How to stream media to your Raspberry Pi
Using AirPlay via rPlay!
Have you ever wanted to stream music, video or even your screen to your TV? You can do this with an Apple TV, but you may not have one, or want to spend out on one. You may already own a device capable of doing this though- a Raspberry Pi.
VMLite have recently developed some software called rPlay, which allows you to use a Raspberry Pi as an AirPlay device. Previously, you could use an XBMC based OS, like OpenELEC or Raspbmc to stream music, and video although unreliably. But rPlay is different, it actually works well and even lets you use the AirPlay Mirroring functionality, so you can mirror your iDevice or Mac screen to your Pi wirelessly! (Using AirAudio on Google Play, you can stream from your Android device to AirPlay speakers too!)
If you would like to try it out yourself, here’s what you need to do:
- Flash an SD Card with the latest version of Raspbian (You can find instructions on raspberrypi.org on how to do this) and connect to the Internet, a power supply and a screen.
- Make sure everything is up to date:
sudo rpi-update
sudo apt-get update
3. Allocate more RAM to the GPU:
sudo raspi-config
Select ‘memory_split’ and change the value to 256.
4. Install the dependencies:
sudo apt-get install libao-dev avahi-utils libavahi-compat-libdnssd-dev libva-dev youtube-dl
sudo youtube-dl —update
5. Download and Install rPlay from the VMLite site:
wget -O rplay-1.0.1-armhf.deb http://www.vmlite.com/rplay/rplay-1.0.1-armhf.deb
sudo dpkg -i rplay-1.0.1-armhf.deb
6. Reboot
sudo reboot
After the device has rebooted, it should start working automatically! Just look for the AirPlay device from an iOS device or a Mac and start streaming!
7. To enable AirPlay Mirroring, you need to have a license key. You can receive one for free by emailing info@vmlite.com.
Once you have obtained a key, visit the Pi’s IP Address on Port 7100 on any browser on the same network, for example:
192.168.1.10:7100/admin
Login with the username: admin, and the password: admin.
Choose the License Key option, and paste in your key.
AirPlay Mirroring should now work too!
Note: To uninstall rPlay you just need to run these two commands:
sudo /etc/init.d/rplay stop
sudo dpkg -r rplay
Finally, enjoy!
Find more content by Lewis on his website here: https://lew.im
