Streaming Media Players

Now with case!

I've put the android phone into a small wooden case that I made on the laser cutter at RoboDino using the excellent tabbed box maker plugin for Inkscape

Here's what's inside

The phone is running:

• Tasker
• AutoSqueeze (tasker plugin)
• SqueezePlayer
• Headset Button Controller

There are two buttons which are connected to the microphone input which allow control of the player.

• Red button; single click = play/pause, double click = reset
• Black button; single click = next track, double click = previous track

Of course, it's also possible to control the player via any of the many Squeeze controller apps, or the web interface.

Later I may look at exposing the screen to allow track info to be displayed. But for now, this is working great.

I tried the OpenELEC build from here http://www.horus.com/~hias/tmp/openelec-wolfson/5.0-rc-cirrus/

This supports the cirrus audio card out of the box, which is great. I had no problems using this for a quick test of XMBC/Kodi

But, It's not really what I'm after. It's a specialised distribution for Kodi. I'd rather use a more general purpose distro (so that I can modify it later)

I tried a couple of Linux Images to see if they support the Cirrus Logic audio card.

• Volumio 1.5 - does not support the audio card.

# cat /dev/sndstat
Sound Driver:3.8.1a-980706 (ALSA emulation code)
Kernel: Linux volumio 3.12.26+ #702 PREEMPT Wed Aug 6 17:43:49 BST 2014 armv6l
Config options: 0

Installed drivers: 
Type 10: ALSA emulation

Card config: 
bcm2835 ALSA

Audio devices: NOT ENABLED IN CONFIG

Synth devices: NOT ENABLED IN CONFIG

Midi devices: NOT ENABLED IN CONFIG

Timers:
7: system timer

Mixers: NOT ENABLED IN CONFIG

• SqueezePlug_rpi_750 - does not support the audio card

# cat /dev/sndstat 
Sound Driver:3.8.1a-980706 (ALSA emulation code)
Kernel: Linux lounge-audio 3.12.28+ #709 PREEMPT Mon Sep 8 15:28:00 BST 2014 armv6l
Config options: 0

Installed drivers: 
Type 10: ALSA emulation

Card config: 
bcm2835 ALSA

Audio devices: NOT ENABLED IN CONFIG

Synth devices: NOT ENABLED IN CONFIG

Midi devices: NOT ENABLED IN CONFIG

Timers:
7: system timer

Mixers: NOT ENABLED IN CONFIG

• cirrus_audio.img - Obviously this does support the audio card.

# cat /dev/sndstat 
Sound Driver:3.8.1a-980706 (ALSA emulation code)
Kernel: Linux raspberrypi 3.12.33+ #12 PREEMPT Wed Dec 3 09:36:24 GMT 2014 armv6l
Config options: 0

Installed drivers: 
Type 10: ALSA emulation

Card config: 
bcm2835 ALSA
snd_rpi_wsp

Audio devices: NOT ENABLED IN CONFIG

Synth devices: NOT ENABLED IN CONFIG

Midi devices: NOT ENABLED IN CONFIG

Timers:
7: system timer

Mixers: NOT ENABLED IN CONFIG

Using Squeezelite, I can set up a simple squeezebox player

Squeezelite v1.7, Copyright 2012-2015 Adrian Smith. See -t for license terms

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ cat /etc/rc.local 
#!/bin/sh -e
#
# rc.local
#
# This script is executed at the end of each multiuser runlevel.
# Make sure that the script will "exit 0" on success or any other
# value on error.
#
# In order to enable or disable this script just change the execution
# bits.
#
# By default this script does nothing.

# Print the IP address
_IP=$(hostname -I) || true
if [ "$_IP" ]; then
  printf "My IP address is %s\n" "$_IP"
fi

/home/pi/Reset_paths.sh
/home/pi/Playback_to_Lineout.sh
/home/pi/squeezelite-armv6hf  -o sysdefault:CARD=sndrpiwsp -n Lounge -z
exit 0

This one will be a connected to my Hi-Fi amp. It will be housed in a Reciva Internet Radio (https://radios.reciva.com/) case:

but with the internals

replaced with a Raspberry Pi Model A+, and a Cirrus Logic Audio card

I'll use squeezelite (https://code.google.com/p/squeezelite/) as the player. First, I need to get the sound card working.

I'm going to look at the piCorePlayer image(https://sites.google.com/site/picoreplayer/) to see if that supports the sound card (I expect it doesn't)

Failing that, I'll try the 'official' cirrus_audio.img from Element14.

My player for the kitchen consists of an old HTC wildfire phone running SqueezePlayer and a pair of Altec Lansing amplified speakers. This has been working well for a week or so. Since I already had the phone and the speakers spare, the total cost so far is A$5.29.

I'd like to add some local control buttons. I'm thinking of wiring up 3 buttons as per this article http://hackaday.com/2010/11/03/patching-into-android-music-control/ and then using Tasker and the autosqueeze plugin to control the player. I may also need Headset Droid to capture the button presses.