Day & Night Sampler - a raspberry pi mpd mini boombox: Part 2 Software Installation

See Part 1, Parts List

To get started building the boombox software from scratch, complete the following steps:

• Prepare your SD card and raspberry pi using the tutorial from the excellent Adafruit Learning System by Dr. Simon Monk. We will use the Raspbian 2014-01-07 Wheezy Debian distribution.
  
  • Start with Lesson 1 (http://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-raspberry-pi-lesson-1-preparing-and-sd-card-for-your-raspberry-pi) and continue through Lesson 6 (http://learn.adafruit.com/adafruits-raspberry-pi-lesson-6-using-ssh)
• You need some software not covered in Lessons 1 -6 in the Adafruit Learning System:
  • sudo apt-get install python-pip      [easy install for other modules]
  • sudo pip install pyserial
  • sudo pip install feedparser     [for parsing weather info and other RSS feeds]
  • sudo apt-get install python-dev
  • sudo pip install spidev
• To get mpd music player and sound working, and allow python to work as an mpd client, you'll need to install:
  
  • sudo apt-get install alsa-base alsa-tools alsa-oss alsa-utils
  • sudo apt-get install mpd mpc
  • sudo apt-get install python-mpd
• For the python LIRC client pylirc to work :
  
  • sudo apt-get install liblircclient-dev
  • sudo pip install pylirc2
• Install the IR Remote Control software by following Dr. Monk's guide on the Adafruit Learning System: http://learn.adafruit.com/using-an-ir-remote-with-a-raspberry-pi-media-center/lirc
  
  • We're using stock Raspbian Wheezy 2014-01-07 for our boombox; Dr. Monk is using XBMC. These changes are necessary:
    
    • skip the link about setting up your raspberry pi as a media center, in the Overview section
    • in the step labelled "LIRC", you can skip the "disable" of Enable GPIO TSOP IR Receiver as this is for the XBMC distribution
    NOTE! I am using pin 23 for lirc_rpi, Dr. Monk is using pin 18; if you want to use pin 18, make the following change in /etc/modules:
   
  # lirc_rpi gpio_in_pin=23

       lirc_rpi gpio_in_pin=18

• Install the audio support for a USB Sound dongle.
  • Follow the instructions on Adafruit Learning System for this install (http://learn.adafruit.com/usb-audio-cards-with-a-raspberry-pi/instructions)
  • I used a generic  CMedia-based USB sound device. This will NOT show a CM108/CM109 chipset in dmesg, just CMedia
  • The essential steps from this tutorial is the firmware update:
    
    • sudo apt-get install git-core
      sudo wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update  -O /usr/bin/rpi-update
      sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/rpi-update
      sudo BRANCH=next rpi-update
      sudo reboot
• update the /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf as indicated in the tutorial

Fix WiFi Dropout Issues
If you are using a WiFi adapter based that uses the 8192cu kernel module (Realtek chipsets) see the fix for occasional dropouts documented on Adafruit.

To install my code, download it from here: thisoldgeek rpi-boombox

• Install the python scripts in /home/pi
• Save the rpi_boombox_init.sh script in a directory of your choice; instructions for installing this script are on this page

• To configure the weather display in rpi_boombox.py:
• change the following for your locality

def weather_info():
    d = feedparser.parse('http://www.wunderground.com/auto/rss_full/CA/Pleasant_Hill.xml')    # Change to your local area

NOTE: This is not using the API for wunderground, for which you need to get an API key
  

Contiune to Part 3, Configure MPD Player