Hey Self Hosted!
Got a shower thought I wanna bounce off youse guys. It’s half-baked but itching to become real: DIY Sonos-like surround sound using Raspberry Pis (or maybe other SBCs if Pi’s not cut out for it). Need your brains to kick things off!
The Vision:
Server Pi
- Acts as the brain. Takes 5.1 audio input from the TV (SPDIF? HDMI? Still figuring that out).
Client Pis
Wireless speakers running balenaSound or similar. Each handles a specific channel (front left, rear right, etc.). I do picture each of these being connected to a amplifier board. With some fancy wiring to give Raspberry pi voltages and power required for the amplifiers. (Something like this: https://a.co/d/fwkXuCm)
The Hurdles:
5.1 Audio Input
Can a Pi even handle 5.1 audio input? Do I need a fancy sound card/HAT? Or should I ditch the Pi for something beefier?
Channel Remapping Sorcery
Wiring all speakers the same (e.g., left channel only) but using Linux wizardry to assign which channel each speaker plays. Like, plug in a “rear right” speaker, tell the Pi “yo, you’re rear right now,” and boom—it works. Possible? Or am I dreaming?
Why? Swapping speakers without rewiring = less headache. Plus, modularity.
First roadblock: Getting clean 5.1 into a Pi. Second headache: Software channel routing.
Anyone tackled something like this before? Am I reinventing a wheel that’s already on fire?
Edit: I think I may actually have found a solution even cheaper and I intended. Has anyone here ever heard of WiSa? Long story short it is a solution for Wireless Audio Cinemas. Mostly it is used in very expensive speakers, I’m talking like $5K USD for a whole system. However. I have found a much cheaper solution: https://a.co/d/fXkaMEX. This would be a good starter point for me because the server side already does everything that I want it to. The client side(speakers) are just about there… But I want to see better drivers and amplifiers. If I were to purchase this, I would use it as is initially, but eventually cannibalize the WiSa adapter, attach it to a strong amplifier, and mount the result in a better set of speakers.
Look at https://www.picoreplayer.org/ using some sort of dac for the raspberry pi. Something like https://www.hifiberry.com/ or https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/iqaudio-is-now-raspberry-pi/ . Easy to install, works pretty flawless and with LMS server can be used as a single full home audio or play zones independently. Not sure if it can do the single speaker type syncing but you can set one left and the other right and sync them to play a single audio source. The only thing I have not done is take an input from a device like a tv as stream source.But with a pi that has bluetooth you can use bluetooth as an input and stream to all other pcp devices in your network. I use raspberry pi 4 1Gig memory with an external poe injector which simplifies powering them and gives consistent network. But 12v input from a power outlet and wifi works well enough in some spots too. It is essentially as close as you can get to plug and play squeezelite as I have found
Interesting. One other option is to use OrangePi for the server. OrangePi has ARC over HDMI and that would count as an input.
I did choose the WiSa surround sound system linked. I’ll cannibalize it later to make better speakers. I like it because it is audio at 24 bit/96kHz. It also just uses the HDMI ARC.
Radio signal(I’m a comm/nav aircraft mechanic, I had to know):