Streaming internet radio when browsing for games and on screensaver?
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@mitu Thank you for your response...would anyone be able to do this ...im a coding noob!
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@pipesfranco Is the page I gave as an example simple enough ? I might replicate it and add explicitly the commands needed.
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@mitu Thank you so much, you rock buddy :)
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@pipesfranco since I don't have the RPI at hand now, I'll get back to you tomorrow, so I can test the scripts first.
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@mitu Thats great thanks mitu :)
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This is my station of choice, C64 remixes https://www.slayradio.org/home.php#news
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Ok, here it goes.
All credit goes to @synack for putting together the easiest method for playing mp3's while in emulationstation. The steps have been summarized by @MapleStory here and I only replaced the mpg123 command with vlc.
NOTE: I tested the instructions below only on a Raspberry PI system installed from the RetroPie. image, so YMMV.The steps must be executed either logged in to the RetroPie system via SSH or by exiting EmulationStation and dropping down to a command prompt.
Playing a radio internet stream in the background
Pre-requisites
The instructions assume you have VLC and socat installed on the RetroPie system. The RetroPie setup script already installs VLC, but the latter must be installed explicitely. The command to install the packages is (copy paste in the SSH/terminal session logged in as the
pi
user):sudo apt-get -y install vlc-nox socat
Step 1
Edit
/opt/retropie/configs/all/autostart.sh
to add the command for music playing:sudo nano /opt/retropie/configs/all/autostart.sh
Once in nano, hit enter to create a line break above
emulationstation #auto
. Go up to the blank line and type/paste the following:while pgrep omxplayer >/dev/null; do sleep 1; done (sleep 10; [[ -f /home/pi/radio/list.txt ]] && vlc -I oldrc --rc-fake-tty --rc-unix /tmp/radio.sock -Zq --no-video /home/pi/radio/list.txt >/dev/null 2>&1) &
Hit CTRL+O followed by Enter to save the file and CTRL+X to quit nano back to terminal.
Step 2
Edit the on-start file to stop the music playing once a game is started
Execute the following command to edit the on-start script file
sudo nano /opt/retropie/configs/all/runcommand-onstart.sh
Once inside, type/paste the following:
echo -n pause | socat -u - unix-client:/tmp/radio.sock >/dev/null 2>&1
Hit CTRL+O followed by Enter to save the file and CTRL+X to quit nano back to terminal.
Edit the on-end file to start back the music once a game is finished.
Execute the following command to edit the on-end script file:
sudo nano /opt/retropie/configs/all/runcommand-onend.sh
Once inside, type/paste the following:
echo -n pause | socat -u - unix-client:/tmp/radio.sock >/dev/null 2>&1
Hit CTRL+O followed by Enter to save the file and CTRL+X to quit nano back to terminal.
Step 3
Edit your
.bashrc
so that music is stopped once you stop EmulationStation and drop to the CLI. Execute the following command:nano /home/pi/.bashrc
Once inside, scroll to the very bottom of the file and create a line break under
retropie_welcome
but above# RETROPIE PROFILE END
and type/paste the following:[[ $(tty) == "/dev/tty1" ]] && (echo -n quit | echo -n quit | socat -u - unix-client:/tmp/radio.sock >/dev/null 2>&1)
Step 4
Create the radio playlist folder and the input file:
mkdir /home/pi/radio touch /home/pi/radio/list.txt
Optional
Adding the SLAY Radio High def stream to the file:echo "https://relay3.slayradio.org:8000" >> /home/pi/radio/list.txt
And this is basically it. Add the URLs to the radio strreams in the
list.txt
file, one URL per line. You can do this while logged in via SSH on the RetroPie system by usingnano
to edit the file:nano /home/pi/radio/list.txt
then add the HTTP URLs one per line with copy/paste.
NOTE: URLs ending with
m3u
are not accepted by vlc, you have to download them first (they're just text files) and look-up the correct URL from them3u
file. For instance, thehttps://www.slayradio.org/tune_in.php/128kbps/slayradio.128.m3u
file contains:#EXTM3U #EXTINF:-1,SLAY Radio - 128kbps, relay2 [shoutcast - kork] http://relay2.slayradio.org:8000/ #EXTINF:-1,SLAY Radio - 128kbps, relay3 [shoutcast - farsan] http://relay3.slayradio.org:8000/ #EXTINF:-1,SLAY Radio - 128kbps, relay1 [shoutcast - elpost] http://relay1.slayradio.org:8000/ #EXTINF:-1,SLAY Radio - 128kbps, relay4 [icecast - icepic] http://relay4.slayradio.org:8000/
The correct URL to add in the
list.txt
file would be one of thehttp...
entries.Finally, reboot the system from the EmulationStation menus and enjoy.
