Network player based on RaspberryPi and Hifiberry
For some time I was thinking about adding a network player to my audio setup. I use a turntable for most of the time, but for some usecases it was no good. Playing background music for programming was no fun. We are also often listen to the radio and since I found out that Onkyo A-8860 has a way better sound than three times more expensive Denon AV 1710 I had no radio anymore. I was considering buying Mac Mini, but the price is way too high even for the used devices. I checked for external DACs for RaspberryPi, but there were (are?) issues with IO on rPi. Then in December I found Hifiberry - a DAC which is connected directly to the I2S slot in RaspberryPi. Exactly what I was looking for. Non expensive, high quality DIY device. There was some soldering involved as I wanted RCA slots in different place and RaspberryPi has no pins in I2S slot.
Requirements
Plays music
After some research on Linux distribution I have chosen Volumio as it uses MPD and is advertising as audiophile weapon. It is also working with Hifiberry with almost no changes. I was surprised it runs shairport which
allows to stream from any Apple device.
Radio Player
I often listen to "Trójka" Polish radio station. Unfortunately it uses some strange codec and is not working under MPD. I decided to use Mplayer to play internet radio.
Test files
What's the fun of owning a DIY network player if one can't take it and test how it sound on your friend's system? I have some space on SD where I copied few files. No need to connect to the probably unsafe local network.
Logic
Device has four buttons. Stop / Radio / Music / Test
If this logic works for you as well feel free to download the software from https://github.com/zalun/NetPlayer
I made a choice to not switch off the device on a usual basis, I can always run ssh and halt it from the terminal.
Stop
This is stop and restart button. I stop all clients and restart shairport. I wanted it that way to be sure everything has stopped playing even if it wasn't run by pressing a button.
Radio
Stations are defined in settings.py. Depending on the current state pressing the button is either switching lates played station or switching to the next one on the list.
Music
Play current song or switch to the next one in playlist.
Note: One needs to create a playlist using an MPD client on a different device.
Test
Files are read from the directory specified in settings.py. Again - Play current song or switch to the next one.
Build
Hearing that the standard impulse power source isn't good for sound I bought a good quality assembled DIY power source. I've placed it in a separate box as I might use it to power another device. The NetPlayer has power input and RCA output. It connects to the network using WiFi USB dongle. All music files are copied to the Synology NAS. Boxes used aren't pretty yet, also the buttons are temporary. I want to design front panel with wooded buttons. There is also an idea to add display (LED or OLED).
First I've designed the device using a prototype board. After it worked well for a week or so, I've ordered the boxes.
It does look well on the shelf even with the current design.
