Most of the configuration items are set to reasonable
initial values, but some must be tailored to
your specific environment. At a minimum,
the following two items must be set:
wifi_network = your_wifi_
networks_SSID
wifi_password = your_wifi_
networks_password
■ Figure 2. Music player schematic.
Set the wifi_network value to the
SSID of your Wi-Fi network and set the
wifi_password entry to the password of
your Wi-Fi network.
Software Preparation
and Configuration
Since I like to be able to remotely log
in to the RPi in the music player, I always
enable SSH (Secure Shell) as follows:
enable_ssh = true
For this part of the process, you will need a computer
system that is capable of writing to a microSD card ( 2 GB
minimum size), and that is connected to the Internet and
able to download files.
The first item of business is to download the Pi
MusicBox software from www.woutervanwijk.nl/
pimusicbox/musicbox0.6.zip. This is a rather large file, so
it will take some time to download. Once downloaded,
unzip the file to get the file “ musicbox0.6.img” contained
within. This is the operating system's image file that must
be transferred to the microSD card. How this is done
depends on the computer system you are using. For
instructions on how to do this on your computer, go to
http://elinux.org/RPi_Easy_SD_Card_Setup.
Pi MusicBox must scan local and networked music
files before they will be selectable in the web user
interface. Scanning can take a long time if there are a lot
of music files to process. If your music library is very
dynamic, uncomment the scan_always entry which will
cause a rescan every time your music device is powered
up. If your music library is relatively static, set scan_once
to true:
scan_once = false
#scan_always = true
The Pi MusicBox software uses a file named
settings.ini for all of its configuration settings. The file is
structured as a Windows ini file where all lines starting
with a are comments. Comments within the
configuration file describe each configurable item, so read
the comments carefully. Some configuration lines are
commented out by default, so if you want to use them,
remove the at the beginning of the line.
Then, when the Pi MusicBox software runs, it will scan
your music library once and then reset scan_once to false
automatically. If you add new music to your library, set
scan_once to true again and reboot.
Hardware Configuration
Once the Pi MusicBox software is operational, you
can manipulate the configuration settings online through
the web interface. It is also possible to enable SSH in the
Pi MusicBox software so the configuration file can be
accessed and manipulated remotely by logging into the
RPi (default username: root; password: musicbox) and
using an editor like Nano or Vi to edit the configuration
In my music player, I used a 64 GB USB Flash drive
for holding my complete music library. As mentioned, I
copied my entire i Tunes music directory to this device so I
would have local access to all of my digitized music.
Before doing this, however, I had to reformat the Flash
drive into plain FAT32 format. This was necessary because
the Flash drive I used came formatted as exFAT which the
Pi MusicBox software does not support natively.
/boot/config/ settings.ini.
You can also edit the Pi MusicBox settings file directly
on the SD memory card before the card is inserted into
the RPi. To do this, put the SD card into your computer
and open the contents of the file /config/ settings.ini with
your favorite text editor.
Once I had formatted the Flash drive, it was an easy —
but long — process to copy the music files ( 33 GB total).
Once you are finished with copying, make sure to
properly eject the USB Flash drive so as not to corrupt it
accidentally when you unplug it from your computer.
Music Player Packaging
How one packages a device such as this music player
42 August 2015