Stream BT audio to LMS on RPi3

[4lex]

Hello folks. I have LMS set up on a RPi3 which streams to a number of endpoints, most of which are squeezelite clients on other RPis.

I'd like (for my wife) to be able to stream audio from her phone over bluetooth to the LMS. I've read a few guides which seem to make the idea very complicated, it'd need to be simple to use. Csn anyone point me to a how-to on the topic?

Cheers - and happy Christmas.

[CJS]

Assuming that you are running piCorePlayer 6.1 on your RPi3, the following is supposed to work (in a nutshell):
1) On the pCP Main Page, go to Bluetooth page
2) If not already done, install Bluetooth extension on pCP
3) Use the Device Pairing/Selection section to pair pCP with your smartphone.
4) After your phone is paired, set bluetooth type to "Streamer". Example is shown below.



5) Go to pCP Tweaks page, and find section "Audio Tweaks"
6) Set "Streamer for Audio Input" to Yes and click save. The pCP screen should look similar to following screenshot:



7) Access LMS web UI, and add following favorite (example):
Name: pCP Bluetooth-in
URL: http://192.168.0.115:9100/S16_LE/44100/2/M (replace IP address with the IP address of your piCorePlayer)
8) On your squeezebox client, select favorite "pCP Bluetooth-in"

If you now play a music track on your smartphone, it should be played back on your squeezebox client.

With this setup, when you want to stream music from your smartphone to a squeezebox client, you need to do the following:
1) Select favorite "pCP Bluetooth-in" on your squeezebox client
2) On your phone make a bluetooth connection with pCP, and play music.

[4lex]

Wonderful, thanks, that's working on a newly flashed uSD

Couldn't figure out how to install pcp on my existing rasbian install, if that's even possible?

[Paul Webster]

Couldn't figure out how to install pcp on my existing rasbian install, if that's even possible?

pCP is an operating system ... it is a very cut down and specialised alternative to Raspbian.

[Shozzer]

I just wanted to say that I discovered this explanation this evening and found it really helpful - thank you.

Steve

Assuming that you are running piCorePlayer 6.1 on your RPi3, the following is supposed to work (in a nutshell):
1) On the pCP Main Page, go to Bluetooth page
2) If not already done, install Bluetooth extension on pCP
3) Use the Device Pairing/Selection section to pair pCP with your smartphone.
4) After your phone is paired, set bluetooth type to "Streamer". Example is shown below.

[ATTACH]32689[/ATTACH]

5) Go to pCP Tweaks page, and find section "Audio Tweaks"
6) Set "Streamer for Audio Input" to Yes and click save. The pCP screen should look similar to following screenshot:

[ATTACH]32666[/ATTACH]

7) Access LMS web UI, and add following favorite (example):
Name: pCP Bluetooth-in
URL: http://192.168.0.115:9100/S16_LE/44100/2/M (replace IP address with the IP address of your piCorePlayer)
8) On your squeezebox client, select favorite "pCP Bluetooth-in"

If you now play a music track on your smartphone, it should be played back on your squeezebox client.

With this setup, when you want to stream music from your smartphone to a squeezebox client, you need to do the following:
1) Select favorite "pCP Bluetooth-in" on your squeezebox client
2) On your phone make a bluetooth connection with pCP, and play music.

[Hogo]

Bluetoot-in stream on multiple players?

Hi, also from my side thanks a lot for the explanation!
My setup:
Bureau: Raspi4 running LMS with BT-in stream asFavorite
Living room: RPI zero running pcP with BT active, Smartphone as Stream device connected, Audio tweak activated
Kitchen: RPI zero running pcP

If I play music from my smartphone, the sound is perfectly played from the living room pi. Not from the kitchen pi. Also not if synchronized with living room pi. Also if I play the BT-in stream separately on the kitchen pi, no sound.

Is it generally possible to play the BT-in stream on other players not connected to the BT-streamer-device (smartphone)?

Many thanks for help!

Best,
Hogo

[tuc]

BT streaming not working

Hi Hogo,

I have a similar (but different problem).
I have followed the instructions from CJS but with the dedicated LMS server on the receiving end of the bluethooth stream (it runs LMS on PcP on RPi4 and has no players).
I cannot get this to work although all the steps seem to work OK (including the BT connection between my phone and LMS).
My phone indicates it is streaming to LMS and LMS indicates that it is playing the BT stream, but no sound comes out.

