Roku Streaming Stick Problems

Having recieved a Chromecast and a Roku Streaming Stick, I had hoped to compare and review both devices together, however due to various problems with the Roku, I was unable to do this. Many hours were wasted on this device and many expletives were uttered.

Firstly, the Roku asked for payment details on setup, and since I don't have a Credit Card or any of the other options I had to phone a premium rate number just to get them to setup an account without payment details. Luckily only a few minutes and they called me back to save me the expense on a long phone call, which was handy as there were more problems to come.

After sorting the account details, I had to restart setup on the device. At this point the remote decided to stop working, it refused to pair. Tried resetting the Roku, and resetting the remote, many, many times! It also kept rebooting itself and freezing up during the attempted pairing! Tried, on the suggestion of the helpline staff, using it in another TV in a different room as apparently the remote works on Wifi and suffers interference problems! They even suggested turning off the router, which seems a bit pointless since there are dozens of other wireless devices around this area and the router is of course needed for other stuff. Such a shame as this device was quite promising but it is going back to the shop unfortunately. The advantage over the Chromecast of having a proper remote (if it worked properly!), making it more standalone, would have been great.

How to setup Firefly Media Server on Ubuntu 10.0.4

Firefly, formerly known as the incongruously titled mt-daapd is a server based streaming app that streams to DAAP clients like iTunes, Banshee and Rhythmbox (see screenshot above) or hardware players like the Roku Soundbridge. Unfortunately iTunes 10 cannot access Firefly at the moment, hopefully this will be sorted soon. Since I'm installing this on a headless Ubuntu 10.0.4 server I'm using commandline configuration, accessing it from my laptop via ssh. Either enter these commands sitting at the server in a terminal, or ssh into it from another PC that has a terminal or ssh client. Enable ssh access to your server with sudo apt-get install ssh and login to your server with ssh ip-address - for example: ssh 192.168.16.14


Install Firefly

sudo apt-get install libid3tag0 (I think this ensures Firefly can read mp3 tags, it's usually installed already in Ubuntu)

then:

sudo apt-get install mt-daapd


Configure Firefly

Next you need to edit Firefly's config file:

sudo nano /etc/mt-daapd.conf


Use Ctrl + W to find the parts of the config file you want to edit. First you need to edit Firefly's admin password (replace password with something you'll remember that's secure):

admin_pw = password


Next add your music folder - mine is:

mp3_dir = /storage1/music


You can also have a password for playing music (the one you enter in the player e.g. iTunes) - remove the '#' and replace mp3 with a suitable password, but this is entirely optional.

#password = mp3


Then you might want to change the Firefly server name, I've named mine "server2-Firefly".

servername = Server2-Firefly %v on %h


Next start Firefly with:

sudo /etc/init.d/mt-daapd start


Now you should be able to log in to Firefly's admin page from your web browser on your network.

http://servers-ip-address:3689

for instance mine is http://192.168.16.14:3689

or if you are configuring it on your server:

http://localhost:3689



Here you can rescan the collection, set scanning preferences and various other options. And that's pretty much the whole setup. You may have to set your music folders permissions so they they can be read by everyone, so Firefly can see all your music. Now you should be able to play your Firefly server's music from Rhythmbox, Banshee, Amarok, iTunes or whichever DAAP client you use. Rock on!