MPD on the Raspberry Pi

This project installs MPD on the Raspberry Pi, copies the web radio playlist and starts playing. Endlessly.

Also, it is possible to stream AirPlay to the Raspberry Pi via shairport-sync.

Install

This project uses Ansible but does not really explain much about Ansible. It's mostly targeted at myself while being open source. Adapt the hosts.ini, then run the playbook:

ansible-playbook playbook.yml

The installation is specifically made for a Raspberry Pi 3B with 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS bookworm. On other systems you may have to adapt the installation.

Allow usage of mpc volume

mpc volume does not seem to work out of the box. Find the control you want to set via amixer scontents.

For the AUX on the Raspberry this is 'Headphone':

Simple mixer control 'Headphone',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined pswitch pswitch-joined
  Playback channels: Mono
  Limits: Playback -10239 - 400
  Mono: Playback -2791 [70%] [-27.91dB] [on]

For the HiFiBerry Amp2 this is 'Digital' (after you configure it):

Simple mixer control 'Digital',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pswitch
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 207
  Mono:
  Front Left: Playback 104 [50%] [-51.50dB] [on]
  Front Right: Playback 104 [50%] [-51.50dB] [on]

Set this control in the mpd.conf:

audio_output {
        type            "alsa"
        name            "My ALSA Device"
        mixer_control   "Headphone"
}

(Sadly I had no luck setting that controller as Alsa default in order to let MPD autodetect it. Hints welcome!)

Configure automatic restart

The FRITZ!Box at home automatically resets the network connection at 5-6. MPD is stuck after that and does not continue to play. Shortly after that the mpd should be restarted in order to continue playback. This is currently done at 6:05 by a systemd service.

Changing the time can be done inside the systemd/mpd-restart.timer file. Rerun the install.sh script in order to apply the change.

mpd-internetradio-destuck fixes the same issue but independently of time. The install.sh script downloads the deb package for 64-bit Raspberry Pi 3 and later (arm64). When running an ARMv6 or ARMv7 OS adapt the download link in the install.sh.

Know Issues

When shairport-sync is running, the volume is set higher in order to be able to adjust the volume from the AirPlay source. When the pi is rebooted while it's playing via AirPlay and gets restarted, the volume is still high. The internet radio after the next startup WILL be loud.