I am trying to sift through the Kodi doc to determine if it fits my needs but having trouble answering the questions....
Can Kodi run as a headless music server/player running on Ubuntu server?
What capability I want to achieve:
- music repository stored locally on the ubuntu server (option to store music on NAS box, or another PC )
- Clients that can create/manage play lists, control the player, etc. ( clients run on: iphone/ipad, linux, osx, and windows machines)
- Play audio through the audio out port of the ubuntu server (optional to BT transmitter, optional stream to other devices)
Can the above be accomplished with Kodi and/or addins?
Where are docs that discuss how to do this?
Thanks
j
I am vague on if this kind of completely headless use is possible or not too, and know nothing about Linux, but given no one else has answered yet I will say what I know.
I think "headless" use is an aspiration for the future yet to be fully implemented, but can be achieved in certain situations now. There is a whole thread on this topic
https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=212061 Also I know some people have RPi based GUI-less setups as stand alone media players, I hope they will come along and advise.
My family setup is based around a RPi running LibreElec, the TV is connected to it but I do all my music playing (and that is many hours most days) with the TV off. Kodi can be controlled via JSON commands, although I find it easier to do the basic setup etc. via GUI and I'm not sure every function has a JSON command route. But browsing and playback control via Android apps like Yatse or Kore on a phone or tablet, or via Chorus on a web browser works well. Infact Yatse offers better ease of filtering and music selection than Kodi GUI does.
You could look at a client-server setup of Kodi, with MySQL dbs on the server and installing Kodi on each linux, osx or windows client (using remote control apps on the iphone/ipad rather than installing Kodi itself)
Quote:Play audio through the audio out port of the ubuntu server (optional to BT transmitter, optional stream to other devices)
Sorry no idea at all on that.
Hope someone comes along that has done more what you want.
I posted a similar question and got some useful responses here:
https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid...pid2800045
I am still trying to piece a solution together but from the replies, it seems doable.
I read through the thread you referenced. my takeaway is that there is not a clear set of requirements for an all music player/manager that is headless. It feels like this capability is an afterthought, and trying to be woven into the existing Kodie framework that is geared towards video content. It is also bothersome to read how brittle the whole implementation is. Seems to me that the architecture of the system needs to be rethought as opposed to throwing the latest development tools at it to see what works (fix one problem, make two?)
There is another effort called music player daemon (MPD) that seems to have a solution more along the lines I am looking for (at least for music).
I am in the process of trying out various solutions on virtual box implementations but finding out that is raising a whole nother set of 'challenges.'
(2018-12-15, 18:47)three_jeeps Wrote: [ -> ]I read through the thread you referenced. my takeaway is that there is not a clear set of requirements for an all music player/manager that is headless. It feels like this capability is an afterthought, and trying to be woven into the existing Kodie framework that is geared towards video content. It is also bothersome to read how brittle the whole implementation is. Seems to me that the architecture of the system needs to be rethought as opposed to throwing the latest development tools at it to see what works (fix one problem, make two?)
Yes that is right.
If you happen to have the skills, interest and time to volunteer for that kind of fundamental development work then please do
(2018-12-13, 23:14)three_jeeps Wrote: [ -> ]- Play audio through the audio out port of the ubuntu server (optional to BT transmitter, optional stream to other devices)
that can certainly be done using pulseaudio, Ive just finished a project to that from a libreelec server sending audio out via spdif and across network to a raspberry pi which feeds audio to a hifi system
it was hard to get working due to the many different howtos online often contradicting each other, but once you get how it works its quite straight forward
libreelec seems to be based on debian so should be pretty similar to ubuntu
(2018-12-13, 23:14)three_jeeps Wrote: [ -> ]I am trying to sift through the Kodi doc to determine if it fits my needs but having trouble answering the questions....
Can Kodi run as a headless music server/player running on Ubuntu server?
What capability I want to achieve:
- music repository stored locally on the ubuntu server (option to store music on NAS box, or another PC )
- Clients that can create/manage play lists, control the player, etc. ( clients run on: iphone/ipad, linux, osx, and windows machines)
- Play audio through the audio out port of the ubuntu server (optional to BT transmitter, optional stream to other devices)
Can the above be accomplished with Kodi and/or addins?
Where are docs that discuss how to do this?
Thanks
j
Late response for ppl landing here. It's doable. I've been running kodi headless as a music server in a small single-board-computer for 5 years in my home office, paired with some great KEF powered speakers - outstanding audiophile-level audio quality.
If you really want to run ubuntu you probably want a small form factor mini pc (x86) like an Intel NUC. But if you want audiophile-quality audio output, the server type doesn't matter almost at all (you just need a tiny sliver of compute power for music-only server) and a NUC dedicated to only a music server is kind of a waste of energy and silicon (you can save some trees!), and without a quality audio card it won't sound any better than a $5 raspberry zero.
My current build (running strong for almost 2-3 years now) is based on a Raspberry Pi3b+ with a HiFiberry Pro "hat" all nicely put together in a metallic case. I run a raspbian (debian) derivative called OSMC that is a full linux distro 'tuned' for kodi and is very well maintained, extremely stable, and it supports hifiberry cards (and a bunch of other audio cards for Pi out there) out of the box.
Kodi consumes 5% of the Pi CPU will idle and 15-20% when busy playing 24-bit 192Khz flacs through the audio card coming from an NFS server in my home network. So I run a bunch of other things in the Pi in additio to kodi, including a dockerized version of HomeAssistant (home automation tool, another piece of fine software). This requires some tuning but once done it's just outstanding.
To control kodi-headless I use an android client (the official one is very good, and then Yatse is well known and is just great if you prefer a tweakable UI), and also the kodi's web interface.
I don't stream from Kodi to dlna clients but I know it's doable, I've read about multi-room type builds that use this.