Navidrome

 I was thinking about improving my POC app to play my album collection.  It allows you to play tracks or albums in a browser window and so will work on mobile devices.  However it is very rudimentary, ugly and troublesome to use at the moment.

I happened to google "google self-hosted music streaming".  After a little browsing, particularly to find out peoples prefernces, Navidrome appear to be popular and widely used.  They have a demo-site which is great as you can see what you are getting.

It is available as a docker image so I installed it to try out.  Initially I had a technical problem which meant a five minute task took two hours.  The problem was that the navidrome app couldn't use its data directory because it was owned by "root" rather than "dockuser".  It isn't a common issue, I suspect it may be related to my OMV docker configuration.

On completion of the installation I had a nice browser interface but no music.  All I had to do was to add my NASmusic shared folder to the navidrome compose configuration file.  I restarted navidrome and by magic there are all my albums, beautifully presented.

What is really brilliant is that Navidrome uses a standard API "subsonic".  Any mobile client app that supports subsonic can use Navidrome music.  I chose substreamer from the list of relevant apps as it is free, popular and versions are available for both IOS and Android.  It works very well and makes the system look very professional.  I can always install another client if I want something different.

Of course the purpose of the app is to list on amobile phone or iPad outside the home.  To make this happen I just had to direct port 4533 on the router towards the navidrome container.  This also has the benifit of avoiding the "not secure" browser message, I get with external browser access as I haven't fully mastered https yet.

The app has been successfully tested off-site by Annette in Portugal so we are all set for the summer.

Homelab

What is it? 

I hadn't heard (or noticed) the term homelab until now.  Google quickly gave me a sensible definition.  I feel it describes rather well what I do with my leisure time.  I might describe what I do in more general terms as "tinkering with tech to gain understanding or make it more useful to me".  Reading about tech is slightly interesting but trying out what I read and making it work is much more enjoyable and, if successful, satisfying.  In a few cases tech turns out to be geninely useful, ie more than just a gadget/plaything, and this is a bonus.

There is an element of beating, overcoming, controlling, mastering the target of my interests.  I have a desire to achieve, suceed, make something work or understand how it works.

There is an element of doing things that others cant, although this is largely illusory. I am reliant on tutorials, examples and explanations provided by people who know more and understand their subject a lot better than I will.

Hardware

Many homlab geeks seem to like buying routers, servers, switches and NAS, spending lots of money to impress.  Myself, I like to minimise purchases, reusing old stuff as much as possible.  Here is my list.

TP-Link router and switches, Raspberry PI (B, B+, 2, 3, 4, 5), ESP32, SSD (Samsung, WD), Risc V (Nezha, VisonFire2, Mango, M1S)

Software

I wasnt sure what to include for software, so I found a random reddit list with suitable ideas.

Home Assistant, OpenMedia Vault, Docker, Transmission, Jellyfin, pihole, navidrome, owncloud, purevpn, wireguard.

If I include IoT hardware and look at software I use regularly the list would be longer and not much more interesting.  I will add more ideas if become inspired.