Category Archives: mpd

moOde audio player 8 on a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Rev 1.2 with Hifiberry Amp2 1.1

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It’s super easy but watch out because volume levels are messed up (super loud on tiny volume values!).

Flash the image with RPI imager (enable SSH)

/boot/config.txt might need dtparam=audio=off but I don’t remember, try without that change.

Boot the device

Visit http://moode.lan (or fix your network, use the IP etc) and click “m” -> “Settings”

“Audio” -> “Audio Output” -> “I2P”: Select “HifiBerry Amp2”

Restart

Use your favorite MPD client (or the web UI) to play some music (FIRST SET A LOW VOLUME for safety, 100 is insane here, ~20 is room level). It should work already, if not, troubleshoot.

“Audio” -> “ALSA Options” -> “Max volume (%)” seems to do nothing

“Audio” -> “MPD Options” -> “Volume options” -> “Max MPD volume”: Set to 30% so at least in the Web UI of moOde you won’t be able to kill your speakers.

In your other MPD clients, make sure you never set a high volume…

Music on connected storage will be discovered automatically and added to your library.

Turn a Raspberry into a no-fancyshmancy mpd server with Archlinux ARM

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Because my SD card keeps getting corrupted and I always start from scratch, here are my notes on how to turn a Raspberry Pi 2 with an always connected USB disk full of audio media into a nice little mpd server outputting via the 3.5mm jack. Probably works somewhat the same on a Raspberry Pi 3.

Install Archlinux ARM

Install https://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv7/broadcom/raspberry-pi-2#installation
And obviously update it right after, add your ssh key, whatever. Then:

Add packages to build a special mpd, sound stuff and common utils:
# pacman -Syu screen wget zip base-devel libmikmod unzip zziplib git doxygen boost alsa-utils hdparm ffmpeg htop libao audiofile libshout libmad faad2 libupnp libmms wavpack avahi libid3tag yajl libmpdclient

Get sound working

Add to /boot/config.cfg:

dtparam=audio=on  # https://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv7/broadcom/raspberry-pi-2#wiki
disable_audio_dither=1  # if you get white noise on low volume, https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/config-txt/audio.md
audio_pwm_mode=2  # better audio driver, https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=136445

Make sure audio output is enabled, not muted, in # alsamixer.
# speaker-test -c6 -twav

Connect and mount external disk with all your media

Connect USB disk. Check UUID using ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid/ or lsblk -f, add it to /etc/fstab at a mount point of your choice:
UUID=12341234-1234-1234-1234-123412341234 /media/egon ext4 defaults,nofail,x-systemd.device-timeout=1 0 2
and made sure that it can spin down by adding /etc/udev/rules.d/50-hdparm.rules (you might want to verify the hdparm call works first):
ACTION=="add|change", KERNEL=="sd[a-z]", ATTR{queue/rotational}=="1", RUN+="/usr/bin/hdparm -B 1 -S 60 -M /dev/%k"
Then check if things work with # mount -a

Compile mpd with zip and curl support (optional, if not wanted, just install mpd from the repos)

I compiled my own mpd because I wanted zip support and Archlinux’s does not ship with that.
$ wget https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/snapshot/mpd-git.tar.gz
$ tar xfvz mpd-git.tar.gz
$ cd mpd-git
$ nano PKGBUILD
Add ‘armv7h’ to the archs

and add some fancy configure options:

      --enable-zzip \
      --enable-mikmod \
      --enable-modplug \
      --enable-curl

$ makepkg
# pacman -U the resulting package
Takes about 30 minutes.

Configure mpd

/etc/mpd.conf:

user "mpd"
pid_file "/run/mpd/mpd.pid"
db_file "/var/lib/mpd/mpd.db"
state_file "/var/lib/mpd/mpdstate"
playlist_directory "/var/lib/mpd/playlists"
music_directory    "/media/egon"

audio_output {
  type            "alsa"
  name            "default"
  mixer_type      "software"      # optional
}

# systemctl enable mpd
# systemctl start mpd

WLAN

TODO ;)

Once it all works, make an image of it so that next time installation is just dd.

Shutting down the operating system by playing a “kill song” in MPD

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I use a 20€ Dockstar with Archlinux ARM on it as MPD music server. Since I like to turn off electronic devices when they are not needed and pulling the plug is not something you should do to running computers, I was looking for a solution to somehow shut it down from any mpd client. So I added a specific song as “shutdown file”. Once that song is played, the system will cleanly shut down and power off.

Here is the systemd .service file I came up with:

# cat /etc/systemd/system/mpdtosystemshutdown.service
[Unit]
Description=MPD to system shutdown

[Service]
ExecStart=/bin/sh -c "sleep 10 && /usr/bin/inotifywait -e open /path/to/path/music/shutdown.mp3 && mpc clear && shutdown -h now"

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

You need: inotify-tools and mpc (in addition to mpd)

  1. The service sleeps for 10 seconds in the beginning because I keep the music on an external USB harddisk which gets mounted after the multi-user target is reached. This is an ugly workaround but should be good enough. A better solution would be using a udev rule or systemd mount unit to only start the service when the harddisk is mounted.
  2. Then inotifywait will monitor shutdown.mp3 for being opened by mpd (or anything else). Once this happens inotifywait will quit successfully.
  3. mpc will clear the mpd playlist as you do not want shutdown.mp3 to be played again right after booting, do you? I surely did not.
  4. Finally the system is being shut down and powered off.

You probably have to add shutdown.mp3 to your mpd database before starting this service or the database update might trigger it. Updating the database afterwards is save and does not trigger the shutdown.

Don’t blame me if this ends up with an infinite reboot loop.