Hi everyone. I want to apologize for the promised Raspberry Pi/Volumio seminar not happening today and explain why.
The short story is: No appropriate network was available. (Yes, I know there was wireless there but that wouldn't do what we needed. See below.)
The longer story: My plan was to first show how one of these things works and plays music including how you can play local music files, stream Spotify and web radio stations, etc. Then we were going to assemble the pieces of a system, install the Volumio software, connect a DAC, boot it up on a wired ethernet network, configure it, and show how to connect it to your home wireless network so you don't need an ethernet connection.
To do that, I brought a pile of stuff including a Netgear router that I got this week and had all configured up so we could do all of the above. I tested it at home and it worked just fine. I fired the router up at the hall today and the "FranknDon-G2" wireless network was up and flying. Sort of. I could not connect that router to the outside world no matter how I tried. Doug and I tried to get it rolling but no luck.
I retired last spring from teaching Engineering. I learned that if you can't teach something so your participants can clearly understand what's going on, can learn things that they will be able to use later, and come away with some enthusiasm for the subject, it's a waste of time. And that is where we were headed without me having the right setup to make things work right.
It's possible that a few of you might have been able to extrapolate what you'd need to do at home if I had plunged into it anyway. But most people would have been left shaking their heads and wondering why I wasted their time. So I didn't.
That's the main reason. However, I wonder if people really want to have seminars at these events. When we had multiple rooms in Clinton, it was easier to head off to a quiet place for seminars. The single big room we had today is great for socializing and looking at gear but it's marginal for real listening and not good at all for seminars. So maybe that's a discussion for future events.
I'm sorry that this thing didn't happen after I promised it. If any of you want to make one of these, let me know if you need any support before or during the project. I think you'll find that most of it is pretty straightforward and covered in the website and forums for Volumio.
It's funny but I used to really like computers. I designed them for a living. Now I think they are killing us. Tonight I'm going to play records and listen to cassettes. No freakin' computers! (Yes, I'm typing this on one. Sigh...)
Thanks. --Dan