Pirate Radio

simple command-line radio station

usage

pirr [options] [mplayer options]

examples

Broadcast the playlist hotline.m3u, shuffled:

pirr -sbl hotline

Listen to that broadcast from another computer, with extra bass:

pirr -e boom http://10.0.1.12:8000/radio

Change playlists on a live broadcast

pirr -f fadeout -l newplaylist

options

In any mode:

-s - shuffle a playlist. Used only with -l, and is forgotten upon subsequent calls with -l, unless -s is included again.
-l <playlist> - load a playlist. If a broadcast is active, the playlist is loaded in the broadcast.
-e [<preset or EQ>>] - set equalizer to a preset or literal value, in the same format as [mplayer's equalizer audio filter](http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/man/en/mplayer.1.html#AUDIO FILTERS).

presets:
- boom - 2:8:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0 (boost the 31.25-62.5 Hz range, big buttery bass)
-f - force past warnings (e.g. quitting daemons)

Only when starting:

-b - broadcast to icecast on the port set in .service/icecast.xml
-S - make the broadcast sticky, so that it doesn't die when mplayer stops; use with -b
-v - verbose output

Only while a broadcast is active:

-n - skip to the next track in the playlist
-p - skip to the previous track in the playlist
-a - appends the loading playlist to the one already playing; used with -l
-k - stop a broadcast
-q - quiet: suppress all output to stdout
-c - pass an input command to mplayer (e.g. pause or loadfile /home/me/music/lovely.mp3)
-x - apply an effect before (must be the first option) or after any other command.
- fade - fade volume to a new value, e.g. -x "fade 5"
- fadeout - fade volume to 0 over 1 second
- fadein - fade volume to 25 (default starting volume) over 1 second
-y - pipe a spoken message into Soundflower, thus the broadcast (excludes all other options)
-V - select a voice to speak in with -y. Pass -V ? for a list of voices; used with -y
-t <1-9> - seek to a portion of the video
-i - show file information
-Y <YouTube URL> - download a video or playlist from YouTube, and create a new playlist -l.
-I - Interactive mode: use mplayer normally; still controllable by -x and -c later.

installation

Copy .pirr/darkice.default.cfg to .pirr/darkice.cfg, and make any changes you need.
Copy .pirr/icecast.default.xml to .pirr/icecast.xml, and make any changes you need.
Copy .pirr/config.default.sh to .pirr/config.sh, and make any changes you need.

Mac

Use Homebrew to install the following packages
```
 brew install mplayer jack darkice icecast coreutils`
```
- mplayer is the media player
- jack captures output from soundflower
- darkice streams from jack to the radio server
- icecast is the radio server
- optional coreutils contains gshuf, which is needed for shuffling a dynamically loaded playlist
- optional id3lib contains id3info, which shows mp3 meta information
- optional mp4v2 contains mp4info, which shows m4a (AAC) meta information
Install Soundflower

broadcast (currently Mac only)

set soundflower 2ch to default input and output (System Preferences.app)
run pirr -l <playlist path> -b
if you don't want your system sounds dumping into the radio broadcast
- set default sound input/output back to the built-in
navigate to http://localhost:8000/, or whichever host/port you configured in .service/icecast.xml

caveats

This tool was created for personal use on a Mac running OS X 10.9.5. No testing has been done on other systems. I intend to make it more portable to other POSIX systems, eventually.

thanks

Most of the information that helped me to get the first version working, and the idea for piping in text-to-speech, came from this article by @dzello.

monking/pirate-radio