librespot-rpi

Stream Spotify to speakers for ~50 EUR. Spotify Premium required.

Hardware

• The cheapest/most efficient board with a 3.5mm audio jack: Rasberry Pi 3 Model A+.
• The best looking Pi case: https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-a-case/.
• MicroSD card, preferably 8GB+ but 4 might be enough.
• 5V/2.5A DC power input.

Initial Setup

1. Flash DietPi on microSD, insert card into Pi, connect keyboard and screen to Pi, logon as root:dietpi.
   Would've loved to use PiCore since it lives entirely in RAM but it's a bit too core to get everything to work. PiCorePlayer with a Spotify connect plugin would be a viable alternative to DietPi with librespot, maybe even better (faster boot times and no chance of MicroSD card corruption).

2. Configure wifi, enable audio and let DietPi install. After this you can disconnect screen/keyboard and connect using SSH.

3. Install dependencies. tmux can be omitted if you don't know what that is.

    sudo apt-get install libasound2-dev pkg-config tmux build-essential
   

4. Install Rust.

    curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh
   

5. Update PATH.

    source $HOME/.cargo/env
   

6. Install librespot.

    cargo install librespot  
   

   This took so long on the A+ model I ended up doing this on a beefier rpi model and switching the MicroSD card back to the A+ model after installation. I'm not even sure this will work at all on the A+ since it only has 512MB RAM and rust compiling is notoriously expensive at the moment. I also tried cross-compiling for Pi from my laptop but to no avail.

7. Should work now, test it out:

   librespot -n "Librespot Speaker" -b 320
   

Run librespot on startup

1. Make file /root/startup.sh.

      #!/bin/sh
      ./root/.cargo/bin/librespot -n "Librespot Speaker" -b 320 \
      --disable-audio-cache --initial-volume 100 --enable-volume-normalisation
   

   We have to use the full path /root/.cargo/bin/librespot to the librespot binary here because it is going to be executed by our service (read why). --disable-audio-cache to lower chances of MicroSD card corruption in case of switching power strip off. --initial-volume 100 because Pi audio output is pretty weak to begin with. --enable-volume-normalisation sounds like it should be enabled.

2. Make it executable

    chmod 755 /root/startup.sh
   

3. Make service file /etc/systemd/system/librespot.service:

    [unit]
    Description=Spotify Connect client (librespot)
    After=network.target
   
    [Service]
    Type=simple
    RestartSec=1
    User=root
    Restart=always
    ExecStart=/root/startup.sh
   
    [Install]
    WantedBy=multi-user.target
   

4. Start and enable service to run on startup:

    systemctl start librespot
    systemctl enable librespot
   

   Use following commands for troubleshooting: systemctl stop librespot systemctl status librespot journalctl -u librespot.service -b

(Optional) Changing output to mono

sudo nano /etc/asound.conf

pcm.card0 {
  type hw
  card 0
}

ctl.card0 {
  type hw
  card 0
}

pcm.monocard {
  slave.pcm card0
  slave.channels 2
  type route
  ttable {
    0.0 0.5
    1.0 0.5
    0.1 0.5
    1.1 0.5
  }
}

ctl.monocard {
  type hw
  card 0
}

pcm.!default monocard
ctl.!default monocard

source

Extras

1. Backup SD card in case something gets corrupted. Replace <Disk Node Name> with disk node name.

   Linux:

    sudo dd bs=4M if=/dev/<Disk Node Name> of=backup.img
   

   Mac:

    sudo dd bs=4m if=/dev/<Disk Node Name> of=backup.img
   

   Windows: win32diskimager

2. Enable audio noise reduction in dietpi-config but careful. It's best to do this after you made a backup because this disables the HDMI output => if anything goes wrong with wifi/ethernet/ssh you won't be able to interact with the rpi.

3. Change root and dietpi password (you never know someone with malicious intentions enters the network).

Tips

• You can control the volume using alsamixer