New user, looking for discussion on direct scan library vs DLNA

[moodeblue]

Hello All, I'm moodeblue and I've just got moode audio up and running on a RPI4.  So far so good, my initial goal was to have a touchscreen "jukebox" (raspberry pi with touchscreen 7") that friends could walk up to in my pool room and select different songs from my library and add them to a queue.  

I have the library directly accessing my NAS media/music folder which is split into sub folders for artists, compilations, soundtracks, etc.

I was also reading that there is uPnP/DLNA functionality that could access my jellyfin server (set up on the same NAS, accessing the media folder).  I opted against using this feature as I came across some discussion about album art not showing up unless it was embedded, and about duplicate entries in the tree structure.  Admittedly some of what I was reading was a bit foreign to me, but I believe I understood it well enough to decide to access my NAS directly without using jellyfin as a library source.

But it got me to thinking...so I'm interested in some discussion or comments on the advantages and disadvantages of directly accessing the same NAS folder and scanning vs setting the library up to use jellyfin (or any media server for anyone else curious).

Are there risks with album art when two separate applications are monitoring the same folder structure?
Are there advantages to having the moode application access the media server instead of directly accessing the source files?  
Does the library update better when using a media server or does it still need to rescan the entire library in either case?  

These are just some of the questions that have come to mind and I'm interested to hear other's thoughts on the matter, or examples of how you have your local file libraries set up and what works good for you.

Cheers everyone and thanks for your replies!

[Tim Curtis]

If you are going to use a locally attached touch screen I'd suggest getting a decent sized one for example the 10.1" WINAXIT. You and your guests will have a much better experience :-) https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1...gKNmvD_BwE

As far as the Library goes, if your collection is tagged then just access it directly by creating a Remote NAS Source in moode Library Config. Then you just use moOde WebUI to access it.

The UPnP renderer in moode only provides the "media renderer" function in a UPnP system. That means that you would need to use some other app i.e., a UPnP Control Point like Linn Kazoo etc to provide the player UI.

Moode also provides a DLNA media server that can be accessed by the above mentioned UPnP Control Points.

[moodeblue]

If you are going to use a locally attached touch screen I'd suggest getting a decent sized one for example the 10.1" WINAXIT. You and your guests will have a much better experience :-) https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1...gKNmvD_BwE

Great tip, that's a really nice and compact looking one. My 7" screen was bought just as kind of a proof of concept and I had almost given up trying to get jellyfin media player to run natively on a raspberry pi as all the ones I could find either don't work, or don't have ARM64 source code anymore. I decided to give one last look at some other things and came upon moode after a horrible experience with jukeblaster (maybe it works good, but my library is very large, 80k+ songs so it just crawled and became unresponsive too often and the support seems to be limited since it's just one guy left answering forum questions). Moode so far handles everything well and I've got the entire system running on standard POE with no fan (though it does run at 71degC when being used). I wonder if this 10.1" screen could run on the same, I might try it and if it doesn't work maybe I will try a POE+ hat and see how it goes. I was already looking at trying to get a 15" touch monitor from a laptop or something and see if I could get that to work now that I have moode up and going.

As far as the Library goes, if your collection is tagged then just access it directly by creating a Remote NAS Source in moode Library Config. Then you just use moOde WebUI to access it.

Thank you for this, it sounds like I probably went the correct route and everything is working fine so I will just stop thinking about this now.

[Tim Curtis]

I have that screen and it works perfectly with a pi4. It uses the standard HDMI interface instead of DSI so you could either mount the Pi right on the back of it or have it be separate. The Touch functionality is via a USB cable. Brightness is controlled by a physical side knob on the device and it also has tiny speakers that you can attach in case you want to hear tiny sound from HDMI, lol.

What audio device are you using?

[moodeblue]

I have that screen and it works perfectly with a pi4. It uses the standard HDMI interface instead of DSI so you could either mount the Pi right on the back of it or have it be separate.

Yeah I really like the little adapter jumpers, very clean, I am going to order one of these for sure.

The Touch functionality is via a USB cable. Brightness is controlled by a physical side knob on the device and it also has tiny speakers that you can attach in case you want to hear tiny sound from HDMI, lol.

It looks like the touch and power are both supplied via the USB 3.0 port so this may very well still run on a POE hat, fingers crossed. I will likely forego the speakers lmao

What audio device are you using?

I am using bluetooth to send to my amp on the other side of the room. My pool room has finished ceilings and I can't find a good way to get a cable to where I have my speakers and amp and the little bar area where I have the interface. For listening to tunes while shooting pool this works absolutely awesome.

[Tim Curtis]

I have that screen and it works perfectly with a pi4. It uses the standard HDMI interface instead of DSI so you could either mount the Pi right on the back of it or have it be separate.

Yeah I really like the little adapter jumpers, very clean, I am going to order one of these for sure.

The Touch functionality is via a USB cable. Brightness is controlled by a physical side knob on the device and it also has tiny speakers that you can attach in case you want to hear tiny sound from HDMI, lol.

It looks like the touch and power are both supplied via the USB 3.0 port so this may very well still run on a POE hat, fingers crossed.  I will likely forego the speakers lmao

What audio device are you using?

I am using bluetooth to send to my amp on the other side of the room.  My pool room has finished ceilings and I can't find a good way to get a cable to where I have my speakers and amp and the little bar area where I have the interface.  For listening to tunes while shooting pool this works absolutely awesome.

Thats a cool setup.

[moodeblue]

Just wanted to pop back in here and say thanks to the team for creating this piece of software! I had a few friends over this weekend and they were able to add songs to the cue and search the library and all commented on how cool it was to have a touch device to browse tunes on! Kudos to everyone! I've just ordered the 10.1" screen mentioned above and once I get that installed I'm gonna be elated.

[Tim Curtis]

Thats cool :-)

[moodeblue]

Thats cool :-)

Received the Wimaxit 10.1 screen after some shipping delay oh yeah, it's a big improvement over the 7", excellent advice, thank you.

After playing around I am wondering about the following functionality:

I have my library on a NAS, so when touching the album cover it first brings me to a menu that lists 4 options: NAS, SDCARD, Default Playlist, Favorites.  Then when I touch NAS, a single menu item for moodepi and then my network music folder.  Since I only have the one library which itself is split into 5 sections, artists, top100s, comps, soundtracks, namethissong. is there a way to change the path when I touch the album cover from the main screen to jump directly to /NAS/moodepi and bypass the other default options?  i thought maybe this path is defined in a config file somewhere.  Or maybe just deleting the other mountpoints in /mnt (I see NAS, SDCARD, and NVME) and putting in my own custom ones for each sub-library I have?  Does touching the album cover just then list all the mountpoints available in /mnt that have content plus the default playlist and favorites?  My goal is to touch the album cover and be presented with my library folders immediately without browsing down a couple of directories first.  Let me know if that makes sense what I'm asking, thank you.

Much appreciated for any response or advice, thanks!

[Tim Curtis]

The root page in Folder view shows the root folders containing music including NAS, SDCARD, NVME, USB and then all Playlists.

Currently there is no setting that filters what folders get displayed on the root page and a page refresh always resets Folder view to the root page.