Best Triple Monitor USB-C Dock I've used

I've bought my fair share of docks and peripherals over the years as I love multi-monitor work set ups. My main workstation comprised a client issued HP corporate laptop that I used with a couple of older Dell U3014 30" displays. This was nice, but I was itching to add a third display that I had lying around and found an adapter that works perfectly.

It's a 'Selore' branded USB C to Dual HDMI Adapter,7 in 1 USB C Docking Station to Dual HDMI Displayport VGA Adapter,USB C to 3USB 2.0, Multi Monitor Adapter. I'm sure there are plenty of versions and brands of this, but this one does the job.

It's got 2x HDMI outputs and a Display Port. I connected up my 3x 30" panels, et volia!

Unfortunately, this only works its magic with Windows as it seems to be able to mirror on Macs, but not span. For now, though, I'm happy with it and can multitask happily.

Building an UnRaid Home Server for Media Storage and Automation

Are you looking to create a versatile and efficient home server that can handle your media storage needs while seamlessly integrating with your home automation system? If so, building an unRaid home server might be the solution you've been searching for. In this post, we'll explore the benefits of unRaid and provide practical advice on building your own home server for media storage and automation.

I've been using unRaid for home storage and automation for about 10 years now, and have been blogging about it here for almost as long. A lot of my posts are quite specific, so I thought I'd try a high level guide for those starting out. Let me know what you think, or if there are other specific topics you'd like to see covered.

Tidal not playing through Squeezebox with LMS in Docker

Starting to rebuild my whole-house audio playback system based on LMS as Roon, while nice, is not as free as LMS. Plus, I can get my LMS to access and play not only local files and Tidal, but also Spotify, which is missing from Roon.

Anyway, in getting back into this, I came across a frustrating issue - I could not get Tidal to play on any client device.

There's a few posts out there on things to check, like Tidal plugin setup in mysqueezebox.com, use FLAC file format etc., but nothing worked for me.

I had a look in the LMS server log file and came across a bunch of these errors;

fh=Slim::Networking::Async::Socket::HTTPS=GLOB(0x563293263068)
[23-03-07 11:43:22.4710] Slim::Networking::IO::Select::__ANON__ (130) Error: Select task failed calling Slim::Networking::Async::HTTP::_http_read_body: Error in tempfile() using /config/cache/tmp/XXXXXXXXXX: Parent directory (/config/cache/tmp/) is not writable at /lms/Slim/Formats/FLAC.pm line 950.

I run my LMS as a docker in unRaid. When I checked my mapped paths in the docker, I see 'config' maps to my appdata/LogitechMediaServer/. Inside there, I used chmod via SSH to set permissions on the /cache/tmp/ directory and instantly the Tidal stream started right up.

Forcing HDR / Dolby Vision when not supported

 I came across VideoProcessor.org through a thread on AVSForums. From their own description, this sounded like something that might be of use for me to see how far I could push HDR on my venerable JVC X500 projector;

VideoProcessor turns a computer into a 4k HDR capable live video processor by connecting a video capture card to a renderer and taking care of details such as conversion, timing and HDR metadata.

This allows advanced renderers to do things like 3D LUT, HDR tone mapping, scaling, deinterlacing and much more which can significantly improve image quality on most displays and beamers.

It turned into quite the adventure, and when I finally got it working, I thought I'd write up the settings for posterity....

Mapping additional and network drives inside an unRaid Windows VM

On the unRaid forums recently, I was responding to a user who was asking why his VM gcow2 image did not shrink when files are removed (thread here). I advised that auto-shrink is not standard behaviour, and in the discussion, it became clear that the use case was security camera footage. The user figured out that perhaps saving video files to a network share would be better than to the VM boot / system drive, and I mentioned that I do this with my BlueIris setup. I promised a quick guide, so here it is....

Streamer, with benefits

I've spent a while refining my a/v setup and finally got around to building a decent home for all the kit. It now all rests on a DIY pull-out and swivel rack that allows for access as needed. However, one of the problems with any rack is the proliferation of devices and cables. 

In the spirit of consolidation that underpins this blog,  I thought there must be a way of tidying all that up. So I started with a svelte computer case and starting adding stuff in until I was happy.