NanoPi NEO Music Player – The Ultra Cheap

Extra lack of options on this one, I’m going to be using the onboard DAC.  The question came up from one of my friends that wants a small music player for sleeping purposes and doesn’t need the extra bulk.

This is essentially a much easier route, very little fooling around has to happen.

This entry assumes you looked through the more elaborate one to get the I2S DAC working.  If something seems poorly explained, look there to verify.

OS Installation

Same OS, Debian-based Armbian.  Easy setup and install, no issues there.  I am assuming the reader can handle SSH.  I then installed MPD and Samba

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install mpd
sudo apt-get install samba

There Is No Hard Part

Seriously.  Type in “aplay -l”, the first device will be the one you want to add to /etc/mpd.conf

MPD Configuration

Configuring MPD is quite simple, assuming you know your way around a linux command line and nano.  (I assume, if you got this far, you’re good)

The MPD config file lives in /etc/mpd.conf

As before, this is a minimalist “how to get it working” writeup.  For more details about cool stuff you can do:  MPD User Manual.

sudo nano /etc/mpd.conf

Open mpd.conf for editing.  Look around, there are a lot of things that live in there.  The only 2 we’re going to look at today are music_directory and audio_output.

The music_directory entry is straightforward, put in the path to your music on the device.  In my case, I use a central file and media server, which MPD can handle without a mount point.  In the case of a windows network drive (samba), you simply type in

music_directory "smb://ServerName/path/to/music/"

The audio_output entry is the really important one, and has some tricks.

audio_output {
        type            "alsa"
        name            "My ALSA Device"
        device          "hw:0,0"        
        mixer_type      "software"      
        format          "*:32:2"
}

Your settings should look like this, we’re using the default output device.  

Hardware mixer didn’t work, so I went to software.  Again, you could use no mixer, but you lose the ability to control it from clients.

So, I had trouble with the “format” line.  The driver appears to have trouble scaling inputs, so  some songs were *very* quiet.  So, like before I made MPD change them all to 32-bit and threw that at the driver.  It seems to work, but be aware it may not be ideal.

Using The Thing

Well, that was simple enough.  Now you just need to hook a plug to the audio out port on your NanoPi NEO and send that to an amplifier.  See FriendlyElec diagram below, bottom left is the callout for the line out pins.

Something to note:  The audio header is *not* 0.1″ spaced like all the other headers.  I had to just solder wires to it.