User manual

Written for the release it ships with. The screenshots use a demonstration library of public-domain works: the album covers are paintings by Hokusai, Van Gogh, Klimt, Kandinsky, Monet, Seurat, Marc, Rousseau, Hiroshige, Mucha, Gauguin and others, the portraits are of the composers, and the lyrics are Schiller’s Ode to Joy (1785). The addresses shown are examples.

Gexis Player is a music player for the Raspberry Pi with a high-quality DAC; it needs a Raspberry Pi 4 or newer, and the Pi 4 is the model it is built and tested on. It plays your Lyrion (Logitech Media Server) library, Spotify Connect, Bluetooth and Plexamp, one at a time, and switches to whichever one you start. You control it from its own touch screen (the panel), from any phone or computer on the same network (the phone page), or from the apps you already use: a Lyrion app, Spotify, or your phone’s Bluetooth.

Contents

1. The panel at a glance
2. Now Playing
3. The library
4. Lyrion’s own menus (Extended navigation)
5. When another source takes over
6. The idle screen and the visualiser
7. The phone page
8. Bar screens
9. Settings
10. Updates

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1. The panel at a glance

The panel shows one of two places at a time:

• Now Playing: the track, its cover and the controls, whenever something plays.
• The library: your music, starting at Home.

The mini strip along the bottom of the library always shows what is playing; tap it to go back to Now Playing. On Now Playing, the Home button (bottom left) opens the library at Home, and the Minimise chevron (top left) goes back to exactly where you were in the library.

Home: the cards along the top, the newest albums underneath, and the mini strip at the bottom. The row of cards scrolls sideways.

With the Lyrion client switched off there is no library, and the panel’s home is the waiting screen: the clock, the date and the player’s name over the same picture as the idle screen, and each source waiting to be played to pulsing at the foot – its mark, its name and its state, as under the library. Start music from a phone and the panel moves to Now Playing. Settings is the button in the top right corner.

The waiting screen, with the Lyrion client off: a public-domain wallpaper, the four sources, and the picture’s credit at the foot.

Everything on the panel works by touch: tap to open, swipe to scroll. Lists with many entries have a letter rail down the right-hand side; tap a letter to jump there.

2. Now Playing

Track shows the title, artist, album and year, and, when the song has synchronised lyrics, the current line and the next one. Tap the artist’s name to open their page in the library.

Lyrics shows the whole text, following the music when the lyrics are synchronised.

Artist shows a short biography, the artist’s genres and similar artists. Tap the artist’s name for their page in the library, and a similar artist the library has for theirs. On Track and Release, the album’s title opens the album’s page.

Release shows the album’s year, number of tracks, length and label, with a note about the release when one is available.

The queue

The queue lists what Lyrion will play next, with the time left. Tap a track to play it; Clear empties the queue; Play from starts a playlist.

The volume drawer

Drag the slider or tap along it. The drawer closes by itself after a few seconds, but stays open while the phone’s pointer rests on it. A change made elsewhere (a phone, a Lyrion app) can open the drawer too (Settings → Display → Show volume when changed elsewhere); a drawer opened that way ignores touches for a moment, so a tap meant for what was under it does not set the level.

With Volume set to Fixed, the player always plays at full level for an amplifier that sets the volume; the button then shows a padlock and the drawer explains why. Maximum volume and Spotify’s Starting volume do not apply in Fixed, and their rows are hidden. Changing the volume type while music plays stops playback, and the sources reconnect on the new type, so the level never jumps mid-track; the source that comes back starts no louder than its Starting volume.

3. The library

The library is your Lyrion server’s music. Home offers:

Browse

Pick an artist, then an album, then a track. A tap on a row shows its actions, and the row turns teal while they show:

• Play plays it now;
• Add to queue adds it to the end;
• + adds it to a playlist.

Album Artists and the artist page

Artists are grouped by letter; tap a letter on the rail to jump.

An artist’s page shows their portrait, genres and albums. It also has Play and Shuffle for everything by them, a biography, their Popular tracks and similar artists; a similar artist the library has opens their page. A tap on a Popular track shows its actions, as anywhere else.