Is there a good way to debug?
Have I misunderstood the instructions so it only works with connecting directly to a PcP player (not via the server)?

I think it is such a cool feature to get working. Especially when having friends over.
Best
-thomas

PS: Thanks CJS for your instruction. It seems like I am almost there :-)

Hi, also from my side thanks a lot for the explanation!
My setup:
Bureau: Raspi4 running LMS with BT-in stream asFavorite
Living room: RPI zero running pcP with BT active, Smartphone as Stream device connected, Audio tweak activated
Kitchen: RPI zero running pcP

If I play music from my smartphone, the sound is perfectly played from the living room pi. Not from the kitchen pi. Also not if synchronized with living room pi. Also if I play the BT-in stream separately on the kitchen pi, no sound.

Is it generally possible to play the BT-in stream on other players not connected to the BT-streamer-device (smartphone)?

Many thanks for help!

Best,
Hogo

[liparis]

Hello,
I have installed pCp and LMS on a Raspberry pi 3 yesterday. All went well but I am struggling to stream my phone to LMS using bluetooth. I have followed the indications given above by CJS: my phone is paired to the raspberry and BT type is set to "streamer" in the bluetooth tab. I have set the streamer audio tweak and added a favorite in LMS. When I open the bluetooth stream in LMS (the http link ending with S16_LE/44100/2/M), it seems to get recognized (the name in the playlist changes: the favourite is called "BT IN" and when I press play, it becomes "pCP pCP line-in (mp3)") but there is no sound. I have tried to open the link a browser and I get a black page with "no video with supported format and MIME type found".
Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

[rmc01]

Streaming Audio from TV

Can anyone advise if this set up will also work if I'm trying to stream audio from a TV via Blutooth to RPi3 based player. Followed the instructions above and everything seems to show up where it's supposed to and appears to be playing but no audio. Thanks in advance

[Paul Webster]

A TV acting as a Bluetooth source should be just like a phone acting as a Bluetooth source - so yes - there is a good chance of it working.
However, do not expect the sound that you eventually hear (if you get it working) to be anywhere near in sync with action on the screen.

[rmc01]

A TV acting as a Bluetooth source should be just like a phone acting as a Bluetooth source - so yes - there is a good chance of it working.
However, do not expect the sound that you eventually hear (if you get it working) to be anywhere near in sync with action on the screen.

Thanks Paul, is that a hardware/software issue particular to this setup? I previously streamed bluetooth from TV to a Quad Vena amp and it worked really well. The amp I have at the moment doesnt have particularly good bluetooth, thats the reason why I wanted to go this way. Can you advise why I'm not getting any sound at the moment when everything seems to be linked and working? Googled it to death but couldn't find any instruction on Bluetooth sound from TV to picoreplayer. I would be happy to provide further info about my hardware etc. Its a RPi3 based player with a Justboom audio hat connected by spdif to a Cambridge Audio receiver. LMS is installed in a QNAP server in the loft and everthing is hard wired. I'm really happy with the sound quality and performance of the player and this is the first problem I've come across. I only built the player around 2 months ago so all the software is up to date. I'm not particularly I.T savvy but good at following instructions!

Thanks again.

[Paul Webster]

No idea why there is no sound at present.
Easy thing to experiment with is the volume.
However, it is probably not that.
So next is to look for logs and increase diagnostics level.

As for the delay ... lots of software and buffers involved so if you were hoping to have the sound in lip sync with the video then I think you have very little chance of that working.

[rmc01]

No idea why there is no sound at present.
Easy thing to experiment with is the volume.
However, it is probably not that.
So next is to look for logs and increase diagnostics level.

As for the delay ... lots of software and buffers involved so if you were hoping to have the sound in lip sync with the video then I think you have very little chance of that working.

Got it working (to some extent). Spot on about the delay, roughly 5 seconds or so. Forget that!

[Yvanq]

Defaut BT streamer option ?

Hello, is there a possibility to make new bluetooth unit connected to be "streamer" by defaut and not have to go in picoreplayer config ?
Thanks for all the amazing job on picoreplayer and all plugins !

[paul-]

Unfortunately there are too many buffers involved to get anything close…. Nothing in pCP or LMS is designed to sync with video.


When connecting the phone, it should default to that devices hardware. However, once configured in the web page, it should stream by default upon future connections.