How to best play music on dataless, headless kodi
#1
I have a full Kodi installation in a main location.  I'm trying to set up a headless box in another location to play music.  I'd rather not buy a drive for it and store everything a second time.  So I thought I'd try to set it up as a UPnP client of the main Kodi server.  

But while I can navigate through the upnp stuff sitting at the keyboard, I don't see any way to access it at all from Kore on Android (unless I hook up a screen and cursor through the menus).

If I had a particular playlist on the main server, is there a way to script having it played?  Some way to avoid manual navigation of the UPnP tree?
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#2
I'm sure Kore can play music. I can access all music including music videos and playlists from the iOS Kodi remote app and from a 3rd party remote for iOS (Music Remote for Kodi). Wouldn't Android be the same?
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#3
Kore is great if the Kodi server has a local music cache.  But I was hoping to use this without local data (just a UPnP client).  In that case, Kore doesn't give me any interaction to walk down the UPnP tree of my main Kodi server.

The only way I know to do it at present is watching a screen, and interactively navigating a menu.  

I know there's a way to play a particular (local) track just through a HTTP call.  But I'm not sure I can do the same for a UPnP track.  If I could do that, it might be enough.
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#4
Share the music folder via smb or nfs then add it as a music source on your headless machine.
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#5
Yes, I suppose I will have to end up turning it into a full instance.  I was hoping I could get UPnP sharing to work because I liked the idea of not having to configure things like playlists in multiple locations, and I would be able to leverage info like "recently played" from a single location (without the effort of running a MySQL instance).  But after I started trying it, I found that it was quite a bit more limited.
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#6
Have you tried using the Chorus webui that comes built into Kodi?
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#7
Thanks for the suggestion.  I hadn't tried it.  It appears to have the same issues as Kore.  I can control a cursor with the remote, but it doesn't show me what's on screen for that to be useful on a headless setup.  It shows items in the local database, but not remote media servers.
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#8
Why not share a mysql database with both kodi instances? Then you get to share your playlists etc
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#9
(2017-11-22, 23:32)bowlofred Wrote: Thanks for the suggestion.  I hadn't tried it.  It appears to have the same issues as Kore.  I can control a cursor with the remote, but it doesn't show me what's on screen for that to be useful on a headless setup.  It shows items in the local database, but not remote media servers.
If not Chorus or Kore then perhaps Yatse can? Not using it as a remote control, but casting from a local device or Kodi source, to another Kodi target. I have not tried it myself, but I'm sure I have read about it somewhere.

Otherwise a client-server setup with MySQL will enable you to share the music, but not smart playlists like Nickr suggests as they are stored as xml files in the user data (local to Kodi). To be honest I am not a great fan of MySQL since it seems to be so much slower than SQLite.
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#10
I wrote a guide on exactly this!

My system is a raspberry pi with integrated amplifier controlled from the ios remote.
Media is stored on a NAS in a different room.
I run the full Kodi client on the rapsberry pi but its all controlled with the app including music library updates.
I also sync the music ratings with the TADB Add-on

Image Image

https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=317811
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#11
Thanks, docwra.  The difference is that I was trying to leverage an existing Kodi installation instead of a NAS repository.  But that idea isn't going to be the best for me.

I'll either do the NAS thing with a full installation on the system or I'll start a MySQL setup.  I found the guide for setting up MySQL Kodi and it's not as bad as I had assumed from some of the discussions about it.
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#12
(2017-11-24, 12:33)DaveBlake Wrote: If not Chorus or Kore then perhaps Yatse can? Not using it as a remote control, but casting from a local device or Kodi source, to another Kodi target. I have not tried it myself, but I'm sure I have read about it somewhere.

I use Yatse and have never had great luck with casting. I can get it to cast individual tracks, but not multiple items or playlists.
Quote:Otherwise a client-server setup with MySQL will enable you to share the music, but not smart playlists like Nickr suggests as they are stored as xml files in the user data (local to Kodi). To be honest I am not a great fan of MySQL since it seems to be so much slower than SQLite. 

Hmm. I suppose I could get around that by having something that ran rsync from the playlist folder on the primary to the secondary.

Does the slowness you've seen affect the user experience? Does it make finding/playing/searching things take much longer than it would over the NAS setup?
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#13
If you wanted to run off a central Kodi install then you’d use http://kodi.wiki/view/path_substitution in addition to mysql, these are the paths you can point to a central location http://kodi.wiki/view/Special_protocol
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#14
I'm not sure I understand.  I read through the links, but I don't know why I would need them here.
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#15
You would create playlists on your main Kodi install for example then use path substitution to point your headless install to the playlist folder, that way playlists are shared between the installs.
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How to best play music on dataless, headless kodi0