I’m a big fan of Michigan Radio. WUOM, WVGR and WFUM are my favorite triumvirate of public radio stations. “Your state, your stories, your NPR news station” is a button on my car radio and a quick link on my smart phone. What do you do if you want to listen to your favorite streaming radio station over your office PA system or on hold and you don’t have radio handy?
Enter the Raspberry Pi. We’ve already seen how the Pi can be coupled with a DVAP to create an effective D-Star hotspot. Disk images abound for just about every interest. But I have yet to find one that automatically configures your Pi to stream your favorite radio station just by plugging it in.
So I created a process where you can make one. Follow these steps and you’ll be up and running in no time. It assumes you have a rudimentary knowledge of how to create an SD card disk image and know some linux basics.
Create SD using the Raspbian Jessie Lite img. Load the SD card into the pi and power up.
login
user: pi
pass: raspberry
sudo update
sudo upgrade
(Install omxplayer)
sudo apt-get install omxplayer
(Disable screen sleep when in terminal mode)
sudo nano ~/.bashrc
(Add this line at the end of the file)
setterm —blank 0 —powerdown 0
(Set up wifi dongle from terminal if you’re not connecting to the internet via ethernet –Follow this link for instructions.)
(Add omxplayer start at boot)
sudo nano /etc/rc.local
(Add this line after “clear” and before “exit 0” you can change the http address to that of your favorite streaming radio station.)
sudo omxplayer -o local http://pubint.ic.llnwd.net/stream/pubint_michigan
(General pi configuration settings)
sudo raspi-config
1 Expand Filesystem
3 Boot Options
B2 – Console Autologin Text console, automatically logged in as ‘pi’ user
Advanced A2 – Create a unique name for the device
Advanced A4 – Enable SSH
(Recommended: change the pi password – don’t forget to write it down!)
(Reboot when finished)
sudo reboot
That should do it! For advanced users, Adafruit offers a micro FM transmitter so you can broadcast the stream to any radio within a few dozen feet.
