Successful quick install on latest Raspberry Pi 2

[YellowLemon1]

Hi! The latest airsonos v0.2.4 works great on a new Raspberry Pi 2 as of November 2015 - using a much faster method than the beaglebone method described on the other thread which involved compiling node from source - I'm doing this writeup for total noobs like me.

COMMENTS/RESOLVED ISSUES

• This now works with node 4.2.2+ as of airsonos version 0.2.4. ALAC support has also been added supposedly.
• Rather than compile node from scratch using the 'beaglebone method' which took 1-2 hours on the poor pi, I used this precompiled version from nodesource as per instructions here: http://joshondesign.com/2013/10/23/noderpi
• After getting airsonos running I would see "Searching for Sonos devices on network..." but no speaker devices would ever show up. The solution was: getting rid of the "BRIDGE" device in my SONOS system. Airsonos seems to only work if you have an actual speaker plugged in by ethernet OR using the standard WiFi setup which was recently introduced by SONOS. The Bridge must be blocking/dropping the broadcast packets rather than sending them into "SONOS-NET" where all my Sonos speakers reside.

See identical issue here: #30

I tried all these solutions to get it to work with the 'Bridge' with no success:
#125
#135
bencevans/node-sonos#73

If you really need to use a Sonos Bridge you could try hardcoding the Sonos speakers IP addresses like this:
#79
also see here: #88

STEP BY STEP INSTRUCTIONS

1. Buy Raspberry pi 2 and case, 4GB+ microSD card, and USB power adapter. Install Raspbian "Jessie" on the microSD card as per instructions with the raspberry

2. Use puTTY to SSH into the Raspberry's IP address - it's hostname is 'raspberrypi' if you check on the DHCP leases on your router.

3. Type the following commands (I did all this as sudo su)
   sudo su
raspi-config =basic initial Raspberry setup, overclock etc.
   apt-get update =update raspberry
   apt-get upgrade
apt-get install libavahi-compat-libdnssd-dev =install avahi needed for airsonos
   curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup | sudo bash - =add nodesource to sources
   curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_4.x | bash - *=install node v4.x.x

4. Log out/in to get the PATH right.

5. Use node -v to check version, make sure node is working OK.

6. Now install airsonos with:

sudo su
npm install airsonos -g
airsonos

It should look like this:

And it all works perfectly from here!

To have airsonos start on startup:

sudo nano /etc/rc.local
And add a line:
sudo /usr/bin/airsonos &
Save, reboot.

Check airsonos is running with:
ps aux

Reference: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/linux/usage/rc-local.md

Thank you Stephen for this great software.

PS I also got one of these tiny Raspberry Pi Hat Screens that work great with the official red/white raspberry case - now I can monitor the status of airsonos straight on the device at a glance, to make sure it picked up all my speakers, cost <$40, link here: http://www.4dsystems.com.au/product/4DPi-24-HAT/

[Htaborda]

Shouldn't it be "curl -sL ...." instead of "url -sL...." ?

[YellowLemon1]

Yes thank you, I corrected it now.

[Muurtegel]

Great tutorial, thank you! Installation finally worked for me!

Unfortunately Airsonos still doesn't work correctly over here. Although 1 device tunnel is set up, I don't see any devices in my airplay. Anyone else experiencing this?

Edit: It didn't work when I started Airsonos from SSH. But adding it to the rc.local file and then rebooting did the trick. My iPhone hasn't found the speaker yet, but my macbook is currently streaming without any problems.

Thanks again!

[jsnoble7]

@Muurtegel If your iDevices are running iOS9, then that is a known issue with Nodetunes that is being worked through by a few excellent people. Hopefully close to being resolved. (See here: stephen/nodetunes#1)

[Muurtegel]

That might explain thins. I am updated to iOS 9. Thanks for the info!

