DIY Squeezebox/Slimproto possible?

[eNBeWe]

Hi,

first of all, thanks for documenting this.

I just bought an Arylic Amp, which turns out to be just a relabeled unit from Rakoit (https://www.rakoit.com/product/wireless-audio-board-2-1-amp/). I played around a bit with it and in general it works fine, but the proprietary software is kind of a bummer to me.
And when using it through DLNA with Music Assistant there is quite some delay between pressing play and the actual playback.

At the moment my favorite approach would be building a kind of DIY Squeezebox from this amp. How "mature"/usable is the OpenWRT approach for actual audio usage? Would I need to do much more than flashing OpenWRT and installing squeezelite in that? (There seems to be a squeezelite package for OpenWRT).

[hn]

I‘m using the device with Airplay and MPD without any problems. I‘m using it for low prio background music, so this is not some fancy schmancy HiFi test environment.

System uptime is 50+ days now. In the beginning I experienced spurious system resets when playing SSL streams, they overload the CPU.

squeezelite seems not to have many dependencies so there is a good chance that it fits into flash (opkg install …).

You can test the system (without flashing), see „Testing“ section of the readme.

[eNBeWe]

Okay, following your comment I wanted to try around with the custom firmware.
But I am having trouble getting the serial connection running.
I soldered RX/TX to the two pads next to the antenna and ground to the pin. But I have absolutely no data received on my serial adapter. Am I doing something wrong? Is there some trick that I missed?

[hn]

• Try swapping RX/TX wires.
• What's the voltage between GND and TX (A31 side), it naturally fluctuates between 0V and 5V (with a multimeter you probably see 5V).
• Which terminal program your're using, is it set up correctly?

[eNBeWe]

I made a bit of progress.
The A31 module that was in the amp I either broke or it is weird. I ripped off one of the pads and had to solder to the trace on the pcb. But I still get no data and both wires are at no significant voltage during operation.
I bought a second module which is actually talking to me, but at 3.3 volts.
The partition layout seems to be different and the software is kind of broken. I don't get a u-boot but some busybox after boot. I didn't get it flashed yet. I suspect it is a fake chip.

[hn]

Thanks for reporting. As I only own exactly one A31 module, I cannot rule out the possibility that there are several hardware versions. That would be a bit strange, because the module is labeled with version “V04”.

Can you please post PCB photos of your modules. Do they differ visually?

Please also post boot logs. Since Busybox is not a boot loader, there must be some piece of software for system startup. It cannot be ruled out that the bootloader uses a different baud rate. Try to vary the baud rate if necessary.

[whiney1]

did you get any further with this @eNBeWe? I've got the same 2.1 amp, and also have no meaningful voltage on the Tx/Rx pins during operation
broadly trying to get the Linkplay Spotify streaming to be of a higher quality (no setting option in the 4stream app), but would be cool to flash custom software on the Linkplay too

[hn]

I ordered a second module a few days ago. I ordered a second module a few days ago. This will likely give me the possibility to perform further tests, e.g. flash @eNBeWe 's dump and maybe fix U-Boot. This will take some time.

@whiney1 Maybe you could dump U-Boot/firmware of your module (via cmdline from within the running system).

[whiney1]

I'm not sure how to do that? I can't connect via serialn no voltage. maybe I am missing something?
thank you for your effort though @hn

[hn]

You can log in via network by enabling telnet (see one of the links here) and dump firmware, maybe @eNBeWe can help you how he transfered the files (or try this method).

[whiney1]

got as far as this link with telnet instructions, but i get 'unknown command' when I try it (other HTTP API commands work)

saw this link as well but it's getting beyond my capabilities/desire to mess with my only board