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After trying different things, I'm stuck on my project. I'm a linux noob, so this doesn't help for sure.

There is my project : I want my rpi 3b+ to be a DLNA server for my DAC player with an independent network, to avoid my bad web speed, because hi-res files are way to heavy to be streamed with my actual network.

At least, the DLNA server work, but I can see it only on my pc and my smartphone, my DAC doesn't see it even I'm on the same network (set up with minidlna). So there is my first problem.

But my major problem is the parallel network setup. I have a really really bad web speed, so I want to get rid of it by creating an Ad-Hoc network completely independent and generate by the rpi. The only time I finally get a WiFi created by the rpi, my DAC didn't saw it at all, and my phone just don't want to connect to it.

The question is : how can I have a fully independent WiFi for my DNLA server that can be accessible with android devices ? And is it actually possible with just the rpi alone ?

Thank you very much for your help!

EDIT : Things are done !

Raeigis
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  • This is an interesting project but far to broad to answer it in one answer. Please take the short [Tour](https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/tour) and visit the [Help Center](https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/help) to get an idea how things work here. There are many unclear general details. Why to use an Ad-Hoc network? Do you want to use "WiFi Direct" or simple IBSS with additional applications using it as background? Do you use mDNS and/or SNMP? Do you use link-local addressing or a DHCP-server? And so on. You should ask one question about a detail to solve your problem step by step. – Ingo Jul 24 '20 at 11:12
  • Hi, thanks for those link, I'm checking it! As I say, I'm kinda a noob in all of this, I didn't even think of WiFi Direct or anything else to be honest. I'm going to look at it, could be a good idea. I actually just need a WiFi connection between those to access to my files, my DAC will do the job as a player. For the rest, I don't know what's mDNS and SNMP, and didn't setup any DHCP-server or anything else. Could explain why it wasn't working. I'm gonna check this too, and if I still have problem/question, I'll back here to ask on more precise step. Thanks :) – Raeigis Jul 24 '20 at 14:39

2 Answers2

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Your project is to broad to have a detailed answer. But here are some general ideas to point you in the right direction.

You should start with an access point, not using an Ad-Hoc network. It is easier and well known. Look at Setting up a Raspberry Pi as an access point - the easy way and Access point as WiFi router/repeater, optional with bridge. Use the DHCP server from your internet router to manage ip addresses and resources on your local network. It's mostly working out of the box without knowing that it is used.

Using upnp/dlna you usually have three things: a media server that presents the media, a media renderer that is connected to your output devices (music boxes, TV) and a control point that managed the media renderer. A control point is usually an app on a smartphone. All three components communicate on the local network either by wire (recommended for HD TV media streams) or by WiFi (sufficient for audio streams). Using this environment you can use different media renderer on different rooms (multi rooming media) to play e.g. music from the media server and just control them with your smartphone, walking from the kitchen into the bathroom. Raspberry Pis are ideal for this purposes.

Start with installing minidlna as media server on one RasPi. Then setup a media renderer with Howto install DLNA media renderer. You can use the same RasPi but to have your system scalable I would use another RasPi. As control point you can look at bubbleUPNP. That's a heavy weight and I don't like it because it has much things I don't need. Search for upnp or dlna control point in the app stores. At time I try MediaHouse and upplay.

Ingo
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  • Thank you for your message ! I wasn't specially looking for a precise, detailed answer, but more for point to look, step I maybe forgot or didn't thing of/known that existed. And actually, I made it work like an hour ago ! Setting up the DLNA server first, struggling a little with permission, but all good. Then I set up a WiFi Direct network with a static IP for the Pi and a DHCP server for the device to connect. I had to do it with tutorial, but everything is fine. – Raeigis Jul 24 '20 at 19:32
  • I tested it with my tablet, I can connect to the WiFi Direct, and then access to the DLNA server with my music app. Now, my actual problem is that my DAC player can't see anything in the WiFi direct menu, and I can't research for device. (And got can't even access to wifi direct with my phone which is weird too). But that's another problem not dealing with linux directly. Now I need to create an automatic script to ping devices to connect to WiFi Direct. Thank you for the direction and point to look at, it help me to see what I had to do :) – Raeigis Jul 24 '20 at 19:32
  • @Raeigis If the answer helped you it would be nice if you could accept it with a click on the tick on its left side. Or you can create your own answer to explain your solution. Please don't add the solution to the question. This is not the way this site works. There is nothing wrong with self answering. Then you should accept your own answer after two days. Only accepting an answer will finish the question and it will not pop up again and again, annoying us for years. – Ingo Jul 24 '20 at 19:47
  • Ok, no problem, things are done like this. Thank you for everything ! – Raeigis Jul 24 '20 at 20:24
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So... Thank you to everyone who helped me by guiding me on different possible step and process!

I succeed to do it and this is how I did it, working on Raspbian with desktop UI and external NTFS HDD :

Step one : Setup your DNLA server. Nothing more, lot's of tutorial around here, can link the one I use, but it's in French. https://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/minidlna

Step two : setting up a WiFi Direct network and a DHCP server. As a I can hardly describe all the things, there is the link I used to set everything up ! Setting up Wifi direct (wifi p2p) and DHCP server

As for now, I can connect to my phone and my tablet to the RPi through WiFi direct and connect to the DNLA server with my music app (Fiio music app, can work as well with Foobar or Proton Player). Everything is good, no latency problem detected for the moment even on 24bit 192kHz FLAC files. The only thing I noticed is that DSD files aren't shown by miniDLNA. I think it just can't read it, but that's not a big deal for me, as I'll put them in the device internal storage.

Raeigis
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