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Posted on 2020-04-18
In the previous home automation blog post[1], I explained how I installed the central pieces of my home automation[2] system (NodeRed[3], Mosquitto[4] and Domoticz[5]). Before starting explaining some of the flows, routine and automation, I need to finish explaining the global setup. This post is about my setup for my music server (Mopidy[6]) and the multi room sound system (Snapcast[7]).
=> 1: | 2: | 3: | 4: | 5: | 6: | 7:
You can find the full architecture defined in this post[8], but the TLDR; is this image (updated from previous post):
=> 8:
=> My Home Automation architecture [IMG]
As shown in the diagram above, my setup is composed of:
I'm using cheap USB speakers mainly because I bought them as a proof of concept (12€ each) to validate the possibility. I'm thinking of changing the one in my bedroom (I don't care about sound quality in the kitchen). Aside from the sound quality, this system has been working smoothly with almost no issues for at least a year :).
I also need to add a snapclient in my living room plugged to my sound bar as well. But I still need to work on it. The good news is that adding a snapcast client is damn easy :).
Installation
Simply follow the official raspberry pi install documentation[9] (Use a dedicated mopidy user!).
=> 9: https://docs.mopidy.com/en/latest/installation/raspberrypi/
For the installation itself:
wget -q -O - https://apt.mopidy.com/mopidy.gpg | sudo apt-key add - sudo wget -q -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mopidy.list https://apt.mopidy.com/buster.list sudo apt update sudo apt install mopidy mopidy-mpd mopidy-spotify
Configuration
See the official documentation[10] for options and configuration! In the meantime, this is my /etc/mopidy/mopidy.conf:
=> 10: http://docs.mopidy.com/
[core] #cache_dir = $XDG_CACHE_DIR/mopidy #config_dir = $XDG_CONFIG_DIR/mopidy #data_dir = $XDG_DATA_DIR/mopidy #max_tracklist_length = 10000 #restore_state = false [logging] color = true console_format = %(levelname)-8s %(message)s debug_format = %(levelname)-8s %(asctime)s [%(process)d:%(threadName)s] %(name)s\n %(message)s debug_file = mopidy.log config_file = logging.conf [audio] # We will understand that later. Leave commented for now! # output = audioresample ! audioconvert ! audio/x-raw,rate=48000,channels=2,format=S16LE ! wavenc ! filesink location=/tmp/snapfifo [mpd] enabled = true hostname = 0.0.0.0 port =#password = max_connections = 5 connection_timeout = 60 #zeroconf = Mopidy MPD server on $hostname #command_blacklist = # listall # listallinfo default_playlist_scheme = m3u [http] #enabled = true #hostname = 127.0.0.1 #port = 6680 #static_dir = #zeroconf = Mopidy HTTP server on $hostname [m3u] enabled = true #base_dir = #default_encoding = latin-1 #default_extension = .m3u8 #playlists_dir = [softwaremixer] #enabled = true [file] # I don't have local music files. enabled = false [local] # I don't have local music files. enabled = false [spotify] enabled = true username = # Changeme #password = # Changeme client_id = # Changeme client_secret = # Changeme bitrate = 320 volume_normalization = true private_session = false timeout = 20 allow_cache = true allow_network = true allow_playlists = true search_album_count = 20 search_artist_count = 10 search_track_count = 50 toplist_countries = [spotify_web] client_id = # Changeme client_secret = # Changeme [tunein] enabled = false [http] enabled = true hostname = :: port = # Changeme static_dir = zeroconf = brook [mopify] enabled = true debug = false [musicbox_webclient] enabled = true musicbox = false websocket_host = websocket_port = on_track_click = PLAY_ALL
The important piece for me are the activation of the MPD[11] deamon (the [mpd] section) so mopidy can be used with any MPD client (for my laptop) and is connected to spotify for my music library (see [spotify] section).
=> 11:
Control
Web UI
I enabled 2 Web UI: musicbox[12] and mopify[13]. If you want to have web UI, you need to enable http extension (see above my config file or the official documentation[14]).
=> 12: | 13: | 14: https://docs.mopidy.com/en/latest/ext/http/#hosting-web-clients
If you want to use them, you'll have to install them.
For Mopify:
sudo pip3 install Mopidy-Mopify
For MusicBox Webclient:
sudo pip3 install Mopidy-MusicBox-Webclient
Then go to http://:/mopidy ( is the one defined in the [http] section), and you'll be asked to choose between mopify and music box.
Check the documentation[15] for more Web UI or extension!
=> 15: https://mopidy.com/ext/
MPD client
As I have enabled Mopidy to act as a MPD deamon, I can use any MPD client to control it. For example, I'm using ncmpcpp[16] on my laptop (because TUI[17] FTW! :)), but you could use any mpd client[18]!
=> 16: https://rybczak.net/ncmpcpp/ | 17: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text-based_user_interface | 18: https://www.musicpd.org/clients/
Mobile App
There is a great Mopidy android application[19] :-).
