Hey, I’m Donald Bell, and in this video
I’m going to make an internet connected
jukebox that hosts my old MP3 collection.
This is a Raspberry Pi project,
and by no coincidence this video is sponsored
by WD Labs, a division of Western Digital
that sells all kinds of great Raspberry Pi
kits, and products, and accessories. You should check them out.
So here’s my problem, and maybe you can
relate to this.
I love music, and I’ve spent the better
part of a decade buying it and building an
MP3 collection that now lives on old drives
I never use.
If that sounds like you, you’re going to
love this video.
Now, there are a lot of solutions I can throw
at this, and I know that.
But here’s what I’m proposing.
I’m going to take an old speaker, a $30
amplifier, and a $45 product
from WD Labs called the PiDrive Node Zero.
And for under $100, I’m going to have a
dedicated, all-in-one solution in my house
that can play my MP3s, play Spotify, and even
act as a Airplay speaker
that I’ll control all from my phone.
I swear this is a real thing.
So let’s give it a shot.
And for a more detailed step-by-step guide
follow the link in the description.
First things first, let me introduce you to
the PiDrive Node Zero.
This is kind of a crazy product. In the best possible way.
It’s a 314GB hard drive with a Raspberry
Pi Zero grafted onto it.
WD Labs also bumps up the Pi’s micro USB
port to a couple full size ports.
They include a mini HDMI adapter cable and
a microSD card preinstalled with their custom
version of the Raspberry Pi NOOBS software
to make setup easy.
Now, the NOOBS software that’s pre-installed is great
and I have a whole other video on doing a PiDrive setup using this software.
But for this project, I’m going to treat
the entire attached drive as just generic
storage where I’ll load all my music.
Sound good?
So, step 1.
Instead of using the included software I’m
going to download the full version of the
Raspbian OS to my computer and write it to
a micro SD card.
I’m just pulling this down from RaspberryPi.org,
where you’ll also find instructions for
how to properly write this to your card.
For me, on a Mac, the best tool I’ve found
is a free one called ApplePi-Baker.
I’m going to open it up, format my card,
and put the Raspbian image on it.
Step 2.
I’m going to boot up the Node Zero with
this card installed and a Wi-Fi adapter, keyboard,
and a USB mouse connected.
I had to use a $10 USB hub to get everything hooked up, but no big deal.
Once we’re in the desktop, I’m going to
connect to Wi-Fi up here in the Wi-Fi settings.
Then in the top left dropdown menu I’m
going Add/Remove software to
install a new program.
It’s called, GParted, I’m going to search
for it, check it, and hit apply.
It’ll ask for your password, which by default
is the word "raspberry" in all lowercase.
Now, you could also do this over command line,
but I figure this is the least intimidating
way for most people.
Once it’s done, hit okay, and then go to
the Preferences submenu to find and open Gparted.
When you open it up, it will ask for your
password again.
Here’s Gparted.
It’s a tool for formatting and partitioning
any storage you have connected to the Pi.
We have a 300 gig hard drive connected, but we can’t do anything with it
until we format it.
To do that, click the drop down in the top
right corner of the window and select the
drive with 292 gigs of actual space.
Next, we’ll create a new partition table
for this drive.
Then we’ll format the partition as Fat32.
I’ll also add a label here for music which
will show up as a folder
that we’ll see in a minute.
After a reboot, the drive is ready to be put
to use.
I’m going to open up the file browser, navigate
to media, pi, and this music folder I created
when we formatted the drive.
I know I’m in the right place because I
see the folder size has the 292 gigs of space.
This is where we want to move our music to.
Step 3.
We’re going to connect up whatever USB hard
drive has your music collection on it to the
other USB port on the PiDrive.
When I connect the drive, the Pi will automatically
give me a file view for it, and I can browse
through it for my music collection.
So here I found an old iTunes music folder.
Inside, I’ve got all the folders holding
my collection.
If I were smart, I would probably groom this
collection a little before copying it over,
but let’s just bring it all over and see
what happens.
