MMM-MplayerRadio

This module plays .m3u playlists with the system mplayer instance. It is possible to use other players as well. There are several wrapper included (i.e. for vlc).

Multiple stations are supported and can be switched either by notification or touch control. The currently played station is highlighted. If the radio station provides stream info (current song, studio hotline, etc.) the information will be displayed, too.
Different stations can be used in different profiles (profile string in configuration).

Currently mplayer has a lot of problems and is not able to play streams properly. Also there is a problem that there is no sound on some devices since Rasperry OS moved to PulsAudio instead auf ALSA (December 2020). To avoid this problems i strongly suggest to use the VLC player instaed. In consequence no stream information will be provided in versions 0.0.X of this module. In version 0.1.X and above stream information will be provided if the vlcWrapper.bash is used. There is an description in the configuration section on how to change to the VLC player!

If you want to use the volume buttons please make sure to install the https://github.com/Anonym-tsk/MMM-Volume module.

Most of my stations are listed at http://www.surfmusik.de. This site provides mostly an m3u-file of the stations for external players. Simple choose the station you like, listen to it in the browser of your choice and right click on the "External Player" link. Copy the link and add it to your configuration. The logos of the stations can be choosen by url (good resource https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Radio_station_logos_of_Germany). If no logo is specified an dummy is used.

Hint: It may be possible to play any songs you like by creating an .m3u file of them and adding the file to local public folder. But i did not test this.

Screenshots

In Action

Installation

System

Mplayer

I suggest to use the vlcWrapper.bash instead!

Make sure you installed mplayer on your system. Simple type the following command

    mplayer

The output should look like

    MPlayer 1.3.0 (Debian), built with gcc-8 (C) 2000-2016 MPlayer Team

If there is something like

    -bash: mplayer: command not found

Install the player with

    sudo apt update && sudo apt install mplayer

Asound

DEPRECATED! As of the release of Rasperry OS in December 2020 the audio system has been changed from ALSA to PulseAudio and this configuration is not needed anymore! I use an Hifiberry DAC device as audio output. You might need to add an asound.conf to get sound output on the mirror. This is my file "/etc/asound.conf"

    pcm.!default  {
        type hw card 0
    }
    ctl.!default {
        type hw card 0
    }

You can try it without an asound.conf. If you get no sound try adding this one and restart the pi.

Module

    cd ~/MagicMirror/modules
    git clone https://github.com/Tom-Hirschberger/MMM-MplayerRadio.git
    cd MMM-MplayerRadio
    npm install

Configuration

    {
   module: "MMM-MplayerRadio",
   header: "Radio",
   position: "top_center",
   config: {
    //autoplay: 0,
    stations: [
     {
      title: "Antenne.de",
      url: "http://play.antenne.de/antenne.m3u",
      logo: "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Antenne-bayern-logo.png",
     },
     {
      title: "Bayern 3",
      url: "https://streams.br.de/bayern3_1.m3u",
      logo: "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/thumb/d/d3/Bayern_3.svg/200px-Bayern_3.svg.png",
     },
     {
      title: "Rock Antenne",
      url: "http://play.rockantenne.de/rockantenne.m3u",
      logo: "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Rock_Antenne_Logo_2017.svg/200px-Rock_Antenne_Logo_2017.svg.png",
     }
    ],
   },
  },

VLC Player instead of Mplayer

As mentioned above mplayer has a lot of problems to play streams currently. My personal suggestion is to switch to VLC player instead by setting a custom command in the configuration section. First check if VLC is installed or install it if needed:

  sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y vlc

Basically you only need to add two lines to the configuration (CUSTOM_COMMAND, CUSTOM_COMMAND_ARGS). Make sure to set the path of the wrapper to the path of your installation. It is ./modules/MMM-MplayerRadio/scripts/vlcWrapper.bash in usual installations but may be different in your case:

  customCommand: "./modules/MMM-MplayerRadio/scripts/vlcWrapper.bash",
  customCommandArgs: ["###URL###"],

The example configuration from above then looks like:

    {
   module: "MMM-MplayerRadio",
   header: "Radio",
   position: "top_center",
   config: {
    customCommand: "./modules/MMM-MplayerRadio/scripts/vlcWrapper.bash",
    customCommandArgs: ["###URL###"],
    //autoplay: 0,
    stations: [
     {
      title: "Antenne.de",
      url: "http://play.antenne.de/antenne.m3u",
      logo: "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Antenne-bayern-logo.png",
     },
     {
      title: "Bayern 3",
      url: "https://streams.br.de/bayern3_1.m3u",
      logo: "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/thumb/d/d3/Bayern_3.svg/200px-Bayern_3.svg.png",
     },
     {
      title: "Rock Antenne",
      url: "http://play.rockantenne.de/rockantenne.m3u",
      logo: "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Rock_Antenne_Logo_2017.svg/200px-Rock_Antenne_Logo_2017.svg.png",
     }
    ],
    displayStationsOnStartup: true
   },
  },

Stream information is only provided if you use version 0.1.X and above of this module!