=> 19: https://github.com/tkem/mopidy-mobile
Playing sound.
At this point, you should be able to play music with Mopidy through any of the client, eg by going to the web UI. Be careful, for now the sound will only play on the machine where mopidy is installed and not on the client machine! Once the music works, let's move on the snapcast configuration to send the sound to the right places!
Snapcast[20] is a Synchronous multiroom audio player. It means it can manage multiple clients that will play music in a synchronous manner (= no lag on the different clients). It is really simple yet powerful as you can manage the different client volume level and you can even have multiple stream if you want to play different music in the different rooms. This is planned on my todolist, but for now I'm using only 1 stream so all rooms will play the same thing (if they are not muted of course).
=> 20:
Installation
First, we need to install the snapcast server (snapserver), so on the server you want to run snapserver:
Go to the latest release page[21], and copy the link to the armhf deb:
=> 21: https://github.com/badaix/snapcast/releases/latest
wget "https://github.com/badaix/snapcast/releases/download/v0.19.0/snapserver_0.19.0-1_armhf.deb" # May change in case of new release. sudo dpkg -i snapserver_0.19.0-1_armhf.deb sudo apt -f install # To fix dependencies
Then, on each machine where you want to install snapclient[^3]:
On my Raspberry Pi (brook and nickylarson):
wget "https://github.com/badaix/snapcast/releases/download/v0.19.0/snapclient_0.19.0-1_armhf.deb" # May change in case of new release sudo dpkg -i snapclient_0.19.0-1_armhf.deb sudo apt -f install
And then on my laptop (running ubuntu for work related reasons):
wget "https://github.com/badaix/snapcast/releases/download/v0.19.0/snapclient_0.19.0-1_amd64.deb" # May change in case of new release sudo dpkg -i snapclient_0.19.0-1_amd64.deb sudo apt -f install sudo systemctl disable snapclient # To not start it automatically.
Look at the official documentation[22] if you don't use a raspberry pi or want more information.
=> 22: https://github.com/badaix/snapcast#installation
Configuration
Snapserver
Edit the configuration file /etc/default/snapserver (defines snapserver command arguments):
START_SNAPSERVER=true SNAPSERVER_OPTS=""
The configuration is very simple because I only use one stream, so I don't need to declare anything specific here. I just set snapserver to start by default
Then edit the server configuration /etc/snapserver.conf. I'm going to only highlight here the changed values:
[http] #enable HTTP Json RPC (HTTP POST and websockets) enabled = true # use "0.0.0.0" to bind to any IPv4 address or :: to bind to any IPv6 address bind_to_address = 0.0.0.0 # which port the server should listen to port =# changeme [tcp] # enable TCP Json RPC enabled = true # use "0.0.0.0" to bind to any IPv4 address or :: to bind to any IPv6 address bind_to_address = 0.0.0.0 # which port the server shgould listen to port = stream = pipe:///tmp/snapfifo?name=default
The stream = pipe:///tmp/snapfifo?name=default line is very important, it should remind you of a commented line in our mopidy.conf file that you need to uncomment now:
output = audioresample ! audioconvert ! audio/x-raw,rate=48000,channels=2,format=S16LE ! wavenc ! filesink location=/tmp/snapfifo
The location=/tmp/snapfifo is the way to tell Mopidy to use snapcast as audio output. See the documentation[23] for more information.
=> 23: https://github.com/badaix/snapcast/blob/master/doc/player_setup.md#mopidy
I also enabled the [http] section to be able to send JSON-RPC request via http from NodeRed, but more on that later :).
Snapclient
Edit the configuration file /etc/default/snapclient on each snapclient[^3]:
START_SNAPCLIENT=true SNAPCLIENT_OPTS="-s 15"
The -s 15 is to indicate snapclient to use the 15 soundcard. To find the right soundcard you can run snapclient -l to get the list with their id.
Control
Mobile App
Snapcast provides a very minimalist android application to control snapcast client volume level. The android app can also be downloaded on the release page. The app is called snapdroid and can be found on the play store or on the snapdroid release page[24].
=> 24:
JSON-RPC API
Snapcast provides a full JSON-RPC API[25] that can be leverage to control it. I'm mainly using through my home automation brain NodeRed[26], but we will see this in another post :).
Now, you should have a working Mopidy server, connected to your spotify account that you can control through any device and client. When playing music via a mopidy client (web, mpd, mobile app), sound will be played through snapcast on the different enabled clients (check on the android app the volume level of each and the mute status ;)).
We'll see in later post how to manipulate and integrate this sound system in the more global home automation by configuring some NodeRed flows (via MPD for Mopidy and Json-RPC for snapcast) :)
Just to whet your appetite, this is part of my dashboard to control (part of) the sound system:
=> Sound and Music dashboard [IMG]
[^1]: From One Piece :)
[^2]: From city hunter / Nicky Larson (fr)
[^3]: Remember the tmux tip to launch commands on multiple machine at the same time.
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