Select all, drag it over to the the empty
folder on the PiDrive, and wait for it to
copy over. Which could take awhile.
Alright, with the music transferred, you can
shut down, disconnect the drive and the mouse,
and take out the card.
It’s time now to introduce the software
star of the show -- Pi Music Box.
This software will turn the Pi into a networked
music server and AirPlay receiver, that you
can manage right from your phone or computer.
It’s awesome and you can learn more at PiMusicBox.com.
At the time I’m recording this, they don’t
have a public release of the software that
supports the Pi Zero.
To remedy this, I went on GitHub and emailed
the developers.
One of them, Nick Steel, was awesome enough
to provide me with an unofficial 0.7 version
that I’ll link to in the description.
Not only will it work for the Pi Zero, but
it also includes a number of software fixes
that aren’t in earlier versions.
It’s a work in progress and I’ll update
the link as new versions roll out.
But everyone thank Nick for this.
If you want to thank me for reaching out and
bugging him, just give this video a thumbs
up and subscribe to my channel, alright?
So, step 4.
With our special version of Pi Music Box downloaded,
we’re going to repeat the process of writing
it to a blank SD card.
I wouldn’t write over Raspbian card just
in case you want to move more music over later.
If you want, you could write over the NOOBS
card WD Labs provides or find any card with
at least 4GB of storage.
After you’ve imaged the card, open it up
on your computer, open the config folder,
and then open the settings.ini file as a text
document.
Under the section labeled Network Settings,
you’re going to plug in your WiFi network
ID and password.
This will allow the system to jump on your
network without you ever needing to touch
the code from here on out.
Save it, close it, and if it warns you that
you can’t undo this change, that’s fine.
Step 5.
We’re going to pop the Pi Music Box card
in the PiDrive Node Zero, along with a WiFi
dongle.
It’s possible that future versions of the
Node Zero will ship with the Pi Zero W board,
which would eliminate the need for this.
It’s also possible to just swap out the
board on your own if you really want.
Now, I could run this without a monitor if
I’m feeling lucky, but for this initial
setup I’m going to keep my monitor connected
so I can see what’s going on.
Alright, so I’m booting up now.
Here’s where the software is looking for
my network.
It found it.
And here’s where it’s scrapping music
from any connected USB drive.
In this case it’s the PiDrive and you can
see it crawling and reporting back on the
files it couldn’t digest.
Maybe there are some DRM files on here or
formats it doesn’t like.
That’s ok.
It’s still going to work fine.
If it really bugged me I could remove those
files either in the command line or by booting
back up in Raspbian and finding them that
way.
Now here’s the fun part. Within my own home network.
I can use any computer or tablet or smartphone, and just go to musicbox.local... and boom.
Here is the musicbox software that the Pi
is hosting on my network.
From here I can go to local files, find something
to play, and it will play off the pi.
I can plug in some headphones to check that
it’s working.
There’s also a whole lot more you can do
here to setup other services, and that’s
all covered at pimusicbox.com
Okay now, final step.
Step 6.
Let’s make this a standalone speaker in
my house that can act as a jukebox.
I’ve got my Pi Node Zero all setup.
I could leave it like this but WD Labs also
sells a cool, inexpensive case I can drop
it in to dress it up a little.
I also have this cool old speaker that I picked
up from a yard sale.
I have a $30 amplifier from Amazon and some
speaker wire.
And I have a minijack to RCA cable to get
me from the Pi to the amp.
I’ll connect that up first.
Then run speaker cable from the amp to the
speaker.
Now we just need to connect the Pi and the
amp to power and see if it all works.
Boom!
Not only do I have a cool connected music
system that I can control from anywhere in
my home, but I’ve also brought my MP3 collection
back into my life.
And all this for under $100.
To learn more about the PiDrive Node Zero
or to pick one up you can visit wdlabs.wd.com.
And to see expanded instructions and links
for this guide you can read the full tutorial
at makerprojectlab.com.
Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next
time.
