I'm really happy to hear anyone still gets milage out of PiMuiscbox. I don't have any usage metrics and as you can imagine I mostly hear from unhappy users, so I do appreciate seeing this. But as you might know the project has not been maintained much for a long time and it's in a poor state. This is arguably unfair on users, especially those "new" users who might struggle with things and end up walking-away from their first foray into the world of Raspberry Pi. So I am thinking of finally making its slow death official and winding the project up. When Wouter first started the project there wasn't much out there but now there are lots of similar projects, as all the recommendations here show. I think this is great.
I've not used Hifiberry OS but I read through the main parts of their code base a while back so I have some idea of it. I like how they are very clear about what software they are building upon but I'd like to see that information on their website, not just github. I also like that they've refrained from using the word "audiophile". That in itself probably saves a load of pointless support issues.
I think their upfront statement regarding support is a good idea:
> Do you need any help? Post your questions in our community area! Note that there is no individual support for HiFiBerryOS. We hope you will understand that we can’t also provide individual support for this free software. Please DO NOT send questions to our support email or our support form. Use the community area for questions.
> Why should you do this? It takes a lot of time to support HiFiBerryOS users. Using the forum ensures that we don’t have to answer the same questions again. Sometimes, also other users can share their own experiences and tips. This helps us to have more time to implement cool new features or fix bugs.
For a time I was foolishly trying to support people across Facebook, Twitter, email, Raspberry Pi forums, and our own community forum. This sucked all the time (and most of the enjoyment) from working on PiMusicbox and has contributed to its demise. I now only (sometimes) support on our community forum but most of our users are not (yet) in a position to help others so I'm not sure it's ever worked very well.
Since hifiberry are a for-profit company pushing this software with their products I hope they are supporting it themselves to some degree on their forum. Otherwise this could result in dumping unnecessary work onto the upstream developers and that wouldn't be helpful.
Edit: on a similar note, I'd also like to see them contribute upstream but it's probably not fair to single hifiberry out over that.
Just wanted to say thanks for all your work on this project. I used PiMusicBox a few years ago and found it to be a very usable. If I remember correctly, the only reason I switched to volumio was because of the snapcast plugin, but I could have easily just not understood a similar option in PiMusicBox.
> I also like that they've refrained from using the word "audiophile".
YES! That word seems to be thrown around a lot as a justification for upcharge and I'm sure you're right about the support issues.
> but I could have easily just not understood a similar option in PiMusicBox
No, you are right, we never had that feature. It would have been the next step if the project was healthy. Or Spotify Connect, of course (although less interesting personally as we'd have to stop using Mopidy).
I had thoughts of a reboot which was much more focused around multi-room (using snapcast or the equally impressive looking SoundSync) but I looked around at Volumio, HiFiberryOS etc and didn't think I'd be bringing anything new to the table so why fragment the space. Perhaps something built around SoundSync would be interesting as that would provide Chromecast support but I am not sure that on it's own is enough. Plus the idea of my USP being something as locked-down as Google's Chromecast is unpleasant.
Also, this might sound bad, but I would like to head away from a project that is too focused on inexperienced users. The support gets too much and you very rarely get any contributions back.
I've not used Hifiberry OS but I read through the main parts of their code base a while back so I have some idea of it. I like how they are very clear about what software they are building upon but I'd like to see that information on their website, not just github. I also like that they've refrained from using the word "audiophile". That in itself probably saves a load of pointless support issues.
I think their upfront statement regarding support is a good idea:
> Do you need any help? Post your questions in our community area! Note that there is no individual support for HiFiBerryOS. We hope you will understand that we can’t also provide individual support for this free software. Please DO NOT send questions to our support email or our support form. Use the community area for questions.
> Why should you do this? It takes a lot of time to support HiFiBerryOS users. Using the forum ensures that we don’t have to answer the same questions again. Sometimes, also other users can share their own experiences and tips. This helps us to have more time to implement cool new features or fix bugs.
For a time I was foolishly trying to support people across Facebook, Twitter, email, Raspberry Pi forums, and our own community forum. This sucked all the time (and most of the enjoyment) from working on PiMusicbox and has contributed to its demise. I now only (sometimes) support on our community forum but most of our users are not (yet) in a position to help others so I'm not sure it's ever worked very well.
Since hifiberry are a for-profit company pushing this software with their products I hope they are supporting it themselves to some degree on their forum. Otherwise this could result in dumping unnecessary work onto the upstream developers and that wouldn't be helpful.
Edit: on a similar note, I'd also like to see them contribute upstream but it's probably not fair to single hifiberry out over that.