Can This Be Done?

[BillTheCat]

Howdy, folks.

I have an unusual situation, and wondering if any of you guys can steer me in the right direction.

My car has a built-in 'combo' gps/phone/media center that supports a bunch of file formats... except the one I need... FLAC.

There are a couple input options, one is Bluetooth, which is how it streams content from my phone to the system. Another option is a USB port in the console that allows the system to look for, and access, files on a drive. However, as mentioned, it won't 'see' FLAC files, only .mp3 and .wav formats.

What I'd like to accomplish is:

• Use a Pi to 'serve' files to the car so that I don't have to re-encode my entire library for just this purpose. I would imagine the Pi would need to appear to the system as a regular USB drive, or provide a similar functionality via Bluetooth.
• Synchronize the Pi library wirelessly with my home NAS once per day (say, overnight) so that as I add new albums to my collection, they are also mirrored on the car system.

Any suggestions on how to do such a thing would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

 

[phofman]

What is size of your library to mirror to your car?

Is your car within wifi access of your house overnight or would a mobile data connection be required?

 

[BillTheCat]

Right now, about 170GB of FLAC, but I'm not done ripping my entire collection. My plan was to use an SSD on the Pi.

Yes, my car is within a decent WiFi signal to the house. However, you do raise a good point - is there a way to 'externalize' an antenna for the Pi?

 

[jazbo8]

Dumb but easy way - copy to the FLAC to a portable media player and use the AUX input on the car’s stereo.

 

[BillTheCat]

That won't work for me. There's no way to control track selection. I want to control the playback using the car system which will also mute playback when using the phone.

 

[phofman]

If we stay with RPI - would you prefer selecting the files with your car multimedia system (i.e. USB storage + OTG capability of e.g. RPI zero) or would you prefer some touch-screen RPI system (such as moode etc.) and use the built-in BT module of RPI?

 

[jazbo8]

That won't work for me. There's no way to control track selection. I want to control the playback using the car system which will also mute playback when using the phone.

That makes sense, it will cost more to implement...

 

[BillTheCat]

would you prefer selecting the files with your car multimedia system (i.e. USB storage + OTG capability of e.g. RPI zero)

This - TOTALLY!

Per my reply above, using the system in this way enables me to use the car's controls for selection and volume, and it will also mute/pause playback when there's an outgoing or incoming call.

 

[phofman]

I have never tried practically, but there is quite a lot of info on USB OTG and RPI W, e.g. NAS Access for Non-Networked Devices: 7 Steps (with Pictures)

Mapt - Developer skills delivered

Make a Pi Zero W Smart USB flash drive - The MagPi MagazineThe MagPi Magazine

At night you need to run a script on RPi to disconnect the USB device , mount the filesystem locally, rsync from your remote NAS a re-connect the USB device as USB storage. For details search google RPI W OTG.

 

[BillTheCat]

Wow. Lots of reading to be done here, but thanks for the pointer.

So, running something like PiCorePlayer or Max2Play (and adding the local drive as a share) on a Pi3 - possibly along with LMS - wouldn't make this easier in any way?

 

[wealas]

I don't see how the Pi helps with the flac problem. Unless you convert the files when you transfer them over to the Pi, the car will still be provided with flacs.
One way the pi could help is if you write a file system (maybe fuse would make it doable) that would expose mp3 named files and transcode on the fly during file access.
I would suggest getting a cheap older phone that can handle large memory cards and hook that up via Bluetooth. Then you can use an app (like foldersync) to sync with a network share when in range of your home wifi.

 

[BillTheCat]

I was wondering about the transcode issue. Yes, that makes sense - showing the files is only half of the battle here. If the head unit in the car doesn't understand the file format, then it's not going to help. I wonder if the Pi has enough horsepower to transcode on the fly with something like Kodi - would that be a solution?

 

[wealas]

If your car supports wav then you won't need much power to transcode flac to wav, it should take about as much resources as playing a flac. I don't think kodi itself has anything you can use, most software uses ffmpeg or avconv to do it. One potential problem with transcoding on the fly is skipping back/forward within a song can be slow and buggy.

 

[phofman]

No need to code such filesystem, it has been doing great service for many years GitHub - khenriks/mp3fs: FUSE-based transcoding filesystem from FLAC to MP3