raveberry 0.4.2

A multi-user music server with a focus on participation

Raveberry

Raveberry is a multi user music server that allows democratic selection of songs.

It provides an intuitive interface for requesting songs and changing their order according to the rating that users have made. It supports Youtube and Spotify as sources for music.

Installation

Raveberry is meant to be installed on a Raspberry Pi. Then it works as a portable music server which you can take with you wherever you are. I use a Raspberry Pi 4 for development and testing of the software, but Raveberry should work on any Debian based Linux. See also tested hardware below.

Raveberry is available on PyPi:

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-get update
sudo apt-get install -y python3-pip ffmpeg atomicparsley mopidy redis-server libspotify-dev libglib2.0-dev libgirepository1.0-dev libcairo2-dev gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad

pip3 install raveberry
raveberry run

Depending on your distribution, you may need to write ~/.local/bin/raveberry run or add that to your PATH. raveberry run will start a basic version of Raveberry that can be tested on http://localhost:8000/ (The server is running if you see Quit the server with CONTROL-C.).

If you want to install Raveberry system wide and make it fully featured, you can use the following command:

raveberry system-install

This assumes you have a working system with root access. If you need help setting up your Raspberry Pi, consider visiting this guide.

You can customize your installation with the config file at config/raveberry.ini. (Or at the location the installer tells you)

Although everything should work fine, I recommend taking a backup of your system. On a Raspberry Pi this is easily done by creating a copy of its SD card.

During installation you will be asked to provide a password for the admin user. This user is allowed to modify the database and change the system configuration, so choose a sensible password.

The installation will take at most 30 minutes, most of which is spent on installing/updating packages. You might need to reboot afterwards for all changes to take effect.

After the installation has finished http://raveberry/ is up and ready to play music (go ahead and try now!). You can visit http://raveberry/login/ and log in as the admin user with your provided admin password. If you take a look at http://raveberry/settings (which is also linked from the dropdown) you can see various configuration possibilities. For more information about these settings and privileges in general refer to docs/privileges.md.

An introduction to basic functionality can be found in docs/functionality.md. Or just visit http://raveberry/ and find out for yourself ; )

A Note about Ubuntu 18.04

Mopidy 3.0 requires Python 3.7, while Ubuntu 18.04 ships with Python 3.6. It is possible to install it nevertheless, but it is not trivial. Refer to this guide for instructions.

Updating

Updating an existing installation is easy. Just update the PyPi package and rerun the system installation.

pip3 install -U raveberry
raveberry system-install

Your database will be preserved, unless you specify a database backup in your config file.

Features

• Live Updates: Web page content is updated instantly using websockets.

• Complementary App: Shareberry lets you share songs directly from your phone to Raveberry.

• Hotspot: Provides a WiFi network for access in areas without proper infrastructure. Can double as a repeater.

• Remote URL: Specify a domain to make your Raveberry accessible from the world wide web.

• Privilege Levels: Grant users additional permissions like playback control.

• Local Files Support: Play all the files you already have in your local filesystem. Various filetypes supported.

• Youtube Support: With youtube-dl as a media provider, all of Youtube is available to play.

• Spotify Support: Raveberry's music player mopidy can play songs from Spotify, if you to log in with your account.

• Graphical Admin Interface: Raveberry features a convenient way of modifying the behavior of the server, like hotspot configuration or download limitation.

• Bluetooth support Use your bluetooth speakers with Raveberry, removing the need of an aux cable.

• Screen visualization: With the tool cava, the current music is split into its frequencies and visualized on a connected screen. (See screenshot below)

• Audio visualization: Using the same tool, Raveberry can also make connected LEDs flash to the rhythm of the music.

Optional Hardware Additions

Some of Raveberry's features rely on additional hardware. If you want to use all of them, consider upgrading your Raspberry Pi with one of these one of items:

• WiFi Dongle: To provide a WiFi network for users to connect, you have to set up a second network interface. If disabled, your users have to be in the same network as the Raveberry, or you have to configure an external URL.

• LEDs: For audio visualization, Raveberry uses the i2c and spi protocols to control connected LEDs. They will automatically be used if they are detected at server startup. For more information see docs/leds.md.

• USB Sound Card: The quality of the internal Raspberry Pi sound card varies from model to model. For a better music experience I recommend using a small USB sound card. If you use one, edit the config file accordingly.

• USB Stick: If you don't want to use the Raspberry Pi's internal filesystem, you can insert an external medium like a USB stick. Its label can be specified in the config file and is then used to cache the songs.

Tested Hardware

Raveberry is known to work on the following Hardware:

• Raspberry Pi 4
• Raspberry Pi 3B+
• Raspberry Pi Zero W

If you have something to add to the list, please let me know!

Although it is possible to install and run Raveberry on the original Raspberry Pi (after a very long installation), the hardware is just to weak for audio decoding and can not provide a pleasant experience at all.

Uninstall

During installation a backup folder is created. It contains all files that were overwritten outside of the raveberry/ folder. To undo installation, move these files back to their respective locations using the following command. Take care of changes you made in the meantime!

sudo cp -r backup_{timestamp}/* / 

To remove files created during the setup run

sudo scripts/uninstall.sh

FAQ

There is an error during installation while building wheel for cryptography.

You are probably missing some build dependencies on your system. This has been reported to happen on the Raspberry Pi Zero. Install them using sudo apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev libffi-dev python-dev.

More Information

Feel free to visit docs/ for more information about usage, resources etc.

Don't hesitate to mail me for feedback or open an issue if you experience any problems.