OK, so the dongle that connects to the cable running to the power supply brick is the one powering the Rpi and that is the one that needs to be toggled to restart, as the WebUI shutdown cannot control the external power brick.
Here’s the proper sequence to shut down and restart Volumio:
-
Shutdown from the WebUI
-
Unplug/disconnect the dongle to the power supply (or unplug the power supply, which is what the unit I mentioned earlier does). The red light on the Rpi goes off and the unit is now powered down.
-
To restart it plug the power brick (or the dongle) back. This causes the red light to come back on and you should see flashing green lights indicating SD card activity as it goes through the boot process while Volumio starts up.
-
Once it all settles down, the WebUI should be available on any browser.
One point though, you say that it took three or four tries to get it started. Does that mean you unplugged and plugged the power back a few times without doing a “proper shutdown”? That could potentially corrupt the SD card image, in which case a re-flash of the card would be indicated.