76 lines
5.6 KiB
Markdown
Executable File
76 lines
5.6 KiB
Markdown
Executable File
# Piradio
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Piradio powers a streaming internet radio client for the "Pirate Radio" hardware sold by Pimoroni: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pirate-radio-pi-zero-w-project-kit
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or any kit based on their Phat Beat DAC / Audio Amplifier and a Raspberry Pi.
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Features are the ones provided by [mpd](https://github.com/MusicPlayerDaemon/MPD):
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- it retains the radio station that was playing after turning off / on the device and also the volume.
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- it has a number of interfaces, currently on this image there is a web interface and a console one.
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- managing your radio stations can be done from the interface (`add stream` and delete buttons).
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- physical buttons on the Phat Beat do what is expected of them
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- LEDs are used as a vumeter
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## how to create the image
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- First clone this repository with `git clone git@github.com:pirateradiohack/PiRadio.git`.
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- Configure your wifi settings: copy the file called `config.example` to `config` and edit this last one. You will see where to enter your wifi name, password and country. All 3 settings are necessary. Your changes to this file will be kept in future updates.
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- Optionally configure your radio stations: If you create a file called `my-playlist.m3u` with your own list of internet radio streams, it will be installed.
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If not, then you can always add stations in the web interface.
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- Then build the image. (You can see the whole guide on the official RaspberryPi repo: https://github.com/RPi-Distro/pi-gen). I find it easier to use docker (obviously you need to have docker installed on your system) as there is nothing else to install, just run one command from this directory: `./build-docker.sh`. That's it. On my computer it takes between 15 and 30 minutes. And at the end you should see something like: `Done! Your image(s) should be in deploy/`
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If you don't see that, it's probably that the build failed. It happens to me sometimes for no reason and I find that just re-launching the build with `CONTINUE=1 ./build-docker.sh` finishes the build correctly.
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## burn the image to a SD card
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You should find the newly created image in the `deploy` directory.
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### graphically
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For a user friendly experience you can try [etcher](https://www.balena.io/etcher/) to flash the image to the SD card.
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### manually
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On linux (and it probably works on Mac too) an example to get it on the SD card would be:
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`sudo dd bs=4M if=deploy/2019-05-23-Piradio-lite.img of=/dev/mmcblk0 conv=fsync`
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(of course you need to replace `/dev/mmcblk0` with the path to your own SD card. You can find it with the command `lsblk -f`)
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Those settings are recommended by the RaspberryPi instructions.
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## controlling your radio via web interface
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You can control your radio via web interface: try to open `http://radio.local` in a web browser. If that does not work then find its IP and in your browser enter `http://[IP of your radio]`.
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If you prefer the command line, you can ssh into your radio (you need to set that up in the `config` file before building the image) and then use `ncmpcpp` to get a nice terminal interface (see some screenshots here: https://rybczak.net/ncmpcpp/screenshots/).
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## ready-to-flash image
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Out of security concerns I recommend you read the [code](https://github.com/RPi-Distro/pi-gen/compare/master...pirateradiohack:master) and build the image yourself.
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But, if you prefer to trust a stranger on the Internet with your Pirate Radio, for your convenience you will find the latest image pre-compiled here: [2019-06-14-Piradio-lite.img](https://github.com/pirateradiohack/PiRadio/releases/download/2019-06-15-PiRadio/2019-06-14-Piradio-lite.img).
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Just flash it and configure your wifi. You can also optionally configure your own radio streams playlist.
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The files to edit are:
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- wifi: `/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf` (edit this file)
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- (optionally) playlist: `/home/pi/.config/vlc/playlist.m3u` (create this file)
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You can edit them before or after flashing the image:
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- before flashing you can mount the `.img`.
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With a modern operating system you probably just have to click the .img.
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With Linux you can use `kpartx` (from the `multipath-tools` package) to be able to mount the partition directly: `sudo kpartx -a path/to/2019-05-23-Piradio-lite.img` followed by `sudo mount /dev/mapper/loop0p2 tmp/ -o loop,rw`
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(you will need to create the mount directory first and check what loop device you are using with `sudo kpartx -l path/to/2019-05-23-Piradio-lite.img`). Then you can edit the files mentionned above. And `sudo umount tmp`.
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You are safe to flash the image.
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- after flashing your operating system probably automounts the partitions.
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## how it is built
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The image is built with the official RaspberryPi.org tool (https://github.com/RPi-Distro/pi-gen) to build a Raspbian lite system with all the software needed
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to have a working internet radio stream client. It uses `mpd`.
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## motivation
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The official documentation from Pimoroni has some instructions and examples to make an internet streaming client for the hardware: https://github.com/pimoroni/phat-beat/tree/master/projects/vlc-radio. It works fine and is a good source of inspiration.
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But those examples assume an already installed OS and run some scripts on top of it.
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I personally find it more convenient when it comes to embedded devices to just burn an image to an SD card.
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Also, the provided software in the examples works fine, but comes in a format that I find hard to tinker with.
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I tried to use an approach based on provisionning an image instead in order to make it a good ground for hacking.
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The first version of this project used the official scripts from Pimoroni. If you want that, you can find it here: https://github.com/pirateradiohack/PiRadio/tree/2019-05-25-PiRadio
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Issues and pull requests are welcome.
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