Playnode - For DJs to play music remotely

[NeilScudder]

Hi there,

My small team and I have launched our new Raspberry Pi powered product called Playnode. It enables businesses to hire DJs to provide their background music, with legality, simplicity and reliability as the priorities.

Since 2007 I have built music players for DJs to serve playlists in commercial environments. I used VIA EPIA boards at first, then Intel Atom, running the FOSS music player mpd. A 7" touchscreen was attached, and using the Gnome 2 desktop environment a simple playback GUI ran. Over 500 were installed, with about 300 still out there.

This year we have developed a brand new system using the Raspberry Pi as a headless music player, connected via website to a mobile control app and the DJs desktop. The model B+ with it's new connector layout and improved audio quality were a godsend!

There are a lot of ways to play music on a Raspi, but our system is developed to be installed by laymen with zero-configuration. Each Pi is shipped with a simple name, (i.e.: Ricky) which is used to register it on our website. The registered user may then give that player a more sensible name (i.e.: Dining Room). She downloads our free app, links that to her account, and may then control the Dining Room player - regardless of what network her phone is on. There is no firewall configuration required, and the Playnode can be moved to any network and still be controlled from the app.

This approach is the result of many years of answering the phone calls of restaurant managers and bartenders using my devices. The simplicity of installation is necessary in order to deal with the chaos that is daily life in hospitality venues. Renovations, disasters and changes in management happen and the faster the music can be back up and running, the better.

The Raspberry Pi may not have the world's best audio quality, but it is more than adequate for most of our clients. After a year of testing, the Pi has proven to be extremely reliable and competent for our needs. It easily handles the simultaneous tasks of music playback, real-time DSP effects with LADSPA, file transfer via Bittorrent Sync and communication with the Control App. In case of failure, the cost of replacement is low, and the light weight makes shipping a breeze.

There are so many factors of improvement over my previous system that it's hard to explain how dramatically the Pi has improved this product. Costs have plummeted across the board, while performance and usability have sky-rocketed. The Playnode is available worldwide as of yesteday's launch on Kickstarter.

If anyone would like to know more about how the Playnode works I would be happy to discuss.

Many thanks to the Raspberry Pi foundation for giving us a truly remarkable computing product to build our company with.

Playnode on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/93 ... urants-and