bit of searching today and found a solution where I can use my CCA as a device within LMS. I will try to describe it:

1. On the bottom of the LMS plug-in settings page, you can specify specific plug-ins to load, enter the following and press the "Apply" button:
upload_2016-1-1_13-47-53.png

2. Next you will have to go to the bottom of the plug-ins list and select the "Chromecast Bridge" plug in from the section titled "Phillippe's LMS Plugins" (Phillippe is a well-known Squeezebox developer, if you ever have browsed the Slimdevices forums you will see his name often). The plug-in is not visible in my screenshot because I had already selected it. I believe you have to press "Apply" again after you select the plug in:
upload_2016-1-1_13-50-24.png

3. Once the Chromecast Bridge is listed in your list of active plug-ins, you should go into the settings for it.
upload_2016-1-1_14-0-52.png

There will be a warning that there is no config file. Press "generate" to create one. Below is my screen after I did this.
upload_2016-1-1_14-3-7.png

upload_2016-1-1_14-3-44.png
Initially this picked up the other 4 CC's in my house, but not the CCA. I unplugged and replugged the CCA's power cord to reboot it, re-ran the config process, and it showed up. I then deactivated the non-audio Chromecasts simply because I did not want to see them in my list of available players in LMS.

4. That's all I did. Once I closed the settings and refreshed the LMS screen, my CCA shows up as an available player. Pretty cool!

Posting this mostly for those who are fans of the various Squeezebox platforms, hope this helps. I am going to continue playing around with the configuration as I am mostly using the defaults right now, will update this thread as warranted.
 
Cool. Might have to dig out the old NAS with LMS installed just for fun.

Which app do you use to remote control things? I've always found the Logitech app's UI very dated and clunky. Are there better apps for 'droid or iOS?
 
I have two (Android), both cost something like $5 - OrangeSqueeze and Squeeze Commander. I bought SC first, then moved to Orange Squeeze. Both are good.
 
I have two (Android), both cost something like $5 - OrangeSqueeze and Squeeze Commander. I bought SC first, then moved to Orange Squeeze. Both are good.

SqueezeCommander was my favorite for awhile, but the dev hasn't updated it in 4-ish years. Orange Squeeze is really nice, too. My favorite these days is Squeezer, it's a really nice free Squeezebox controller app.
 
Been running since yesterday without issues. I have a couple of hi-res files in my library (96/24), going to play these today to see how the CCA handles them. The room that I have the CCA in has less than great wifi signal strength (I ended up going with wired ethernet on my Pogo's because of this), so far the CCA has been good on the 2.4 gHz band (I also have 5gHz band, but have run into problems with my devices seeing the CC's, even when both bands are under the same SSID).

Update - tried the hi-res on my 2.4gHz band and could not get good results, but when I reset it and went to the 5gHz band it worked. Listening to Carole King's "Tapestry" 96/24 right now...
 
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Thanks for the info. I tried installing the plugins on my Freenas hosted LMS, and it appears to install o.k., but I never get any "generate" button/link on the plugin's setting page. Even though I have "Start the bridge" ticked, it always reports "not running" (after multiple restarts).

Anyone get these going on their NAS?
 
Update - tried the hi-res on my 2.4gHz band and could not get good results, but when I reset it and went to the 5gHz band it worked.

Not well publicized, but Google sells an Ethernet adapter for the CC. Just $15, if memory serves.
 
2016-01-02 07:27:15 Logitech Media Server died. Restarting.
[16-01-02 07:27:21.6822] main::init (368) Starting Logitech Media Server (v7.8.0, 1395409907, Thu Mar 27 13:20:53 PDT 2014) perl 5.010001
[16-01-02 07:27:22.6301] Slim::Networking::UDP::init (39) FATAL: There is already another copy of the Logitech Media Server running on this machine. (Address already in use)
[16-01-02 07:27:22.6325] Log::Log4perl::Logger::and_die (868) Warning: FATAL: There is already another copy of the Logitech Media Server running on this machine. (Address already in use) at /usr/share/squeezeboxserver/lib/Log/Log4perl/Logger.pm line 900
2016-01-02 07:27:22 Logitech Media Server died. Restarting.

Ah, the joys of LMS. ;) Now I'll have to install an ssh client, remote into the NAS, and try to remember how to shut down and restart LMS from the command line, because they didn't provide a simple restart button on the UI. Sigh.
 
2016-01-02 07:27:15 Logitech Media Server died. Restarting.
[16-01-02 07:27:21.6822] main::init (368) Starting Logitech Media Server (v7.8.0, 1395409907, Thu Mar 27 13:20:53 PDT 2014) perl 5.010001
[16-01-02 07:27:22.6301] Slim::Networking::UDP::init (39) FATAL: There is already another copy of the Logitech Media Server running on this machine. (Address already in use)
[16-01-02 07:27:22.6325] Log::Log4perl::Logger::and_die (868) Warning: FATAL: There is already another copy of the Logitech Media Server running on this machine. (Address already in use) at /usr/share/squeezeboxserver/lib/Log/Log4perl/Logger.pm line 900
2016-01-02 07:27:22 Logitech Media Server died. Restarting.

