jsburky / led-album-cover

This repo gives the code and instructions to create an LED Display that connects to Spotify and displays the album cover of the song playing.

LED Album Cover

Parts Needed:

• Adafruit 64x64 display
• Raspberry Pi Bonnet
• 5V 4A Power Supply for 64x64 or 5V 15A for 128x128
• Raspberry Pi (zero - 4) Would recommend a 4 for better peformance
• A computer with ssh capability. This can be done by connecting a monitor to the Pi but, it is easier with ssh because you can copy over code from this repository

Setting Up Raspberry Pi

• For help with the next steps look here
• First, on the Raspberry Pi Bonnet solder the E pad to the 8 pad it should look like this:

• Next, solder a jumper wire between GPIO 4 and GPIO 18. This will reduce the flicker. It should look like this:

• Next, you want to plug in the power cable and ribbon cable (make sure its the "in" connection" to the led screen like this:

• Then, cut off the other end of the power cable and attach to bonnet like this:

• Connect ribbon cable to bonnet.
• Use the Raspberry Pi Imager to flash Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64/32 bit depending on which Pi is being used) to an SD Card. I would recommend going through the settings to set up a hostname, wifi, username and password, and enable ssh
• Insert SD Card in Pi
• Plug in the bonnet using the power supply. You can power the raspberry pi seperate or through the bonnet depending on current supply.
• Once turned on, if set up properly, you can ssh from another computer using hostname@LOCAL_IP then entering the password. Or, you can attach a monitor and keyboard to setup
  • LOCAL_IP usally takes the form of 192.168.1.### and can be found on your routers desktop settings as a connected device

Setting up LED Matrix Library

• Once at the pi's command line enter:
  • curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/adafruit/Raspberry-Pi-Installer-Scripts/main/rgb-matrix.sh >rgb-matrix.sh
  • then: sudo bash rgb-matrix.sh
• This will bring you to a setup menu for the library. The settings you want are:
  • Continue?: y
  • Adafruit RGB Matrix Bonnet: 1
  • Quality: 1
• Confirm Settings and answer yes to reboot after installation
• navigate to config.txt file with sudo nano /boot/firmware/config.txt
• Set dtparam=audio=off and save file with ctrl o then exit with ctrl x
• navigate to blacklist.conf with sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
• Add line: blacklist snd_bcm2835 then save file with ctrl o and exit with ctrl x
• Lastly navigate to cmdline.txt with sudo nano /boot/firmware/cmdline.txt
• At the end of the line of text, add isolcpus=3 then save file with ctrl o and exit with ctrl x
• Reboot Pi with sudo reboot

Setting Up Spotify Account:

• Set up Spotify for developers account and start a new app
• Give the app a name and description
• Make the Redirect URL: http://LOCAL_IP:8888/callback
  • You will want LOCAL_IP to be the address you used to ssh into the pi
• Go to settings
• Take note of the Client ID and Client Secret
• Save the settings

Setting Up Python Code:

• Install these dependencies using sudo apt install python3-MODULE_NAME
  • flask
  • requests
  • psutil
  • dotenv
  • qrcode
  • numpy
• The rest should come installed with python on Raspberry Pi but, if you get an error install it using the same method
• Navigate to the sample folder with cd ~/rpi-rgb-led-matrix/bindings/python/samples
• in this folder create album.py, image_show.py, and address_display.py and copy the respective code from this repo
• In album.py edit the variable LOCAL_IP to match the local ip of your Pi
• In address_display.py update the LOCAL_IP to the ip
  • This step is really optional but it shows a qr code to connect to the display
• Then save file with ctrl o and exit with ctrl x
• in the same folder create a file called .env by typing nano .env
• In .env add two lines
  • CLIENT_ID = 'YOUR_SPOTIFY_CLIENT_ID'
  • CLIENT_SECRET = 'YOUR_SPOTIFY_CLIENT_SECRET'
• Then save file with ctrl o and exit with ctrl x

Running from boot with keyboard input

• This allows for the code the be run without a monitor or ssh
• Install evdev using sudo apt install python3-evdev
• In the same directory as the rest of the scripts, create main.py by typing nano main.py
• Copy the code from the file on gitub
• Change the event# to the event of the keyboard you plugged in. For me, this was event 0
  • Use ls /dev/input/ to find the curent events
  • Run ls /dev/input/ before and after plugging in the keyboard to see which events get added
• After changing the code, run sudo main.py and press 1 to run the album.py file.
• 0 terminates the code that is running
• Type: sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/program_launcher.service
  • Copy over the contents of the file: program_launcher.service
  • Then save file with ctrl o and exit with ctrl x
• Go to the home directory with cd ~
• Type sudo nano shutdown_services.sh
  • Copy over the contents of the file: shutdown_services.sh
  • Then save file with ctrl o and exit with ctrl x
• run: sudo systemctl daemon-reload
• run: sudo systemctl start program_launcher.service
• run: sudo systemctl enable program_launcher.service
• run: sudo reboot

Running The Program (With ssh or a monitor):

• Make sure you are in the samples folder by typing cd ~/rpi-rgb-led-matrix/bindings/python/samples
• Run: sudo python album.py
• On another device, in a browser, visit http://LOCAL_IP:8888/authorize and log in to Spotify.
• Once Spotify is playing, the album cover should be displayed on the matrix
• Please leave comments for errors and improvements.
• Thanks to hzeller for creating the matrix driver