Album page

Play album or Add to queue, and the tracks with their lengths. Tap a track once to show its actions, twice to play it.

Playlists

Radio

Lyrion’s radio directory, by category. Tap a station once to show Play and Add, twice to play it.

4. Lyrion’s own menus (Extended navigation)

Choose Extended in Settings → Sources → Lyrion Client → Navigation and Home gains My Music, Favourites and Apps: everything your Lyrion server offers, including the apps it has installed.

My Music groups Lyrion’s library views:

Apps lists the apps installed on your Lyrion server (streaming services, internet radio and so on), each with its own logo and menus. A service’s first page can take a second or two to arrive; the panel says which service it is waiting for. A service’s playlist opens as a page of its tracks, each with its artist under the title (a single artist’s album shows titles only), and its button says Play playlist.

Search: tap a search field and type on your phone (section 7); results arrive as you type. A service’s Search opens straight on its field, and tapped from the phone’s touchpad it brings up the phone’s keyboard. My Music’s Search looks for artists, albums, works, songs and playlists at once.

A few things are left out on purpose:

• Lyrion’s player settings, alarms and sync;
• album artists and playlists, which have their own cards on Home;
• entries that would change your streaming account (for example Add to favourites).

An album a service cannot stream in your region shows its tracks as Not available.

5. When another source takes over

Only one source plays at a time. When you start Spotify, Bluetooth or Plexamp from your phone, that source takes over: Lyrion pauses, a short transition screen shows who took the player, and Now Playing shows the new source. When that session ends, the player can give itself back to Lyrion (Settings → Handoff → Reclaim Lyrion when a session ends, off by default), or you can start Lyrion again from the panel.

Spotify starts at the Starting volume you set, however loud the Spotify app was last time, so a takeover never starts at full volume.

6. The idle screen and the visualiser

After a while with nothing touched, the panel shows the idle screen: a clock, the weather and a changing background picture. A touch brings back what was there. Settings → Display sets when it appears and what it shows.

The visualiser shows a VU meter or spectrum from a collection of skins, drawn from the music as it plays. Open it with the visualiser button on Now Playing or from the phone; touch the screen to close it. A spectrum’s bars run from the deep bass on the left (50 Hz) to the top of what recordings carry on the right (16 kHz), the same at every sample rate. Each bar shows the music’s own level in its range, so a recording with little treble has short bars on the right.

7. The phone page

Open the player’s address in a phone’s browser, for example http://gexis.local:8090 (the name is your player’s, chosen at setup). Nothing needs installing; the phone and the player only need to be on the same network.

The phone page shows Settings above and the mini player at the bottom. With more than one player on the network, a switch button sits at the right of the Settings title: tap it for every player, each with what it is doing – Playing · Spotify, Stopped · Lyrion, Idle – and choose one to open its page in the same tab.

The mini player has:

• the track playing;
• a row of buttons for the panel: Home, Now Playing (lit while the panel shows it; tap again to minimise), Lyrics, Visualiser, the Screen button (the panel’s screen off until a touch, music starting or the button again wakes it; the player keeps playing, and some screens show their own “No signal” for a few seconds first) and Idle screen (not offered while the idle screen is switched off);
• the volume slider. A tap sets the level where it lands and a sideways drag moves it; a swipe up or down that starts on the slider changes nothing.

The touchpad

Tap the track name, or swipe the sheet up, to open it: its large area is a touchpad for the panel, so you can drive the screen from across the room. Swipe it down to close it.

Tap a text field on the panel (a search, for example) and the phone’s keyboard comes up: what you type appears on the panel. Whatever the pointer is over that can be pressed is outlined, and the dot shrinks inside the outline (Now Playing’s tabs are underlined instead); only the part that shows is outlined, so a button half under the mini strip is outlined down to the strip. A track whose Play, Queue and Add buttons are showing is not outlined itself. The pointer hides after a few seconds of rest. Settings → Display sets Pointer speed, Pointer style (Dot or Arrow), and whether the touchpad is offered at all (Phone touchpad). While the visualiser is up, a tap on the touchpad only closes it, as a tap on the screen does. A tap outside the open sheet just closes it, so nothing behind it is pressed by mistake.