If you do want to set the volume of vlc before a stream gets started you can use the vlcPaWrapper.bash wrapper do this. You can set the wrapper either in the general configuration or for a single station. To use the wrapper you first need to download and compile the pa_volume binary which can be found at https://github.com/rhaas80/pa_volume.

cd ~/

sudo apt-get install -y make pkg-config libpulse-dev pandoc

git clone https://github.com/rhaas80/pa_volume.git
cd pa_volume/
make

sudo mv pa_volume /usr/local/sbin
sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/sbin/pa_volume

After this process should have the binary pa_volume in the directory /usr/local/sbin. The first argument for the wrapper call will be the new volume, the second the stream to play.

This example will start the wrapper and plays the "Antenne Bayern" station with a volume of 50%:

./modules/MMM-MplayerRadio/scripts/vlcPaWrapper.bash 50 "http://play.antenne.de/antenne.m3u"

The custom commands configuration then will look something like:

  customCommand: "./modules/MMM-MplayerRadio/scripts/vlcPaWrapper.bash",
  customCommandArgs: ["50", "###URL###"],

Both the vlcWrapper.bash and vlcPaWrapper.bash support adding additonal custom arguments that will be added to the vlc command line. If you i.e. want vlc to ignore certificate errors while connecting to a https stream you can set the option --http-no-ssl-verify like in this example:

  customCommand: "./modules/MMM-MplayerRadio/scripts/vlcWrapper.bash",
  customCommandArgs: ["###URL###","--http-no-ssl-verify"],

XMMS2

If you prefere xmms2 to play the radio streams instead of mplayer you will find an custom script "playRadio.bash" in the scripts folder. There is a example config in the examples directory, too.

STREAMLINK

If you want to listen to a stream which does not send continously you may want to use the streamlinkWrapper.bash script in the scripts directory. It supports auto reconnects. An example config can be found in the examples directory. The first option is the time to wait for the stream to send data. The second option is the time to wait between to reconnect attempts. And the third is the url of the stream.

Make sure to install streamlink i.e. with these commands:

sudo apt -y update && sudo apt -y install streamlink

HiFiBerryOS

There is included a wrapper to control a remote instance of HiFiBerryOS in the scripts directory now.
Make sure to setup password-less ssh with key authentication to to the host running HiFiBerryOS first (i.e. with this tutorial https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-configure-ssh-key-based-authentication-on-a-linux-server).
Make sure to use mp3 streams instead of m3u!

The proper module configuration will look something like (replace "hifiberry.local" with the hostname or ip of the HiFiBerryOS host):

  {
     module: "MMM-MplayerRadio",
     header: "Radio",
     position: "top_center",
     config: {
       customCommand: "./modules/MMM-MplayerRadio/scripts/hifiberryOS.bash",
       customCommandArgs: ["###URL###", "root", "hifiberry.local", "2"],
       stations: [
          {
            title: "Rock Antenne",
            url: "https://stream.rockantenne.de/rockantenne/stream/mp3",
            logo: "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Rock_Antenne_Logo_2017.svg/200px-Rock_Antenne_Logo_2017.svg.png",
          },
       ],
     },
  },

In this setup the user root is used to connect to HiFiBerryOS (which is the default user of HiFiBerryOS) and the check if the station is still played will run all 2 seconds.

If you want to use the MMM-Volume module to control the volume you can make use of the build in REST-API with the following configuration (and again replace "hifiberry.local" with the hostname or ip of the HiFiBerryOS host):

  {
    module: "MMM-Volume",
    position: "top_left", // It is meaningless. but you should set.
    config: {
      setVolumeScript: `curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"percent":"#VOLUME#"}' http://hifiberry.local:81/api/volume`,
      getVolumeScript: `curl -sX GET http://hifiberry.local:81/api/volume | grep -oE "[[:digit:]]+\.[[:digit:]]" | grep -oE "^[^\.]+"`,
      usePresetScript: null,
    }
  },

General

The custom commands either can be configured in the global module configuration and then will be used for all stations or it can be configured for each station individually!

Stations

Supported Notifications