Addendum
The vlc command will play randomly one of the radio streams in the file. If you want to have a new radio stream played every time you return from a game, then add the following line in Step 2, in the on-end script:
echo -n next | socat -u - unix-client:/tmp/radio.sock >/dev/null 2>&1
If you want to stop the background music, just rename or remove the
/home/pi/radio/list.txt
file, then modify the files/opt/retropie/configs/all/runcommand-onstart.sh
and/opt/retropie/configs/all/runcommand-onebd.sh
and remove the line added in Step 2. -
This would be a great addition to the Wiki :)
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@mitu This is cool. There is a script to toggle background music on / off. You could change this to toggle the radio on / off.
#!/bin/bash #Toggle to start / stop any Music Player or Video Player command="mpg123" pids="$( pgrep "$command" )" #if [[ -z "$pids" ]]; then # printf '"%s" is not running\n' "$command" >&2 # exit 1 #fi for pid in $pids; do state="$( ps -ostate= -p "$pid" )" stopped=0 case "$state" in *T*) stopped=1 ;; esac if (( stopped )); then kill -s CONT "$pid" # printf '"%s" (%d) has been unpaused\n' "$command" "$pid" else kill -s STOP "$pid" # printf '"%s" (%d) has been paused\n' "$command" "$pid" fi done
I wish I could remember who wrote it so I could give them credit.
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@jonnykesh It's quite similar to the method in the topic I mentioned first, so it might have originated there.
I used thevlc
control-over-unix-socket method instead of the script because it gives more control over how the playlist should be played - you can jump to the next radio station in the playlist when going back to ES from a game. -
This is awesome thank you so much for your help :)
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One last thought guys...is there anyway to make the radio fade out rather than cut out once a game is selected and fade back in when you exit a game?
No big issue but just a thought?
Thanks again
:)
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@pipesfranco I actually tried adding a cross-fade effect when stopping/resuming vlc, but it does not support that. Various searches on the interwebs show that it's not implemented in currently (see for instance this ticket).
I'll see if we can find an alternative to VLC that supports both streaming from internet radio sources and fade out/in for audio.
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Raspberry Pi 3B
2.4A power supply
Raspbian Stretch
RetroPie 4.3.1I haven't been able to get this working properly. I suspect there is a problem with my particular setup. I have RetroPie installed on top of Raspbian Stretch, which I know has issues.
Step 1 and 4 work fine for me. I was able to install everything, add my station (AI Radio), and get it to start playing automatically when emulationstation starts. However, step 2 and 3 are where everything falls apart.
The step 2
runcommand-onstart.sh
breaks my runcommand. The music keeps playing and my chosen emulator fails to launch. I tried copy-pasting. I tried typing by hand. I even looked at the other thread and used chmod to allow execution privileges for all. It didn't work. The files were newly created and no other commands were added.As for Step 3, my .bashrc doesn't have a
retropie_welcome
or#RETROPIE PROFILE END
Again, it is clear some people have gotten this working, so it is probably down to my particular setup. I'm just not sure what I did wrong.
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@nowarrivinghere Can you paste here the contents of the
/opt/retropie/configs/all/runcommand-onstart.sh
file ? It seems this is the stuff that breaks for you. -
@mitu
Sure. Here you goecho -n pause | nc -U /tmp/radio.sock >/dev/null 2>&1
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@nowarrivinghere You might be missing the
nc
utility. Does the command works if you run it in a terminal ? Just typenc
and see if you get any error. -
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ nc usage: nc [-46CDdFhklNnrStUuvZz] [-I length] [-i interval] [-O length] [-P proxy_username] [-p source_port] [-q seconds] [-s source] [-T toskeyword] [-V rtable] [-w timeout] [-X proxy_protocol] [-x proxy_address[:port]] [destination] [port]
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@nowarrivinghere So
netcat
is installed. What happens if you run the command from the onstart file manually, after ES is started and the music plays ? It should pause the music.echo -n pause | nc -U /tmp/radio.sock >/dev/null 2>&1
Can you run the command from a SSH session and see what's the outcome ? If it works (i.e. music is paused), try starting a game and (after you get thrown back to ES ) then paste the contents of the
/var/shm/runcommand.log
file, we might have some clues there. -
@jonnykesh said in Streaming internet radio when browsing for games and on screensaver?:
I wish I could remember who wrote it so I could give them credit.
Not written completly just modified a bit... but I introduced here.... with correspondending source ;)
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