I'm considering my options for music playing around the house. I have much of my music digitised now and available from a file server that's on all the time. What I need is some simple 'clients' that can access the file server and play the music. So, a Pi can do the 'mechanics' as it were, access the files and play them, *BUT* (and it's a big but) what do you do for a user interface? I have getting on for ten thousand items arranged in a classified hierarchy, when deciding on what to play I tend to navigate down the hierarchy to the album I want, often I'm not looking for a particular name, rather I want to be prompted by what Isee in a particular genre. So how can one do this with a Pi, or is some other sort of approach going to work better? It needs a display of some sort and a means of navigating, a remote (as in a TV type remote) would be nice, can one get them to interface to a Pi easily? ... and I'm pretty much against a mobile phone interface, it's too small for my (gently) fading eyesight and I don't get on well with on screen keyboards. I've actually just changed back from a smartphone to a feature phone with real buttons for this very reason. -- Chris Green

Won't you need a 'HAT' of some sort to get stereo audio out of it (as opposed to audio embedded in HDMI or mono on the 3.5mm jack)?

Pi music centre - anyone done it?

Oct 11, 2019 42 Replies

Rate this thread:

Computer Nerd Kev 6 years ago

It says that it's based on omxplayer, which I believe is commonly used for playing MP3s as well as videos on the Pi. Generally any package that supports video playback supports audio as well because there's little extra effort in adding support for that. Still I said "_might_ be useful" because I hadn't looked too closely at it. If the client-server system matches exactly what the OP is after (I've got no idea if it does), maybe it would be a good starting point if not an immediate solution.

I'm thinking that USB sound adapters shouldn't be hard to get working if not recognised by default, but I might be wrong.

__ __ #_ < |\| |< _#

Vote

Toby Newman 6 years ago

I have the following system: Server box stores music (Debian) Server box runs MPD and Icecast

Multiple RaspberryPi clients throughout house (Raspbian) They run headless, listening to the Icecast server at boot time with mpg123.

Server box has a cronjob that keeps the MPD playlist topped up with random songs. It constantly plays, like a radio station.

I can add/remove to the playlist via either tablet or phone MPD clients, or via voice control using a Google Home. Or via ncmpdcpp.

-Toby Add the word afiduluminag to the subject to circumvent my email filters.

Vote

Toby Newman 6 years ago

I find using voice is very convenient (but not a 100% hit rate, so still nice to have other means like phone control as a backup).

-Toby Add the word afiduluminag to the subject to circumvent my email filters.

Vote

Join the Discussion

Have something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.

Didn't find your answer?

Ask the community — no account required