RaspbAIRy - the RaspberryPi-based Airplay Speaker

With the delivery of my second RaspberryPi I finally got the chance to start this long-planned project:

I wanted to replace my old bathroom radio with a  more contemporary device by building a network-enabled speaker. Because I'm a user of several iDevices, the idea of making the speaker AirPlay-compatible became the basis of my further work.
After some googling I discovered James Laird's amazing shairport client for Linux. The initial installation on the RasPi worked like a charm, so I decided to take the project one step further by making it wireless. With a little help from Google again and some twiddling I finally got it to work and started writing this Instructable.

Have fun reading how it all went down and maybe build your own version of the raspbAIRy.

• RaspberryPi

• Sound

• Case

• Tools

• Stereo to Mono

• Input Switch

• Mono Amp and speaker

• Power Supply

• Raspbian 'wheezy'

• Shairport

1. Install some packages and their dependencies, that shairport uses, via apt-get
2. Get shairport and the perl module Net::sdp via git
3. Install shairport as a service and make it run at startup

• Wifi

• Here is what I did (commands in italic):

1. Updated apt-get
   • $ sudo apt-get update
2. Installed vim (personal preference)
   • $ sudo apt-get install vim
3. List USB devices to get infos on wifi dongle
   • $ lsusb
4. Installed Ralink-Firmware
   • $ sudo apt-get install firmware-ralink
5. Modified the interfaces config
   • $ sudo vim /etc/network/interfaces
   • auto lo
     iface lo inet loopback
     iface eth0 inet dhcp
     auto wlan0
     iface wlan0 inet dhcp
     wpa-ssid "my_ssid"
     wpa-psk "my_password"
6. Reboot
   • $ sudo reboot
7. Checked that wifi is running
   • $ ifconfig -a
8. Installed all dependencies for shairport
   • $ sudo apt-get install git libao-dev libssl-dev libcrypt-openssl-rsa-perl libio-socket-inet6-perl libwww-perl avahi-utils
9. Installed Net::SDP for iOS6 support
   • $ git clone https://github.com/njh/perl-net-sdp.git perl-net-sdp
   • $ cd perl-net-sdp
   • $ perl Build.PL
   • $ sudo ./Build
   • $ sudo ./Build test
   • $ sudo ./Build install
   • $ cd ..
10. Got shairport from git
    • $ sudo git clone https://github.com/albertz/shairport.git shairport
11. Changed to shairport directory and compiled
    • $ cd shairport/
    • $ sudo make
    • $ sudo make install
12. Copied the init sample to startup folder and set rights
    • $ sudo cp shairport.init.sample /etc/init.d/shairport
    • $ cd /etc/init.d
    • $ sudo chmod a+x shairport
    • $ sudo update-rc.d shairport defaults
13. Changed name of shairport client
    • $ sudo vim shairport
    • changed the following lines:
    • NAME=ShairPort
      DAEMON="/usr/local/bin/shairport.pl"
      PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
      DAEMON_ARGS="-w $PIDFILE -a raspbAIRy"
14. Set audio output to line
    • $ amixer cset numid=3 1
15. Started shairport
    • $ sudo /etc/init.d/shairport start

• The case is a simple 200 x 200 x 210mm cube-shaped box made of 5mm MDF, with the side parts being mitered with a 45° angle.

• On the front I made cutouts for the speaker, the volume knob and the power LED. It was covered with light-grey speaker cloth  and clipped on with wooden dowels.

• The back shows holes for the power chord, power switch, audio jack and input switch and is held in place by wood screws.

• All of the audio wiring was done according to Step 2. The RaspberryPi got its own 5V DC power supply with a soldered-on MicroUSB connector.

• Switching from Raspbian to ArchLinux to decrease boot time from ~35 to 6 seconds
• Adding an audio output socket and switch
• Adding bluetooth support for non-Airplay devices