pi_alarm

An alarm clock running on a raspberry pi playing music from the network using Music Player Daemon (MPD), using a numpad as input and no screen. Written in Python

development

I've developed this on windows. For that, you need to be running mpd.exe with a modified version of mpd.conf. Both are in the tools folder. Start mpd with: cd tools\mpd-0.21.24 mpd.exe mpd.conf

The tools folder also includes mpc for a simple way to control mpd without pi-alarm
https://linux.die.net/man/5/mpd.conf
https://www.musicpd.org/doc/mpc/html/
https://python-mpd2.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
https://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation:Command_line/

Opening a new terminal in Visual Studio code should run this line automatically. It loads the evironment variables: pi-alarm/.venv/Scripts/Activate.ps1

setup

• Install raspberry pi OS
• add file on ssd boot partition simply called "ssh" to enable ssh
• startup pi
• ping raspberrypi to find ip (was ipv6)
• sudo vi /etc/dhcpcd.conf and uncomment 2 suggested lines for static ip + change address to 192.168.1.3
• sudo apt-get update
• sudo apt-get install mpd
• sudo vi /etc/mpd.conf paste config (note that the user is pi)
• sudo apt-get install python3-pip --- https://www.synology.com/en-global/knowledgebase/DSM/tutorial/File_Sharing/How_to_access_files_on_Synology_NAS_within_the_local_network_NFS
• enable NFS on NAS under File Services settings & add NFS permissions to backup folder
• sudo mkdir /mnt/nas_mp3
• create file /home/pi/.smb and add user and password details user=pi password=raspberry
• sudo vi /etc/fstab //192.168.1.2/Backup/MP3 /mnt/nas_mp3 cifs uid=1000,gid=1000credentials=/home/pi/.smb,iocharset=utf8,vers=1.0,noperm 0 0
• copy requirements.txt to linux-requirements.txt (line endings are broken, I think)
• pip3 install -r ./linux-requirements.txt
• sudo apt-get install vlc
• sed -i 's/geteuid/getppid/' /usr/bin/vlc enables vlc to run as root by fooling it (https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/125546/how-to-run-vlc-player-in-root)
• turn volume up to % with "alsamixer" ---- note that it has to be run as root because the keyboard module in linux requires root
• create service with sudo ln -s /home/pi/pi-alarm/pi_alarm.service /etc/systemd/system/pi_alarm.service
• enable service to be run at boot with sudo systemctl enable pi_alarm
• sudo reboot or systemctl start pi_alarm check if it is running with systemctl status pi_alarm

mpd config

full version

See mpd.conf

important parts (tabs to separate keys and values)

music_directory "/mnt/nas_mp3/"
playlist_directory "/mnt/nas_mp3/#mpd_playlists"
log_file "/var/log/mpd/mpd.log"
sticker_file "/var/lib/mpd/sticker.sql"
user "pi"
#bind_to_address (commented!!!)
audio_output {
type "alsa"
name "My ALSA Device"
device "hw:0,0" # optional usb output is 1,0. Keep 0,0 if using the Pi audio
mixer_type "software" # optional, used to be hardware
mixer_device "default" # optional
mixer_control "PCM" # optional
mixer_index "0" # optional
}

troubleshooting

manually control service with
sudo systemctl stop mpd
sudo systemctl start mpd
sudo systemctl status mpd
sudo journalctl -u pi_alarm

the mpd log may have root owner because mpd starts as root-ish and then switches to the specified pi user from the conf. chowning the file can help
sudo chown pi:pi /var/log/mpd/mpd.log