In previous posts I already talked about all these different headless audioplayer operating systems there are for small single board computers such as the Raspberry Pies (eg. Volumio and Max2Play). I also discussed that I am a Spotify user and love the Spotify Connect feature and the multiroom speaker possibility it brings. But the two audioplayer OSes that I am current testing did not support Spotify Connect so far, so I am currently resorting to a multiroom setup using Max2Play, Logitech Media Server (LMS) and the “triode” Spotify plugin to control several devices (RPis with Squeezeplayer software/Squeezebox duet receiver) for audio playback. It works, but the look and feel of LMS is very dated, so I am still on the lookout for improvement and I am not alone. The requested features section of the user forums of both Volumio and Max2Play show major interest in Spotify Connect. However the developer(s) of Max2Play does not seem to warm-up to this feature, while it trumps to be the multiroom audio centered OS. A missed chance in my view. In the meanwhile, Volumio has beaten Max2Play to the punch via support of third party plugins and the coding work available at Github of user “Balbuze” which seem to be based on previous work of “Fornoth” and “Plietar”. I am planning to test Balbuze’s Spotify Connect plugin “Volspotconnect” in Volumio shortly on my Pi Zero that currently runs Max2play. The plugin is specific for ARM6 and ARM7 chip based computers such the Rasberry Pi’s, so if you are running Volumio on a Intel machine, bad luck for now. It is a basic plugin that just makes your Volumio device show up as a Spotify Connect device. It has no connection with the Volumio interface yet, so no control via this interface or cover-art. This is no problem as you would rather use the Spotify software or app to control playback. It is clearly a work in progress. I also thought that you also needed a Spotify app developers key, which your can request here. However commenter Wim, indicated that this key is already present in the zip file provided by Balubuze. That makes it even simpler, I hope to have time soon to get this up and running. This also seems a good topic for a Youtube tutorial so stay tuned!
