Get Spotify on that old Hi-Fi

A hassle-free DIY Sonos speaker made with Balena, a Raspberry Pi 4 and a HifiBerry DAC

It also works with Apple Airplay and even as a "simple" Bluetooth speaker!

What is Balena?

From my understanding it is mainly three services.

Balena OS: an operating system tailored for embedded devices, such as the Raspberry Pi 4, with a focus on running Docker containers.

Balena Engine: a Docker compatible container engine.

Balena Cloud: a platform to deploy, manage and monitor IoT applications.

What is a DAC?

A DAC or digital-to-analog converter is the device that converts our digital music files into analog signals for our Hi-Fi amplifier.

Prerequisites

Services

• Spotify premium account
• Balena free account, register here
• Github account

Hardware

• HiFi with RCA analog inputs
• 2-male to 2-male RCA cable
• Raspberry Pi 4
• Raspberry pi power supply
• Micro SD card
• HifiBerry DAC + PRO, see other compatible DAC

Instructions

Create a balenaCloud application, set the Application Name to sound2, and set the Default Device Type to Raspberry Pi 4.

Add a device and download the customized image.

Flash this image to the SD card with Etcher.

Raspberry Pi setup:

• Insert micro SD card
• Power up
• Wait for a minute or two
• Visit the Balena's dashboard to see your device

Get the Balena CLI tools

If you have node:

npm install balena-cli -g --production

If not, see alternatives.

Fetch and deploy the code

git clone git@github.com:balenalabs/balena-sound.git
cd balena-sound
balena push sound2

Configuration in the Balena Dashboard

• Under device configuration, set audio=off in RESIN_HOST_CONFIG_dtparam
• Add a custom variable BALENA_HOST_CONFIG_dtoverlay with a value of hifiberry-dacplus
• Add a device environment variable: SYSTEM_OUTPUT_VOLUME to 100, see Increase Output Volume

Result

The dasboard is features rich: live logs, terminal session to the host machine, service status, environment variables and so on.

The setup is running smoothly for a couple of weeks now. The experiment is a success and the feeling is really good. For me, hardware experiments are tedious at best but mainly just painful, this time it was different.

Kudos to Balena for making hardware felt like software, I was at home 🙂.

Source

This is a washed-out version of this article from Balena.