[garz75]

Hi, I just followed the instructions and everything went fine. Airsonos works, it discovers my two sonos, The playback from an iPhone or Mac works correctly for a while, then it starts skipping... Is the Raspberry Pi 2 powerful enough to decode/transcode the audio steams ? I would think so... using top, I see that node is using 100% CPU of one core (25% overall CPU usage...). Due to the single-thread nature of node, am I hitting a CPU performance bottleneck ? I use the Raspbian, with the latest updates. @YellowLemon1 what OS do you use on the RPI? Do you see the same issue with your setup ?

[edited] I tried with both an ethernet and wifi connexion to rule out other hardware problems. My Raspberry is not overclocked (700MHZ).

[jsnoble7]

Elsewhere, it's been discussed that upgrading your Pi to Raspbian Jessie (as opposed to Wheezy), and also using Node 4.2.1 works perfectly. And that's what I'm running and it's all working sweetly for me.

On 16 Nov 2015, at 12:36 PM, garz75 notifications@github.com wrote:

Hi, I just followed the instructions and everything went fine. Airsonos works, it discovers my two sonos, The playback from an iPhone or Mac works correctly for a while, then it starts skipping... Is the Raspberry Pi 2 powerful enough to decode/transcode the audio steams ? I would think so... using top, I see that node is using 100% CPU of one core (25% overall CPU usage...). Due to the single-thread nature of node, am I hitting a CPU performance bottleneck ? I use the Raspbian, with the latest updates. @YellowLemon1 what OS do you use on the RPI? Do you see the same issue with your setup ?

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[YellowLemon1]

Hi @garz75 I am on the (now old) Wheezy with R Pi 2 and no such problems. Are you sure you have R Pi 2 and not the older model since RPi 2 runs standard at 900 Mhz not 700 Mhz also I get no overclocking options on RPi 2 I think you might be using RPi 1?

[garz75]

I bought a kit from canakit, the label on the box says Raspberry Pi 2 Model B 1 GB

$ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 948120 907092 41028 0 111448 481688
-/+ buffers/cache: 313956 634164
Swap: 102396 0 102396

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
model name : ARMv7 Processor rev 5 (v7l)
BogoMIPS : 38.40
Features : half thumb fastmult vfp edsp neon vfpv3 tls vfpv4 idiva idivt vfpd32 lpae evtstrm
CPU implementer : 0x41
CPU architecture: 7
CPU variant : 0x0
CPU part : 0xc07
CPU revision : 5

..
..
..
..

Hardware : BCM2709
Revision : a01041
Serial : 0000000095506e5f

Looks like an RPI2 Model B doesn't it ?

However, it looks like my PI was under clocked:

$ grep freq /boot/config.txt
arm_freq=700
core_freq=250
sdram_freq=400

$cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/cpuinfo_max_freq
700000

I guess I did something wrong with raspi-config...

I upgraded to Raspbian Jessie, and commented out the *_freq entries in /boot/config.txt
I got 900000 in cpuinfo_cur_freq, the CPU was less loaded (75% / 80% of a core), but I was still getting some skipping and lag, although much less than before, using node v0.10.40 from deb.nodesource.com

I am currently trying node 4.2.2 from https://deb.nodesource.com/ : no problem after 15 minutes... the CPU load is lower (50-60% of one core)... I think I fixed my problem...

Thank you @YellowLemon1 and @jsnoble7

Hi @garz75. Thanks a lot for your hint. My Pi2 was skipping as well. Now with node.js 4.2.2 instead of 0.10.40 it works fine!

[rmustard]

I was successful with node.js 4.2.2 on Raspbian Jessie

Basically the instructions above, but install 4.x using
curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_4.x | bash -

I saw this warning while installing forcing me to install using apt-get install nodejs and then confirm twice.
WARNING: The following packages cannot be authenticated!
rlwrap

[YellowLemon1]

Thanks @garz75 @Bernte83 @rmustard for the info, I have updated the instructions in the first post to use node v4.x.x because this now works well with the latest airsonos version 0.2.4+

I am getting CPU load around ~30-60% on my Pi2 with a single stream going, no skips, no problems.

[sportsnapper]

Great instructions. Worked first time, and also on iOS9 - which gave me issues before....