Settings on the phone

Every setting can be changed from the phone, which is the easier place to type a name, a password or a key.

8. Bar screens

On a wide, short bar screen (such as the tested 1280 × 400 and 1480 × 320) the same player is laid out in strips: Now Playing on one line, and the library’s lists run sideways. A tray pulled down from the top holds Home, the volume and the visualiser. On Now Playing, the Minimise button on the artwork points right, to the mini strip it leaves you with, and sits where the library’s Back button does, at its size. With the Lyrion client off, the waiting screen keeps the clock in a column on the left with the source tiles beside it.

Pulled down from the top of any screen, the tray: Home, the visualiser and the volume. Tap below it, or push it back up, to close it.

The library’s lists run sideways, with a strip of letters to jump along them.

An artist’s page and an album’s: the picture on the left, what can be played on the right.

9. Settings

Settings is reached from the Settings card on Home, or on the phone page. It is grouped into eight areas, listed down the left-hand side on the panel.

Tap a row to change it. A row that only applies in some cases (for example, Spotify’s Starting volume while Spotify is off) is hidden until it does. Changes take effect at once unless the row says otherwise.

Library — Your own music, and where it is read from

The Lyrion Server (a music server on the player itself) is switched and set here. It reads only the music locations switched on, none at first:

Taking a location away later – a switch turned off, a USB folder removed, a share forgotten – makes Lyrion clear its library and scan everything again, which for a large library takes hours. A network share whose server does not answer reads Not mounted: the server did not answer; the other shares are still mounted.

Sources — Renderers and services

Plugins add their own rows here once switched on: Plexamp (claim the player into your Plex account).

Handoff — Who gets the player

Audio — Level and output

Display — Screen and idle

Enrichment — Lyrics and artist info

Plugins — What is installed beyond the player itself

Optional parts, each with its own switch: the visualiser skins for this screen’s size, Plexamp, the Lyrion Server and the Beszel monitoring agent, among others. A plugin that needs software from its maker downloads it when switched on. Setup offers the same plugins, and the first start shows each download arriving. A plugin file can also be uploaded here. Each plugin’s switch says its version (for example Version 0.4.7); the software it downloads is named, with its own version, on the line below once it is installed. While Beszel is on, its heading in System, above the hub address, token and key, says whether the agent has reached its hub: Connected in green, Connecting in orange for its first minute, Not connected in red after that. A Hub public key that is not one is refused when it is saved.

System — The player, its network, updates and maintenance

Everything about the player itself, under seven headings.

This player

Network

Updates

Backup and reset

Help

About

Power

10. Updates

When a new release is waiting, Settings → System → Software update shows it with its notes. A player several releases behind shows the notes of every release it skips, newest first, each under its number and date. What it shows is from the last check, which runs every night; Update… checks again first, so it offers what the channel holds now, with its notes. Update runs six steps, each ticked as it finishes:

1. download;
2. back up the settings;
3. stop playback;
4. install;
5. restart the player;
6. check that it answers.

The panel shows the steps full-screen and keeps them up, all ticked, until you press Done.

The backup from step 2 is listed under Restore as before an update. The player keeps the newest three of these and deletes older ones; a backup made with Back up now, or copied into the Backups share, is never deleted.

Check for updates pressed while an update is being installed – the automatic one at night included – shows that install’s steps instead, with An update is being installed. Check for updates again once it has finished.

On the player’s own screen, Update (or Continue, when music is playing) goes straight to the full-screen update view.

If something goes wrong during the install, the player puts the previous release back by itself. If an update stops without finishing, the panel lets go after about half a minute, and Software update shows what the updater last reported. When the player starts again after a power cut during the install, it finishes the install and restarts once more, or puts the previous release back. An install found cut short later, by Check for updates or the check at night, is finished once nothing is playing, and the device restarts; while music plays, it waits.