On 2019-10-11, Chris Green  wrote:
> I'm considering my options for music playing around the house.  I have
> much of my music digitised now and available from a file server that's
> on all the time.  What I need is some simple 'clients' that can access
> the file server and play the music.
>
> So, a Pi can do the 'mechanics' as it were, access the files and play
> them, *BUT* (and it's a big but) what do you do for a user interface?
>
> I have getting on for ten thousand items arranged in a classified
> hierarchy, when deciding on what to play I tend to navigate down the
> hierarchy to the album I want, often I'm not looking for a particular
> name, rather I want to be prompted by what Isee in a particular genre.
>
> So how can one do this with a Pi, or is some other sort of approach
> going to work better?  It needs a display of some sort and a means of
> navigating, a remote (as in a TV type remote) would be nice, can one
> get them to interface to a Pi easily?
>
> ... and I'm pretty much against a mobile phone interface, it's too
> small for my (gently) fading eyesight and I don't get on well with on
> screen keyboards.  I've actually just changed back from a smartphone
> to a feature phone with real buttons for this very reason.

I have the following system:
Server box stores music (Debian)
Server box runs MPD and Icecast

Multiple RaspberryPi clients throughout house (Raspbian)
They run headless, listening to the Icecast server at boot time with
mpg123.

Server box has a cronjob that keeps the MPD playlist topped up with
random songs. It constantly plays, like a radio station.

I can add/remove to the playlist via either tablet or phone MPD
clients, or via voice control using a Google Home. Or via ncmpdcpp.

--
-Toby
Add the word afiduluminag to the subject to circumvent my email filters.

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