Car Airplay Project

[Griggsy]

Hello There i would like to craft my raspberry pi into airplay receiver for my car and i need some help with this task

Things I would like to have

- For it to be wifi network with no internet connection
- And also for it to boot the program at power on

Many thanks
Griggsy

[Sydiom]

A few quick questions to before I can help you:

1: What model Pi do you have? (Either model a, b or b+)

2: How do you intend on powering the pi? (Cigarette lighter or portable power supply)

3: How do you intend on connect the pi to your radio? (Auxiliary or other method)

4: Are you going to have a separate router in the car or buy a wireless card capable of broadcasting a network?

- Syd

[guitarans]

Not to ruin your pi project, i respect em all, but would et be more easy just to buy a bluetooth module ?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/351130314704?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT

it was just an ideer

[Noel Hibbard]

Not to ruin your pi project, i respect em all, but would et be more easy just to buy a bluetooth module ?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/351130314704?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT

it was just an ideer

Bluetooth is lossy whereas AirPlay is lossless. AirPlay is more work but totally worth it.

[alfista2600]

I thought about doing this myself, but found this to be a easier way to get it done, and to not put the Pi under constant on/off stress.

http://lifehacker.com/how-to-add-airpla ... -512312902

[kusti8]

I made a raspberry pi which would stream movies to me in the car.

Google to find out how to make an "ad-hoc network" with the raspberry pi
And the boot on startup is fairly simple if you google that.

It also depends on what OS you want to use. If you want a media center, use XBian since that is the fastest and can make an ad-hoc network.
Raspbian can also work.

[Noel Hibbard]

I thought about doing this myself, but found this to be a easier way to get it done, and to not put the Pi under constant on/off stress.

http://lifehacker.com/how-to-add-airpla ... -512312902

This is the route I went a long time ago. I would buy broken APEs off eBay for $15 - $25 and then replace the dead PSU with a $3 PSU which would accept 9 - 24v which was perfect for the car. My problem with these APEs is they get CRAZY hot and randomly reboot. It was a constant battle... open the glove box to let them cool off and all that junk. I had one in the garage and even that one would overheat. They only seemed to stay up when they were indoors. The other problem I had with the APE was it took about 58secs to boot up. My Pi boots in about 20secs and has a nice little chime sound that it plays when it is ready for use. The APE also drops the WiFi in some spots in town. I've tried fixed channels and stuff like that but no matter which channel it's on it dropped in some places. On my way to work there were about 3 places that it would always drop. The Pi NEVER drops like that. The Pi is much cheaper too. You if you don't mind running the onboard sound then you can even get the RPi A+ with single USB port and a WiFi dongle and come out even cheaper. The onboard sound isn't that great though. I am running a cheap $6 USB sound card on mine. The RPi runs on 5v so a cheap USB cig adapter is all you need to power it. The older APEs run dual voltage.. 5.0 and 3.3 so you need a dual voltage PSU and there is more soldering to mess with. Newer ones, including the latest run on just 3.3v. The latest has some really handy solder points so you don't have to cut any wires or anything like that.

On my RPi I have moved all the wifi and airplay related config files to /boot so they are easy to edit when you have the card mounted in a windows machine. I have a 1.6gb image that compresses down to 500mb. When a friend wants their own Pi I simply tell them what to buy and then I restore my image to their card and then within windows I edit the config files to match their needs and then hand them the card and they are all done.

Oh also, to make the Pi reliable with the power going on and off all the time, I made the FS readonly using UnionFS. It's indestructible.

Oh... I just remembered another advantage to the RPi for AirPlay. If you use the right ShairPort distro it will allow multiple devices to AirPlay at the same time. So for example you can have one device AirPlaying driving directions and have someone else in the car playing music with their own device. The APE will only allow one stream at a time.