This is not about NLP, but I think it is worth sharing, so here we go 😉
I really like the project PiMusicbox, the raspberry pi is just the perfect device to host a music server, especially the model B1, which is also a little bit slow when it comes to video playback. But there are a few drawbacks, like that updates are quite hard and you cannot easily customize it. So I just set up the system in a different way, directly from scrath on Raspbian. In the next steps I show you how.
Thoughts before you start
This is what comes to my mind if someone asks me if she whether should take the normal version of PiMusicbox or mine.
Pros
- You can update all the time. PiMusicbox you have to reinstall with every new release.
- You can customize it as you want. The normal PiMusicbox does not provide Podcasts or Files.
Cons
- Configuration is done manually. You should be able to connect to your pi via ssh. Alternatively use the Websettings package.
- You do not have a way shutdown button integrated. But you can use RaspiCheck.
- It is slower. In PiMusicbox a few tweaks are done to improve booting of the system. I did not do that.
Download Raspbian minimal image
You can get this directly from the website of Raspbian: https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/
Install mopidy + run as system service
In order to start it when the system boots, you only have to type (source)
sudo systemctl enable mopidy
Install add-ons
I used Spotify, Podcast and files, because these are all I use with the raspi. You can get an overview at the documentation of Mopidy. Generally speaking you can download all extensions either via pip or via apt, depending on in which repo they are. This makes it sometimes a little bit confusing, but you’ll find everything, I am sure 😉 You can find all of the extensions for playback (the documentation calls them backend-extensions in the mopidy-documentation).
Also, you need an extension for a HTML-frontend. I used the one made for the PiMusicbox. An overview can be found here.
Mounting your external storage automatically
For this I used usbmount, which is a small programm that just mounts external storage devices automatically. This can of course be done via scripts as well, but I did not want to mess around with scripts, so I used this approach.
Configurations
The config file for mopidy can be found at /etc/mopidy/mopidy.conf, if you run it as a system service, not in your user’s directory. To shorten this paragraph I just paste my config file here and make some comments:
[core] cache_dir = /var/cache/mopidy config_dir = /etc/mopidy data_dir = /var/lib/mopidy [logging] config_file = /etc/mopidy/logging.conf debug_file = /var/log/mopidy/mopidy-debug.log [local] data_dir = /var/lib/mopidy/local media_dir = /var/lib/mopidy/media [m3u] playlists_dir = /var/lib/mopidy/playlists [musicbox_webclient] enabled = true [spotify] username = # your username password = # your password bitrate = 320 # better sound quality [http] hostname=0.0.0.0 # VERY important. Otherwise you cannot reach it from outside [mpd] hostname=0.0.0.0 # VERY important. Otherwise you cannot reach it from outside [podcast] enabled = true #only need to activate it. browse_root = #Path where your .opml-file with all your podcasts is [file] enabled = true media_dirs = /media/usb #this is where your external storage is mounted via usbmount show_dotfiles = false follow_symlinks = false metadata_timeout = 1000
I hope this tutorial helped you.
Bonus: Setting up SMB share
If you have a hard disk connected to your Raspi, you can easily share the files in all your network. I used the tutorial given by putokaz to install and configure it. I just configured it like the share for the torrent files at the end of the tutorial, but this is up to you.