Pretty well finished now. I still have to put about 100GB of Classical Music on but that's going to mean a bit of faffing around with metadata as most media players only really play nicely with rock/pop/jazz etc. I also have to install a wifi chip, having recently discovered the difference between MHF4 connectors and mini PCI-E connectors on internal antenna tails (M.2 cards have the former and no matter how hard you push, the latter don't fit). Then there's some more cable-management and taking a look at Fidelizer. But, yes, nearly done. Sounds brilliant and I have a stupid smile.

 

"cheapo, no-name tablet and use iDisplay"

If you want to go really cheap, androidvnc is free (iDisplay is US$24).

Looks the business that does.  (yes)

It sounds pretty business-like. The speakers will take a few days to wear in, but at the risk of sounding like a HiFi prattler, they did improve with a day of use.

I've taken a false step there and I haven't worked out how to get around it. Tried a couple of VNC viewers and a couple of other remote desktop type apps. None were especially good. It's a combination of factors. Basically it's far easier to control from a laptop than from a small tablet,, especially one with a low res, laggy screen.

Vnc viewers can be finicky, and servers idiosyncratic so there is some trial and error to find the right combo of ip address and port. Then you're shoehorning a desktop display into a small screen.

It's easy to forget that Android, iOS etc were designed specifically for touchscreens. You connect to a Windows box and straightaway you're faced with text entry boxes that don't automatically resize, links that are too small to tap reliably and so on. Switch Windows to tablet mode and after the pain of setting things back up so that you can find stuff it's not much better. Combine that with a painfully slow tablet and it's all but impossible. 

Trying to improve the memory situation with the tablet by adding a swap file/partition, but it's proving bloody hard to even root the damn thing.

Oh, your server is running Windows. I missed that. Windows RDP is actually far more bulletproof than VNC (IME) -- for seeing Windows on other desktops (Windows, OS X and 'mainstream' Linux distros). There is an rdp client for android iirc.

Ubuntu over vnc is pretty usable, even on a 7" tablet (1280x800), but I'd rather use JuiceSSH + Hacker's Keyboard for configuring stuff, because it's basically a full-screen terminal, and the keyboard gives a Ctrl key and other essential functions lacking in the onboard android keyboard.

I was able to 'unlock' my tablet, but not root it and after further investigation decided it isn't worth the bother. I did install a better recovery mode than stock, "team win recovery project," which enables a number of advanced recovery, backup and restore functions, mounting volumes etc. Otherwise it's the same old, lame-ass tablet.

I can see if you are trying to get a really simple setup for non-technical users this is all a complete non-starter.

Very glad to see you're happy with the results!

It's like this: some people are perfectly capable of using, say, an iPod or mp3 player. They'll happily flip around a television remote on a smart TV. However, when faced with a tablet or even a Windows PC they start to get angry really fast. Instead of saying 'that didn't work, let's think about it a bit' they seem to get into a 'that didn't work, let's do stuff at random to get deeper in the shit' frame of mind.

My FIL is typical. I've seen him sitting at his laptop clicking away (no such thing as a single click. He learned double-click so uses it everywhere) as his laptop opens program after program and stores away actions to complete, draining every last ounce of memory and performance until nothing is working. Still he clicks, because obviously 'something will work' eventually. Then, he slams the lid and stamps off to do something else. 

Mrs WilliamA is not nearly as bad as that, but she is easily frustrated by computers in general, and I don't want her getting fed up because she can't turn 'the record player' on. She may get the hang of AnyDesk which is on her laptop, in which case that's fine.

I am, indeed :)
 

You've just described ~90% of the tech users I typically encounter. Actually most are far more competent on Office, twitter, facebook (etc) than I'll ever be, so I give 'em that.

Oh god, the double clicking when it's not needed. All the time at work

"why did it open 4 windows?"
"because you're double clicking when you shouldn't be, and the system is slow, which you know, but you double clicked twice"

Him: it looks like it's stuck
Me: you don't need to double-click when the cursor turns into a hand with a pointy finger - usually
Him: oh, really?
Me: and some other times as well
Him: oh, right. I'll have to look for that
Him: click click
Computer: dies (stage left)

Very nice indeed.

Well, very last thing to do I hope (with the hardware anyway) was to put antennas onto my M.2 Intel 9260 wifi card and install it instead of the USB thing I was using.

Dear God! Is there any reason at all that they make MHF4 connectors so damn nearly impossible to fit? They are seriously tiny, made of incredibly thin, soft metal, lacking in a nice positive click if you do eventually fit the buggers. Lining the little fuckers up needs three hands and a magnifying glass. Then you need nerves of steel, because you have to push really, really hard - preferably with something like a flat screwdriver blade. For the first few goes I was nowhere near and I was beginning to think I'd bought the wrong bloody antennas again. Then I examined the fittings with a jeweller's lens and I could see that they should fit together (after some micro-surgery to reshape the bits I'd squished with previous attempts). 

All done.

They are pretty shit to attach. And they're pretty much one time only.

That's good to know as I will likely try to avoid them.

This snippet isn't necessarily about a music player, but it could be. I know there are a few of teh people who play with the Raspberry Pi* sometimes. My son was running a Plex server from his laptop which wasn't especially convenient. He has an early Pi which definitely can't run Plex successfully, but was wondering whether the Pi4 was up to the task. He's been pretty low of late, so, being a kind dad I thought a little project might at least cheer him up a bit, so I bought him all the bits to give it a try.

Turns out that it works a treat. 

I'd read all kinds of reports that it runs hot when it idles, reaches horrific temperatures under load and can't manage really heavy lifting such as video transcoding. I know that recent firmware changes have tried to address the temperature issues, but again, reports I've seen have said that the difference is substantial, but maybe not enough to safely use the Pi4 for demanding roles. However, I did invest in one of these coolers to give him the best chance. I still thought it would have problems, especially doing something like streaming to a remote client.

It idles in the mid 30s Centigrade. I can direct stream from it at 1080P to my phone across t'web (he lives about 50 miles away) and it's incredibly smooth. Transcoding to 720P or lower is also perfectly acceptable without stutters of any kind. Temperatures when transcoding/streaming sit comfortably in the low 50s. That's better than my water-cooled desktop manages when transcoding.

So if you're wondering whether it's worthing trying the Pi4 for something demanding, there you go.

*I thought that suggesting teh peeps sometimes play with Raspberry Pis was taking the Pis a little.

So, how is the music player after a good number of months?
Still using it as you had envisioned?
Does the wife use it?