It took me a while. And it also took one of my micro-SD cards along with various installs, network wiring configs, a new fancy case and fun, fun, pure listening/audio fun. But before any of that, first things first. I’m finally NAS ready and my R-PI with Hifiberry Amp2 is the bomb! The initial install of OpenMediaVault, which I’m using as my NAS/Share source for my audio library, didn’t actually go all that well. Continuing my tech confusion streak, I made the mistake of tossing the first OMV install on account I found it too complicated. At the least, I wasn’t ready for the OMV interface. So while I proceeded to learn from OMVs website, you know, to get a bit informed about their software and how it works, I re-flashed the SD card back to RasPlex and suddenly the card was broke. At least I think it was broke. It was a 16GB card and after re-flashing it a utility tool informed me it had only 500MB of space. I tried everything. Erase. Partition. Erase and re-format in x-Fat and then in MS-DOS (or what ever’s available via Mac Disk Utility) and nothing happened. There was always only 500MB of space on what was supposed to be a 16GB card. Whaaa? Nomatter. I don’t have time for this. Plus I spent a few hours studying-up on the OMV site and after about two weeks (of casual reading of their doc pages), I was finally ready to give it another go. But then, out of the blue, I decided to support local retailers (as opposed to ordering from you-know-who online retailer from hell!) and jumped on my bike and road off to a local electronic store to buy a new micro-SD card. And get this, dear worst-reader. Would you believe that one of Germania’s largest tech stores doesn’t even carry a micro-SD card smaller than 32GB? Are you serious, I asked one of the store clerks. He informed me that I might have a problem getting such a small card anywhere. Ok. Fine. So I broke down and paid 16,-€ for a 32GB card–4x more capacity than I need for a OMV instal. I biked home, fought with the stupid mass produced packaging to free the card, slid it in the side of my 2015 MacBook Air (i7) and flash, flash, flash. I then proceeded to install the card in the R-PI 3B board. I hooked up ethernet cable and then the 5V 3amp dedicated micro USB power cable. According to OMV one is supposed to be patient as the software goes through the initial install. The readme.txt says I should give it at least forty minutes depending on speed of SD card and internet connection. So I set a timer and went off to be productive elsewhere. After about 36 minutes exactly, I woke up my MacBook Air, searched my network for a new IP address titled “raspberrypi” and… Boom! Long story short. I then hooked up an external 700GB Samsung HDD (which has got to be ten years old; which is also housed in a Icy-Box ext powered case) that has a copy of all my audio files (FLAC and MP3). I set up the network share with Samba and then opened Volumio. Again. Boom! Volumio immediately recognised the share and began indexing my music library. Oddly, Volumio seems to perform better with my music library using a network share. Previously I had the Icy-Box USB drive connected directly to the R-PI’s USB. Although Volumio worked fine with it, there were always hick-ups and duds. My guess is that Volumio wasn’t able to index the directly connected HDD as well as it can when connected by a network share. But that’s just a guess. The thing to remember is that when you have a house full of R-Pi’s, put them to good use. Btw, I’m really digging the R-PI3B+ as my new NAS device. Will be testing it by adding another HDD soon to see how it works as a backup system. And for those interested in how the Hifiberry Amp2 sounds? I’m tickled to-death with it. Together with the R-PI3B it is a fantastic low-cost audio device that delivers incredible audio, especially on high-sounding low-cost speakers like a pair of Pioneer BS22. And btw, even though I have rough beginning with some of this tech-krapp, the end result I’m experiencing is what tech should be all about.
Rant on.
-T
worstwriter 