Note: This “How-To” was originally presented by Cesar Picco as part of a Nova Labs partnership with GE Garages. Raspberry Pi is a $35 credit-card-sized computer.
Online streaming services are lowering the cost and increasing access to the music we love. But while the choice of devices needed to utilize these services are growing, they are still expensive. After checking out pricey “audiophile” gear at my local neighborhood shop I was left asking the question:
Can I build one with a Raspberry Pi?
The Raspberry Pi (RPI) is a perfect transport for audio since it is very low cost, needs very little energy to operate and new open source software becomes available almost daily. In addition to this, the Pi gives you three different audio output options on a board slightly larger than a credit card.
What you will need:
Hardware
Software
Playing Audio from a Raspberry Pi
There are three different ways to play audio from a RPI.
Headphone Jack
The 3.5mm jack is not recommended by most due to pops and clicks. Now that I have said that, I use my headphone jack a good amount.
Rating: Fair
HDMI Output
HDMI is recommended if you have a newer audio amplifier that will accept HDMI audio inputs.
Rating: Better
USB Output
For high quality, use the USB output to a USB digital to analog converter (DAC).
Rating: Best
Setting Up the Raspberry Pi Streaming Music Player
Step 1
Create an SD card as the boot disk.
Step 2
Boot up and log in.
Username = root
Password = nosoup4u
Step 3
Squeezeplug has a very detailed video on their YouTube site.
I highly suggest Squeezelite and Shairport as good player options yet feel free to explore the other players.
Controlling Your Squeezeplug
There are multiple ways of controlling your Squeezeplayer, the easiest in my opinion is the standard app released by Logitech for their Squeezebox. The software for the Squeezeplug is based on Logitech’s Squeezebox so their apps work very well to control these units.
The app can be found for Android systems at the Play store as well as at the Apple App Store.
One last step to controlling your Squeezeplug using the app is creating a Squeezebox account.
If you are interested in attending an encore presentation of this class at Nova Labs please rsvp on Meetup!
We are open! See our COVID-19 Phase III reopening guidelines.
|