Streaming audio from a Pi to a Bluetooth speaker, with Spotify Connect

Published on 26 November 2021

This is a post about hardware, raspberry-pi and bluetooth.

Very raw notes on getting a Pi to appear as a Spotify Connect speaker, and stream to a bluetooth speaker. Might not work for your set-up, sorry.

Flash the operating system

I used Raspberry Pi OS Lite Buster (not the latest, Bullseye).
Enabled ssh
Connected to my wifi network

Update the OS packages

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y && sudo reboot

Auto-connect Bluetooth audio

Using: https://github.com/bablokb/pi-btaudio

sudo apt-get install git -y
git clone https://github.com/bablokb/pi-btaudio
cd pi-btaudio
sudo tools/install

Pair speaker:

$ sudo bluetoothctl
# scan on
 [NEW] Device 00:02:3C:6B:63:48 Creative MUVO 2c
# pair 00:02:3C:6B:63:48
[CHG] Device 00:02:3C:6B:63:48 Paired: yes
Pairing successful

# trust 00:02:3C:6B:63:48
[CHG] Device 00:02:3C:6B:63:48 Trusted: yes
Changing 00:02:3C:6B:63:48 trust succeeded
[CHG] Device 00:02:3C:6B:63:48 ServicesResolved: no
[CHG] Device 00:02:3C:6B:63:48 Connected: no

# connect 00:02:3C:6B:63:48

Attempting to connect to 00:02:3C:6B:63:48
[CHG] Device 00:02:3C:6B:63:48 Connected: yes

# quit

sudo nano /etc/asound.conf
## Add MAC address above to line:
defaults.bluealsa.device "00:02:3C:6B:63:48"

Test autoconnect:

aplay -vv /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav

Should play sound out of the speaker 🔊.

Spotify Connect target

Using: https://dtcooper.github.io/raspotify/

curl -sL https://dtcooper.github.io/raspotify/install.sh | sh

Fix for crashing issue (should be fixed in raspotify 0.31.2)

Connecting to the speaker in Spotify would crash and not work because of this config problem. This is going to be fixed very soon and the next part won't be needed.

sudo systemctl edit --full raspotify

Add AF_UNIX to RestrictAddressFamilies:

RestrictAddressFamilies=AF_UNIX AF_INET AF_INET6 AF_NETLINK

Save the file and run:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload && sudo systemctl restart raspotify

Enjoy

The speaker should now appear in the Spotify app. You should be able to play music to it. Turning the speaker off/on should automatically pair it with the Pi.

Massive shout-out to this blog post, which has a lot of info about bluetooth on the Raspberry Pi.