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MPD, the Music Player Daemon, is a flexible server-side application for playing music. Client programs on different machines on the network — a mobile phone, a laptop, a desktop workstation — can connect to it to control the playback of audio files from your local music collection. MPD decodes the audio files and plays them back on one or many outputs.
By default MPD will play to the default audio device. In the example below we make things a little more interesting by setting up a headless music server. There will be no graphical user interface, no Pulseaudio daemon, and no local audio output. Instead we will configure MPD with two outputs: a bluetooth speaker and a web server to serve audio streams to any streaming media player.
Bluetooth is often rather frustrating to set up. You will have to pair
your Bluetooth device and make sure that the device is automatically
connected as soon as it powers on. The Bluetooth system service
returned by the bluetooth-service procedure provides the
infrastructure needed to set this up.
Reconfigure your system with at least the following services and packages:
(operating-system
;; …
(packages (cons* bluez bluez-alsa
%base-packages))
(services
;; …
(dbus-service #:services (list bluez-alsa))
(bluetooth-service #:auto-enable? #t)))
Start the bluetooth service and then use bluetoothctl
to scan for Bluetooth devices. Try to identify your Bluetooth speaker
and pick out its device ID from the resulting list of devices that is
indubitably dominated by a baffling smorgasbord of your neighbors’ home
automation gizmos. This only needs to be done once:
$ bluetoothctl [NEW] Controller 00:11:22:33:95:7F BlueZ 5.40 [default] [bluetooth]# power on [bluetooth]# Changing power on succeeded [bluetooth]# agent on [bluetooth]# Agent registered [bluetooth]# default-agent [bluetooth]# Default agent request successful [bluetooth]# scan on [bluetooth]# Discovery started [CHG] Controller 00:11:22:33:95:7F Discovering: yes [NEW] Device AA:BB:CC:A4:AA:CD My Bluetooth Speaker [NEW] Device 44:44:FF:2A:20:DC My Neighbor's TV … [bluetooth]# pair AA:BB:CC:A4:AA:CD Attempting to pair with AA:BB:CC:A4:AA:CD [CHG] Device AA:BB:CC:A4:AA:CD Connected: yes [My Bluetooth Speaker]# [CHG] Device AA:BB:CC:A4:AA:CD UUIDs: 0000110b-0000-1000-8000-00xxxxxxxxxx [CHG] Device AA:BB:CC:A4:AA:CD UUIDs: 0000110c-0000-1000-8000-00xxxxxxxxxx [CHG] Device AA:BB:CC:A4:AA:CD UUIDs: 0000110e-0000-1000-8000-00xxxxxxxxxx [CHG] Device AA:BB:CC:A4:AA:CD Paired: yes Pairing successful [CHG] Device AA:BB:CC:A4:AA:CD Connected: no [bluetooth]# [bluetooth]# trust AA:BB:CC:A4:AA:CD [bluetooth]# [CHG] Device AA:BB:CC:A4:AA:CD Trusted: yes Changing AA:BB:CC:A4:AA:CD trust succeeded [bluetooth]# [bluetooth]# connect AA:BB:CC:A4:AA:CD Attempting to connect to AA:BB:CC:A4:AA:CD [bluetooth]# [CHG] Device AA:BB:CC:A4:AA:CD RSSI: -63 [CHG] Device AA:BB:CC:A4:AA:CD Connected: yes Connection successful [My Bluetooth Speaker]# scan off [CHG] Device AA:BB:CC:A4:AA:CD RSSI is nil Discovery stopped [CHG] Controller 00:11:22:33:95:7F Discovering: no
Congratulations, you can now automatically connect to your Bluetooth speaker!
It is now time to configure ALSA to use the bluealsa Bluetooth
module, so that you can define an ALSA pcm device corresponding to your
Bluetooth speaker. For a headless server using bluealsa with a
fixed Bluetooth device is likely simpler than configuring Pulseaudio and
its stream switching behavior. We configure ALSA by crafting a custom
alsa-configuration for the alsa-service-type. The
configuration will declare a pcm type bluealsa from the
bluealsa module provided by the bluez-alsa package, and
then define a pcm device of that type for your Bluetooth speaker.
All that is left then is to make MPD send audio data to this ALSA device. We also add a secondary MPD output that makes the currently played audio files available as a stream through a web server on port 8080. When enabled a device on the network could listen to the audio stream by connecting any capable media player to the HTTP server on port 8080, independent of the status of the Bluetooth speaker.
What follows is the outline of an operating-system declaration
that should accomplish the above-mentioned tasks:
(use-modules (gnu)) (use-service-modules audio dbus sound #;… etc) (use-package-modules audio linux #;… etc) (operating-system ;; … (packages (cons* bluez bluez-alsa %base-packages)) (services ;; … (service mpd-service-type (mpd-configuration (user "your-username") (music-dir "/path/to/your/music") (address "192.168.178.20") (outputs (list (mpd-output (type "alsa") (name "MPD") (extra-options ;; Use the same name as in the ALSA ;; configuration below. '((device . "pcm.btspeaker")))) (mpd-output (type "httpd") (name "streaming") (enabled? #false) (always-on? #true) (tags? #true) (mixer-type 'null) (extra-options '((encoder . "vorbis") (port . "8080") (bind-to-address . "192.168.178.20") (max-clients . "0") ;no limit (quality . "5.0") (format . "44100:16:1")))))))) (dbus-service #:services (list bluez-alsa)) (bluetooth-service #:auto-enable? #t) (service alsa-service-type (alsa-configuration (pulseaudio? #false) ;we don't need it (extra-options #~(string-append "\ # Declare Bluetooth audio device type \"bluealsa\" from bluealsa module pcm_type.bluealsa { lib \"" #$(file-append bluez-alsa "/lib/alsa-lib/libasound_module_pcm_bluealsa.so") "\" } # Declare control device type \"bluealsa\" from the same module ctl_type.bluealsa { lib \"" #$(file-append bluez-alsa "/lib/alsa-lib/libasound_module_ctl_bluealsa.so") "\" } # Define the actual Bluetooth audio device. pcm.btspeaker { type bluealsa device \"AA:BB:CC:A4:AA:CD\" # unique device identifier profile \"a2dp\" } # Define an associated controller. ctl.btspeaker { type bluealsa } "))))))
Enjoy the music with the MPD client of your choice or a media player capable of streaming via HTTP!
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