audio-talk

Is this a Mac laptop?

Nope, bog standard windows 10 icore3 jobbie.... where U have managed to get LMS up&running ( my level, sort of)

Ok, only reason I asked is that I used to be able to write sd cards from my MacBook, and then it started corrupting them (although not permanently trashing them)
I switched to a windows laptop and so far that has been writing them without a problem.
I’ve never managed to corrupt a card by turning off the power to a pi, but probably just lucky.

Ref LMS, I used to run it on my NAS, but that stopped working. So now I have a pi4 in a nice flirc case running picoreplayer in LMS mode, with a Samsung usb3 ssd with all the music on plugged straight into the pi. All sitting in my ‘server cabinet’ (OK cupboard). With hindsight I should have done that from the start.

Sort if what I hope to achieve!

Oops

Sort of what I want to achieve. At the moment I'm wondering how I can install picoreplayer into the pi400. I must have missed something pretty basic.

At the moment you have your pi set up as a Linux computer. There may be a way to run LMS on a Linux computer, but I haven’t done that

Picoreplayer is designed to turn your pi into a dedicated squeezebox or an LMS server or even both. It will no longer be a general purpose Linux computer.

Take the sd card out of the pi and put it somewhere safe. If you want to use your pi (or another pi) as a general purpose Linux computer, just put this sd card back into it.

Take another sd card and burn the picoreplayer image onto it.
Insert that card into your pi, power it up, and follow the instructions from picoreplayer.org to set up LMS

Does that make sense?

Big sense Max. Of all the stuff on the Internet, YouTube and elsewhere no one has said that. 'Funny though I did just what you said and ran the sd card with only picoreplayer on and of course its all command line interface, line after line, reminds me if msdos, which frightened me then and now....OMG.

Tomorrow I'll set up what you have told me, again, and stare at the screen....

many thanks.

Having run the trashed microsd card through Nick's suggestion although I could only go so far it seems enough to make a boot drive and get it running. The other trashed card refuse to do anything other than worry me and my lap top. One day I shall return to it...

Back up and running, this is one of the trashed microsd cards back and all ticketty boo.

The other card remains in the toast category.

I am still reeling with Max's simple explanation that a Rasberry Pi is a lovely little Linux based machine ( and it is) but picoreplayer is not linux based so out with that Os and in with,,,, whatever I have actually already been to. It looks like "command line interface" and that is very difficult, very difficult indeed to me.

but picoreplayer is not linux based

It actually is, its just a bit more dedicated. Linux is the operating system, What most people call the operating system is the user interface. picoreplayer runs on top of Linux.

For example Android phones are running Linux, but with a user interface and set of application programs to make it behave like a phone.

Okay I get that but I hate this problem aka, Pi.

I'm off to bed.

I'm a bit surprised by the command line interface comment. Picoreplayer has had a web interface for ages and doesn't require anything connected to it apart from a network cable to get it going.

Yep, there’s one more cognitive leap you need to make. Forget all about pi’s and picoreplayer for now.
Think about how you control a device like a router.
To talk to a router, you fire up a separate computer and open up a browser. You type in the IP address of your router into the browser on this other pc, and (as long as the pc is on the same network as the router) a web interface appears in the browser of the pc.
The router is a ‘headless’ device, you can only configure it by connecting to it from another computer.

That’s exactly what picoreplayer has done to your pi, it’s made it headless. It’s sitting there waiting for another computer to connect to it from a browser, and when that happens it will present a web interface.

With a router it’s obvious that it’s headless - there’s no where to plug in a monitor. The confusing thing about picoreplayer is that the hardware was a Linux computer 2 minutes ago, and now suddenly it’s a headless device. Just by plugging in a different sd card.

(Actually, as Nick says, picoreplayer is actually running Linux, and probably your router is as well, they’re just headless versions, but hopefully you get the point)

So once you have picoreplayer running, you just need to connect to it from the web browser of any pc on the same network. To keep it simple, connect the picoreplayer to your network using an Ethernet cable.
The last little hurdle is that you need to know the ip address of the picoreplayer. I use a network scanner like iNet.
Browse to the IP address from the pc, and the web interface of picoreplayer should appear in the browser of the pc

A glimmer light! Thanks fir the explanations ( so far)

Onwards! Coffee and breakfast...