Cannot Connect to Plexamp running Headless on Raspberry Pi

Plex Labs
1

I have had my Raspberry Pi running a headless plexamp install for a while. A few months ago I stopped being able to connect to it.
I can see it on my network, from Plexamp on my iPhone or iPad, but cannot connect to it.

Interpreting the daemon.log is a little inside baseball for my abilities but I do see the following, repeated numerous times after each reboot, which seems relevant:

Nov 7 16:26:28 raspiaudio upmpdcli[531]: :2:src/mpdcli.cxx:114::MPDCli::openconn: mpd_connection_new failed: Connection refused
Nov 7 16:26:28 raspiaudio upmpdcli[531]: :2:src/main.cxx:640::MPD connection failed

If someone could point me in the right direction, I would appreciate it. Thank you!

2

For more background, here is my plexamp.service file…

[Unit]
Description=Plexamp
After=network.target

[Service]
Environment=“PLUGIN_PATH=/home/pi/plexamp/server/node_modules/treble/build/Release/”
Environment=“LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/pi/plexamp/server/node_modules/treble/build/Release/”
Type=simple
User=pi
ExecStart=/usr/bin/node /home/pi/plexamp/server/server.prod.js
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

If there is other information that would be helpful, let me know!

3

MIne stopped working as well. I believe it stopped with one of the last updates. In previous posts Elan indicated that he and his team are working on bringing back a Raspberry Pi client. It couldn’t happen soon enough as all my players are now not working.

4

Yes, unfortunately something changed in one of the recent PMS updates, and PlexAmp for Raspberry Pi will no longer connect to PMS music libraries.

In my instance, I’m able to select the PlexAmp for RPi in both the PlexAmp for Android player, as well as the Plex Media Server web interface, but the Pi never takes over the stream and eventually both frontends give up.

It’s a shame, because like you I had PlexAmp running quite nicely on the Pi for some time and was able to control it via PlexAmp for Android perfectly. Then… it stopped. That’ll teach me to allow updates to PMS without in depth research.

I’ve opened a thread on this subject, and received absolutely no response from anyone at Plex… just the occasional “me too” from fellow Plex users.

5

Really disappointing, and Elon’s snarky responses to you are just disrespectful.

6
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7

I have been banging my head against getting plexamp to work on my Pi since yesterday.

For context, I’m a competent web developer, so I’ve been really trying to reverse-engineer my way around the current broken state of the beta Plexamp that was posted several years ago.

The first thing I ran into was that the old version of Plexamp required to generate the necessary server.json file could not find my Plex Media Server (which is running the latest version as of this post). However, it at least gave me a token which was enough for me to try to fill in the rest: machineIdentifier and sections which I was able to get through my server’s API using the token.

Indeed, the Plexamp instance running on the pi does announce itself to other Plexamp players on the network, but won’t connect. I think the important bit from the logs is “Error loading media providers from plex.tv…” so I think something about the API Plexamp uses to find servers has changed overall.

I spent a good amount of money on the new Hifiberry DAC for my pi thinking that there’d be a way to use Plexamp headless. I hope I can find another way, short of writing my own client.

8

Try the Logitech media server. There are lots of plugins to get pretty close to what Plex has and there are lots of players like the picore player. People have been asking for a headless version for well over a year here with mostly vague promises that it’s on the list at Plex. I like the Plex interface and overall system better, but the Logitech system still works really well and there are multiple clients to control a headless version. Plus it’s fairly light weight and really stable.

9

Hi all, I think I figured out what specifically has gone wrong. It’s potentially fixable if you’re very savvy, and with a little more community knowledge I might be able to post a general fix. Please see my post from yesterday in another thread on the issue. At any rate I got my brand new instance of plexamp on rpi working yesterday with the adjustments I refer to. Plexamp for Raspberry Pi - How to create a new server.json file now older desktop versions of Plexamp no longer work - #6 by IvanKaramazov

10

You correctly identified the issue. See here for the logic for a fix; happy to provide code changes if that would be helpful: Plexamp for Raspberry Pi - How to create a new server.json file now older desktop versions of Plexamp no longer work - #6 by IvanKaramazov

11

I figured it was something simple like that. I’m not really keen on hacking the code for my plex server, not because I’m not confident (I’m a professional javascript/nodejs developer after all) but because it’s just… meh. In principle.

Right now I’m using UPnP (bubbleupnp, etc.) and the the DLNA option in the Plex server. The only thing that doesn’t work about it is Plex doesn’t let you search via dlna, which is a shame. By the time I go through the trouble of setting up a different dlna indexer, then I’m already most of the way to having to decide whether it’s worth keeping Plex around.

12

Yep, I agree, hacking the code is not a good solution. I too was on the UPnP / DLNA solution, and between the lack of searching and the slow first load in the android app on each listening session, I prefer the plexamp option. If you’re interested, I posted the hacked JS and the explanation here, but I get it if it’s not worth it. GitHub - IvanKaramazov/rpi_plexamp_hack

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