Volumio

volumio

Microcenter has Raspberry Pi Model B on sale for $30 so I picked one up for the basement. I have the HiFiBerry DAC on order, but wanted to try out a few of the other distros for the RPi. Volumio, formerly known as RaspyFi , bills itself as “a truly new listening experience”. It’s an optimized OS for audio quality, probably not too high on security, but offers support for the HiFiBerry’s I2S data path. Any browser on the local network can access it’s minimal web interface, but since it runs MPD, pretty much any MPC client can control it.

Downloaded the image, connected the RPi via ethernet, and most importantly, plugged in an old Xitel AN-1 DAC that I’m really happy to have found. Not sure why, but Volumio doesn’t use the analog audio output on the RPi. Anyway, up and running, I setup a mount to my music on a NAS drive, waited for it to update mpd’s database, rebooted, and bingo, it all works.

Purpose-built for turning your RPi into an audio player (though conspicuously absent on the details), the ui is the biggest drawback from for Volumio. Too much mouse movement, too much clicking. However the sound quality was fantastic.

Other notes: The timezone was off, ntp could’nt get it right. Here’s how to fix it:
sudo rm /etc/localtime
sudo ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Tokyo /etc/localtime
Still can’t Wifi going, will try with another distro to make sure it isn’t the usb mini.

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raspberry pi, part two

After nearly five months on order, I got another Raspberry Pi model B last week, this one upgraded to 512mb RAM. Its running the October 28th release of Raspbian "Wheezy", and for some reason, only Ubuntu's Image Writer would get it working properly on my 8GB SDHC card. The Pi's performance is much snappier than the previous one reviewed, due to the extra memory and four months of work on the Debian-based OS.

*** FYI: Remember, that SD card is your hard drive, and by most estimations, not the most reliable format in the world. Keep it backed-up, have a spare or two around, SD cards are inexpensive! And please be sure to shutdown the RPi correctly using "sudo halt" or similar. This will help keep that SD card uncorrupted. ***

New this time is the raspi-config command that ran on first boot. Among the several options available is the ability to overclock, which I eagerly set to high. The good folks at Raspberry Pi claim it will not void the warranty. Even though web browsing is sluggish, the performance of this board seems good enough now for desktop use. Beware, however, some seem to believe that this leads to SD card corruption!

BTW, total cost of ownership: Raspberry Pi $43.02 for the board delivered, plus SD card, video adapter, power stuff, etc comes to $65; plus I'm using an old Apple keyboard & mouse, ethernet, and a spare monitor.

Right off the bat, I had to edit /etc/default/keyboard and edit the keyboard language from "gb" to "us" to get the @ sign to type right. You can also do this with raspbi-config, and be sure to run "sudo setupcon" right away to avoid delays in rebooting. After a perfunctory update && upgrade, I added the tsocks package which allows me to use a SOCKS connection with the Midori browser.

Open /etc/tsocks.conf, comment out all lines except:

server = 127.0.0.1
server_type = 5
server_port = 1080

Then open a ssh connection to your the computer you want to tunnel through, using the same port above:

ssh -D localhost:1080 tunnelcomputer.com

Finally, open the browser, using the tsocks argument first (you can do this with most any program!)

tsocks midori

Viola! Go to whatismyip.com and verify yor SOCKS connection. But remember, DNS request don't go through SOCKS in the Midori browser. (IceWeasel, the Debian version of Firefox, can).

Next, I installed mpc and mpd software, which allow playing audio streams over the internet.

sudo apt-get install mpd mpc

If you man mpc, you can get a list of commands available, but here's how to add an internet stream and play it. Note that when you start/restart the RPi, your stream will immediately start! I'm playing the Shoutcast address for prog station Stellar-Attraction.

sudo mpc add http://stellar-attraction.net:8000/
mpc play

You can also load a folder by cd'ing to it, and then telling mpc to queue it up:

mpc ls | mpc add
mpc play

Pretty slick. Loads of commands, like shuffle, current, clear, etc. More about MPC and MPD here.

Other things to install for music are:

sudo apt-get install moc libflac-dev

Next, let's see if I can stream my Squeezebox Server from home (have to open ports on the router first)!