DLNA Compatibility on Nomad: What Works / What Doesn’t

[Jstudner]

I have been experimenting with basic DLNA/UPnP emulation on the ESP32-S3 to allow smart TVs and media players to discover and stream content from the Nomad device. The goal is to let devices like VLC, Android TV, or smart displays see Nomad as a media server without requiring apps or web browsers. I have never messed with DLNA, and had never even heard of it before this so please let me know if you have ideas on this topic, its a really neat feature that would be very useful to many users.

What Works:

Device description (/dlna/desc.xml) and content listing (/dlna/contentdir.xml) are served via HTTP.

Manual browser access to media files (MP4, MP3, etc.) works fine, including proper Range support for seeking.

Limitations:

Multicast SSDP only works over SoftAP, not in STA mode (client). ESP32’s WiFi stack has restrictions with multicast on certain modes/interfaces.

No full DLNA stack: The ESP32 is just pretending to be a DLNA server, and doesn’t handle full SOAP-based browse/control requests. Many clients expect full compliance.

VLC and some TVs timeout or reject the stream, possibly due to missing metadata or timing constraints.

No true media transcoding — obviously — so playback relies on your client supporting the raw format.

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I have only spent a few hours on this, I will do more actual research and hopefully there is some kind of light weight work around.