I posted in the Q&A about one of these issues but I thought I would come on the forum as well, so hi everyone.
A friend has lent me a V3 mini. I am interested in several of these but I wanted to come and voice some feedback before purchase.
As well as around the house, I intend to put in 2 v3 mini units in home made portable speakers.
I would like to start before the questions by saying that I am thoroughly impressed by the majority of the product, it’s truly amazing for such a size and price point. Well done.
My first question is about local connectivity: it seems like for such a great product, there is a missing feature - P2P!! Think JBL connect or similar. If I am out and about with 2 speakers, the ability to link them together without the need of the home router surely is a massive thing? I was told that the only way to do this at present is to use my phone as a hotspot, but then Spotify connect won’t work etc etc. If I am not mistaken, the V3 contains both a Bluetooth module and a WiFi module, if it’s not entirely possible to local connect and pair up with the standard firmware, is there any chance at all of a custom ‘P2P’ firmware? The reset button could become the pair button when short pressed (long press still reset) and this way no hardware changes would be needed. The phone would find and connect to the devices via Bluetooth and when the pair button is pressed, they use their WiFi cards to discover each other and link up creating a P2P synced music network… this would be HUGE. It would allow us to build our own portable speakers with the same feature set at the likes of JBL - seems like you’re missing a pretty big trick here! It would make this product about a million times better for portable applications!
2nd question: is there any way to have a different WiFi connected audible alert? I mean no disrespect, but as a British person, the American voice is quite out of place. Just a tone or sound would do nicely!
Thank you again for such wonderful products. I hope that I will enjoy them for years to come
Firstly welcome to the forum and kicking off with an engaging post
I am not totally sure if I understand 100% your P2P explanation but I do I have a funny feeling that “WiFi direct” mode could certainly help or even achieve what you are looking for. I am pretty sure that the Arylic Devices can also be configured as a Wireless Access Point and you can connect slaves to it (Multiroom of a network created by the Arylic Hardware). I have no experience with this or haven’t used it myself but I thing the “Linkplay” & “Arylic” terminology for this function is “WiFi Direct”. So a bit of googling or searching on forums could maybe reveal that there is in built solution.
Thanks for the reply. WiFi direct mode unfortunately does not do what I am after. In WiFi direct mode, the device just connects to the source via WiFi directly, ie it becomes an access point. What I am talking about is like an on the go multi room setup. It would be fair to describe it as somewhere in between WiFi direct mode and Bluetooth mode. For example, when out with no LAN available imagine we have 2 lithium powered speakers we’ve built with an Acrylic V3 mini as the input to the speaker’s amplifiers. Let’s make it fun and say we’re in the woods having a drunken midnight rave there’s no electricity, no LAN, and the only devices are the speakers we’ve built and phones with 4G/5G signal armed with Spotify/Deezer whatever.
Connect phone to 1st Acrylic device via Bluetooth
Turn on 2nd Acrylic device
Press ‘pair’ button on the 1st and 2nd Acrylic devices
They find each other and connect
They have now entered a WiFi direct mode with each other and sync whatever is being played between them - this WiFi connection between the two is similar to how an iPhone would ‘air drop’ something to another.
The end result is two Acrylic devices that are in a ‘portable’ multi room mode, but the source is a Bluetooth device that has access to Spotify etc etc.
Here is a really good video showing how JBL do it, the guy gets straight to the point and you only need to watch the first minute and a half: https://youtu.be/j8KJeZgOjFA
Obviously just two devices would suffice (JBL reckon theirs does 100+) but point being if this P2P feature could be introduced, it would be a big deal.
sure, you’re welcome, but I did not set it up yet I’ll submit beta firmware in forum if have any progress, but currently just busy in some projects. making money is always in the first place in company, lol
Yesssss I’ve been wanting this functionality since I bought my first Arylic device almost 2 years ago. I frequently take my DIY boomboxes camping and have no WiFi or even LTE signal so no way to pair them together. This will add A LOT of value to the product. Looking forward to this feature!
@zpl1025 not normally one to hassle on stuff like this but the summer is round the corner and it would be great to use this feature. Is there any progress at all?
@zpl1025 Hi, sorry for the delay replying. I must have missed the notification.
Oh right, no problem. I would love to hear when you resume work on this. It really is a shame that the boards are unable to link together in such a way.
Is there anything that we can do as end users to aid this? You mentioned before that obviously the priority is that Rakoit generate sales, but is there a management contact we could drop an email to in order to register interest in this feature? I think all interested end users agree that this feature would add significant value to the entire line of products. This would, in turn, generate additional sales.
I myself would purchase additional boards for my projects if only this was implemented. I am sure I am not alone in this.
Thanks for the feedback, actually we also want to have this feature enabled on our boards, it’s a very good plus. But the difficulty is the codes from chip vender is in mess (functions calling here and there and no layer at all) and we have difficulty to merge it. We’ll wait for new SDK release and see if it improves.
there’s no electricity, no LAN, and the only devices are the speakers we’ve built and phones with 4G/5G signal armed with Spotify/Deezer whatever.
)
I’ll submit beta firmware in forum if have any progress, but currently just busy in some projects. making money is always in the first place in company, lol