Raspberry pi multi room

nikonD60maty

nikonD60maty

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Mathew
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Hi everyone. So recently I have looked into setting up a multi room audio system using raspberry pi's as the source and ceiling mounted speakers. I'm very new to the idea and need some computer genius' to point me in the right direction as to components needed and software I can use. The dream is to stream different music in each room via phones or tablets. There will be 4 speakers I. Total (1 in each room) and one or more 'pi's' if needed. I realise to some people this is a strange topic but to those of you who are a whiz on a computer will know what I'm talking about.

I'm sure I've missed out some information that is needed, but my intention for this post is to see if anyone has any idea of what I'm talking about.

Ps. I'm in the building trade so if I need to get cables anywhere in the house, chasing out wall etc is not a problem.
 
Or just use apple airport express for £50 each, source can be iTunes or iOS phones. Can't remember if android phones can now send music to airplay speakers
 
neil_g said:
Might get more of a response in the computers and tech section in this one.
Click to expand...

Agree, ask an admin to move to that section.

First thoughts off the top of my head though, XBMC for the software (it can be controlled via phone/tablet).

Where are you going to store the music files? on a network drive or a USB drive attached to the pi?

You may need multiple pi's as I'm not sure one would be capable of playing 4 different music files at once. Maybe have one pi as a file server (assuming you don't already have a NAS box or something acting as one), others as media servers pointing at the file server over the network.

Not sure this is the 'best' solution for streaming music around a house but it's certainly an interesting project in any case.

Take a look at this link, you may find it useful:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Raspberry-Pi-Multi-Room-Audio-MobileTabletPC-Contr/

Oh, and good luck with it.
 
Ah brilliant. Ok so can admin move this to the relevant forum please.

Thanks for the help and links guys. Will have a little but more of a look and try and understand how it's all going to work.
 
Hi everyone. So recently I have looked into setting up a multi room audio system using raspberry pi's as the source and ceiling mounted speakers. I'm very new to the idea and need some computer genius' to point me in the right direction as to components needed and software I can use. The dream is to stream different music in each room via phones or tablets. There will be 4 speakers I. Total (1 in each room) and one or more 'pi's' if needed. I realise to some people this is a strange topic but to those of you who are a whiz on a computer will know what I'm talking about.

I'm sure I've missed out some information that is needed, but my intention for this post is to see if anyone has any idea of what I'm talking about.

Ps. I'm in the building trade so if I need to get cables anywhere in the house, chasing out wall etc is not a problem.
 
As I said before, if you want something simple to work really well. Apple airport express with PC speakers or airplay speakers control from iTunes, iOS or android.

If you really must build it yourself, what will the source be? How do you think it will run?
 
Dale_tem said:
If you really must build it yourself, what will the source be? How do you think it will run?
Click to expand...

As a little project and a bit of fun for me and my son, as I have a couple of PI's lying around I took a little look into this.

The source could be Logitech Media Server (used for their Sqeezebox devices) running on a PC/NAS/Linux/Raspberry PI.

The Sqeezebox player is available as software only, Softsqeeze for Windows/Linux and Sqeezelite for the Raspberry PI. It can be run as a headless system and controlled by a mobile/tablet/web.

The 'server' can be accessed via a web frontend to synchronize playback to multiple devices at one (for a party etc) or each player could be controlled independently.

Providing everything is networked correctly and the Raspberry's are configured/named with some thought it doesn't look too complicated, in theory anyway ;) It appears the onboard soundcard of the PI may not give the best sound quality but a USB soundcard is cheap enough at around a tenner.
 
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