Ah, the joys of LMS. ;) Now I'll have to install an ssh client, remote into the NAS, and try to remember how to shut down and restart LMS from the command line, because they didn't provide a simple restart button on the UI. Sigh.

/etc/init.d/logitechmediaserver stop | start | restart ;) If you're using Chrome, there is an SSH client extension.
 
Ok, JuiceSSH installed, figured out the root login, tried the "nice" shutdown of LMS, which refused to work. Had to kill the process... Finally, CC and CCA's are showing up. Try to play something to them, though, Squeezer never advances past 0:00, LMS player shows stream advancing, but nothing plays.

Oh, and the CC groups, probably the best feature of CCA, don't show up.

Screenshot_2016-01-02-08-36-57.png
 
Enabled his UPNP bridge, which finds all my other toys, but won't play to them, either. Probably a binary incompatibility with the WD Mybooklive?

Screenshot_2016-01-02-09-35-29.png
 
Hmmm...not sure on the NAS, I am running LMS on a Windows 10 desktop computer. There's lots of threads on the plug-in on the Slimdevices forums, and I saw lots of people who had this working with a NAS. I don't think that the UPnP players can be synchronized with Squeezebox/Squeezeplay/Squeezelite players - I did not try that as I normally don't run mine synchronized.

Here is a link to the latest thread from slimdevices that I was looking at yesterday, happy reading :) http://forums.slimdevices.com/showt...te-Chromecast-players-with-LMS-(squeeze2cast)
 
I decided to give one of these devices a try in my living room system, replacing a PogoPlug E02 SqueezeLite/iFi nanoDSD DAC. Well, it took me about 3 hours to get it to the point where it's playing music (for the second time - I had it playing but it quit halfway through an album and I could never get it to finish playing) but I had to remove the original plugin and after I bounced the LMS Service a couple of times it downloaded the latest plugin from the repository. Getting it set up took another couple of bounces of the LMS service before it would see the device and generate a config file. Once I had that I was able to see it in LMS and add titles to the playlist and get them to play from the NAS.

I really like the significantly smaller footprint of this device and the DAC doesn't seem to be all that bad for a self-contained streamer. I am going to try it out with an external DAC that handles optical input but for now I'm content to not futz with it while it's playing music.

I had problems getting it set up on my wifi network which required me to disable the client isolation on the one SSID that had it enabled even though I had tried the SSID that did not have isolation enabled. I have an Ethernet adapter on order and I prefer to use a wired connection for streaming. I use Ethernet over PowerLine and don't have any issues streaming lossless files or high bitrate DSF/DSD and it doesn't impact the bandwidth available to my video streaming devices which use a dedicated 5 GHz SSID.

I'm running the latest 7.9 build on a Windows 10 PC. I do want to experiment to see if this thing will handle DSP using DoP with an appropriate DAC connected now that LMS has support for DSD and DoP. Not to the Chromecast but to the PogoPlug with updated player.

What better way to spend a cold, rainy day than playing with new audio stuff?

Edit:
Arrgh...quit playing halfway through the album. The log seems to point to a loss of connectivity between the server and device.

Bounced the LMS service and connectivity restored, playing again.

Might be time for a finger or two of Bourbon...
 
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Played around for a bit more this afternoon, am currently rendering to Sonos from LMS, but can't get it to render to any Chromecast directly. I can route LMS through BubbleUPnP to the CC's, though, so the UPNP LMS plugin works. Will try restarting everything again in a while...
 
I solved my playing half the album issue. The log repeatedly showed that the connection was being lost from LMS to the player. After futzing with settings in the config file and getting no joy, I decided to pull the wifi off the LMS box and take it back to EoP. I've been running steadily since making that change so something funky when both were on wifi.

I also am able to play DSF and DSD files through the Chromecast device with the new DSDPlayer plugin. It does transcode them to PCM on the fly before shipping the stream off but they do play. Listening to the Allman Brothers Live At The Filmore East SACD rip.

NOW it's time for that Bourbon.
 
Ah, the joys of LMS. ;) Now I'll have to install an ssh client, remote into the NAS, and try to remember how to shut down and restart LMS from the command line

/etc/init.d/logitechmediaserver stop | start | restart

Ok, JuiceSSH installed, figured out the root login, tried the "nice" shutdown of LMS, which refused to work. Had to kill the process... Finally, CC and CCA's are showing up. Try to play something to them, though, Squeezer never advances past 0:00, LMS player shows stream advancing, but nothing plays.

Ah, well, enough "fun". ;) Back to the no-fuss Sonos.

Arrgh...quit playing halfway through the album. The log seems to point to a loss of connectivity between the server and device.

Bounced the LMS service and connectivity restored, playing again.

Might be time for a finger or two of Bourbon...
:rflmao::rockon:
 
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