minimserver

What is minimserver?

MinimServer is a high performance UPnP dedicated music server which has an intelligent browsing mechanism to select genres, composers and other fields to progressively narrow down the results across the library.  It is particularly useful for a classical music collection.

For those unfamiliar with a Universal Plus and Play (UPnP) setup, it consists of a UPnP server (Source), controller (Control Point), and renderer (playback device). MinimServer is the UPnP source. BubbleUPnP is an excellent Android controller which works well with MinimServer.  There are many playback devices which have UPnP.

MinimServer has a number of advanced features incorporated into the MinimStreamer extension package. MinimStreamer allows for on-the-fly transcoding of music formats, play a network stream such as an internet radio station on a music player that doesn't have native support for playing the stream, record a network stream, including timed recording and convolution filtering (room correction). Please refer to the MinimStreamer doc for more information.

MinimServer supports multiple platforms including Windows, Mac, Linux, Raspberry Pi and various NAS. MinimServer (without convolution filtering) can run on low powered hardware.

Questions and enhancement requests on MinimServer can be posted to the user forum. Simon, the developer is responsive and helpful.  

Useful links

MinimServer features: https://minimserver.com/features.html

MinimStreamer doc: https://minimstreamer.com/

Forum for users and support: https://forum.minimserver.com

BubbleUPnP App: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bubblesoft.android.bubbleupnp&hl=en_AU

Tips

Playing Music

Once MinimServer has been set up, use an App such as BubbleUPnP to control and play your music. In the "Now Playing" screen, select the UPnP Renderer.

In the library screen, select the UPnP library.

There are also other controller Apps.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_UPnP_AV_media_servers_and_clients#UPnP_AV_clients

Why MinimServer & BubbleUPnP App?

Minimserver is available out-of-the-box in Activated version of SnakeOil OS. Together with SnakeOil OS library setup, made it easy to install and get running. MinimServer and BubbleUPnP App are known to work well together.  Unsurprisingly, the software developers talk to one another to resolve problems.

Both MinimServer and BubbleUPnP App are dedicated UPnP packages.  There are other server and controller software which can also do UPnP but often UPnP needs to be specifically enabled.

Security Risks of using UPnP

UPnP doesn’t require any authentication or authorization to use. While this is convenient for users, it’s also very risky. It allows hackers to find backdoors into your network and get remote access to your devices with ease.  Please do a search of "UPnP security vulnerability" to understand the security risks of using UPnP.

Setting up software

1. Select and install MinimServer in SnakeOil.  MinimServer is only available out of the box in the Activated (token donation required) version.

   

2. Start Minimserver and go to webpage

   

3. Need to confirm License terms, when using it for first time.

   

4. Will be using  [https://minimserver.com/starter.html starter edition] which is free and with limited configuration.

   

5. Enter content directory, if empty.  And you can check status of Minimserver on this page, which should now be running.

   

6. Optionally, install and run MinimWatch on a PC or Mac connected to the same network. MinimWatch sets up, monitors and manages the MinimServer instance.

7. Bring up Minimwatch Properties.  For the starter edition, you can add additional libraries in the contentDir field.  Other fields are used in the fulll version.

   

8. The MinimServer log is useful to monitor the state and identify any errors, including problems with music tags.  Suggest using MP3Tag to fix music tags.

   

9. When MinimServer is running, a rescan is required to show the changes in the music library.