Raspberry Pi Piandora

Raspberry Pi GUI for pianobar. Pianobar is a client for Pandora. Piandora is to be used with a touchscreen. Either a 3.5 or larger. The required resolution is 640x430

Raspberry pi setup

Download the full raspbian stretch image and burn to a 8GB or bigger SD card. To start you should be able to SSH to the Raspberry Pi and also use the remote connection VNC. After burning the image create an empty file called ssh in the boot folder of the SD card. Also create a file called wpa_supplicant.conf and include your WIFI credentials.

ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicantGROUP=netdev
update_config=1
country=US
  
network={
ssid="RouterName"
psk="password"
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
}

Power ON the Pi and try connecting to it with SSH. Use pi@raspberrypi.local for the IP address or find the IP in your network with FING, an android App.

You do not need the screen connected at this time. You can also run piandora without a touchscreen but you will have to change the Raspberry resolution to 640x480 and use VNC for controls.

After the Pi boots up, you need to turn ON the VNC server on the pi using SSH.

sudo raspi-config

Go to interfacing Options and enable VNC. Also change the resolution to 640x480, then exit and reboot..

Now connect to the Pi with VNC viewer from your computer and finish setting up your time zone and keyboard type. Use raspberrypi.local as the IP and raspberry as the password. Finish with the location and new password setup. At this time you should change the hostname from Raspberry Pi to piandora. Go to Preferences and Raspberry Pi configuration. Now piandora.local will be your IP address.

Enter the terminal screen and upgrade if needed.

sudo apt-get update 
sudo apt-get upgrade

Installation

After the upgrade, you are ready for the installation.

You need to clone Piandora to home directory on the Pi.

git clone https://github.com/granpino/Piandora.git
cd Piandora
chmod +x *.sh 
sudo ./install.sh

The installation will install the required files. Now open the config file and enter your Pandora credentials.

sudo nano ~/.config/pianobar/config

To test pianobar enter

pianobar

Select the desired station. To exit type q. If you hear the audio you are ready for the next step. If you do not hear audio and get a Unknown PCM cards error it is because you do not have the right audio output selected. Right-click on the speaker icon at the right top of the desktop and see which output you are using. To test your speakers type.

aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav

The Desktop Icon

The installation file will create shortcut on the desktop. To open the Piandora, double tap on the shortcut.

To change the desktop for a single click go to file manager, click on Edit and at the very bottom select preferences. Select 'open files with single click'.

The application uses Pygame and the touchscreen will only run under lx-terminal. If you run the application from SSH, it will not work properly.

Bluetooth setup

To setup bluetooth, go to the Raspberry desktop and click on the Bluetooth icon then add device. Select your Bluetooth speaker and pair. Some speakers will require a password, sometimes 0000. You will need a mouse to righ-click on the speaker icon on the menu to connect. To see if the bluetooth is setup type alsamixer and you should see your speaker.

alsamixer

LCD Drivers

Now install the LCD drivers provided with your LCD. Most of the problems related to LCD screens are related to the drivers.

If no drivers were included, you might try LCD-show

sudo git clone https://github.com/goodtft/LCD-show.git
cd LCD-show 
sudo ./MPI3508-show

The resolution required by the script is 640x430. The driver will probably use 480x320. You will have to change this at the bottom of the config.txt file located in the boot directory.

sudo nano /boot/config.txt

Go to the bottom of the file and change the resolution to 640 430