aguileragit / kidsradio

Spotify Kid's Radio

kidsRadio

Required Hardware and Software

• HW: Pimoroni Pirate Radio from Adafruit
• SW: raspotify + this Git Repo + Tekore
• Paid Spotify account

Setup

Setup the RPi

Setup the RPi using the Pimoroni instructions. It will setup the audio, buttons, and leds.

You may need to install the Phat-beat libraries.

Install Raspotify. This will make the RPi a Spotify Device you can stream to.

Spotify

Setup Spotify for developers. Get Client ID and Secret.

Create a playlist for the kid's music.

The fun part

Export your Client ID and Secret as variables to the shell.

Run configTest2.py. This will allow you to login to Spotify and grant the Python app access. This will also create the tekore.cfg file that will allow constant access to the required Tokens.

I ran this on a seperate machine since the RPi is headless. The tekore.cfg file must then be copied over to the RPi via SSH.

Note you can remove the shell variables at this point

Edit the self.rPiSpotifyDevice with the ID of the RPi Radio. You can use the configured.py to list all your devices.

Get the playlist name by copying the link (Three dots) from the Spotify App/Web and paste to a text file. Extract the playlist ID (first set of numbers/letters).

Stop the process cleanshutd from running. This will force the rPi to reboot.

Just a player

One issue I've run into is the RPi only acts like a player after it's been found by Spotify. In order words, you have to go find the RPi Spotify Device in the Spotify App. It's unclear how long Spotify is aware of the player. It seems from time to time, the RPi player disappears. The app then crashes since it relies on the RPi player being present.

References

• https://github.com/pimoroni/phat-beat/tree/91821cf0ba05465d23c241694ba0b5a66986f711
• https://forums.pimoroni.com/t/phatbeat-library-clash-with-cleanshutdown/6675
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/47291633/repeating-a-function-in-a-background-thread-every-n-seconds