Topping E30: another DAC for linux/RPi

The Topping brand has put out various well received budget Chi-fi units over the last few years, and of interest to me, with various USB enabled DACs such as the D90, D50s and so forth. The most recent addition as of Q2 2020, the Topping E30 is a hi-res DAC with an all metal case, requiring 5v ~1A via by a 2.1mm barrel jack. The E30 has traditional inputs and outputs: toslink/coax and USB digital input and RCA out and crucially for me, without the bloat of a headphone amp or bluetooth receiver- a pure DAC.



How does it work with Linux and a RPi music server running forked-daapd.

Backing up an RPi SD and shrinking the disk image

There are numerous tutorials on how to resize/shrinking media but they typically advise using gparted for the task; whilst gparted is a great tool, it can fail with obscure error messages when trying to shrink partitions. This is how we can do this the old fashioned way.

RPi and iTunes <-> IOS app for music

After finally setting up Kodi to use a DAC mounted on Raspberry Pi for controlling/serving my music controlled by an IOS device, I re-discovered that IOS devices, via the Apple iTunes remote, can control remote iTunes.

But how's that help?

Kodi and DACs from a RPI to an amplifier

There are a number of options to connect a Raspberry Pi to an stereo amplier but one option is to use a DAC hat card such as an IQAudio DAC with RCA jacks. With the hardware in place it's all about the software to library/index/serve your music and to provide a pleasant user experience to select/queue/control your music - this typically means to control your music via a IOS-based smartphone/tablet.

Smallest hostap RPi setup

The original 2011 Raspberry Pi model B (rev1) with its 256MB is dwarfed by it's younger siblings now but this can still be used a very cost effective board for projects such as a portable wifi access point.



Whilst this use case is nothing new, trying to create an access point with the smallest SD card sizes can cause a few problems.

Simple Web monitor/maintanence for RPi

Basic maintanence and monitoring for your RPi can obviously be achieved by ssh into the machine but sometimes there needs to be an easier way.

RPi: bonding network interfaces

One of the big advantages of the Raspberry Pi is that it's form factor makes it so portable; I can have a RPi moved around the home depending on what I need at the time but it does mean I need to worry about which network interface is available to the RPi without having to log into the RPi, reconfigure to/from wifi to/from ethernet etc..

Setting up a RPi Zero

After jumping on the Raspberry Pi bandwagon, I wondered what could be done with the smallest/stripped down version of the RPi, the RPi Zero.



But with many things, theres always hurdles to overcome.

RPi3 media server with Volumio and Kodi

I have most my music now ripped to mp3/flac but these either live on my iPhone or on a NAS .. playing them easily through a proper amplifier/speakers has been an obsession of mine for many years. Recently, I discovered that the RPi3 could be enhanced with RPi DAC boards which meant a new avenue to explore.