Hello - just curious if there’s a roadmap or even demand for having ESP32 as headless clients for Plexamp. I understand the some want bit-perfect audiophile-quality streams that would require the power of a Raspberry Pi and DAC, but for light usage such as background music around the house, the ESP32s are quite affordable and work well. I can’t be the only one??! Thanks!
no, you are not the only one!
I currently use LMS and squeezelite-ESP32, but I dream of a plexamp-ESP32 too!
It was reported recently that the embedded version of Plexamp was ported to an OrangePi Zero 2W. I think this is the smallest you can get, atm.
I don’t think that the Plexamp code can run in that tiny ESP32. It lacks even enough RAM to have a decent buffer size for audio data – let alone the program code.
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I do agree it would be a lift to rewrite entire code to fit into the space of an ESP32. Being a non-programmer I wouldn’t know the nuances of how Plex vs Squeezelite works but 6+ years ago they were able to pack a network stack, AirPlay and Bluetooth player with display and player controls into an ESP32 with PSRAM.
I don’t want to come across as ungrateful as I really enjoy PlexAmp, but curious what else could be out there.
Oh I’m sure that you can write an audio player for it.
You might even be able to write an audio player which behaves as a Plex client.
But I don’t think that you can use the Plexamp code base. It’s based on React Native. That is a lot of overhead for that tiny micro controller.
And I don’t see a Plex developer starting a completely new code base, to be able to support just one hardware platform.
React Native was chosen because it does allow one to support a multitude of hardware platforms with one code base. Even if that means that it cannot be used on absolutely low-power platforms.
That’s where theoretical and practical possibilities are clashing.
The sink/speaker part for multiroom would likely fit on an ESP32, but with the ~$20 Orange Pi Zero 2W, it’s kind of almost not worth it?
Thanks for that awesome explanation! As much as it’s not the ideal answer some of us were looking for, to put dev money and time to where it would benefit the most.
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