one-button-spotify

One-Button-Spotify is a simple Python(2) script which uses Spotipy to access the Spotify Web API and provide basic remote control (play/skip/pause) of a Spotify Connect Enabled device (eg a Pi running Raspotify with a single button.

Nota Bene

This project is potentially unreliable, as I'm not much of a coder. It's tested and working, but might throw an error or two if things go wrong that I haven't yet encountered in my own tests. Oh, and there are probably/definitely some inefficiencies in my code - feel free to fork and push improvements or get in touch. Also see my noted quirks section at the bottom of this Readme.

Quick Explanation

(for people who know their way around)

You need:

• A Spotify Connect enabled device for playback (eg Amazon Echo Dot)
• A Raspberry Pi with available/accessible GPIO pins
• A button
• A Spotify Premium account

Steps:

1. Sign up to Spotify for Developers if you haven't already, and create a new app/client id. Note down the Client ID and Client Secret. Set the redirect URL to http://localhost/ (or, optionally, something of your choosing)
2. Note down the Spotify Connect Device Name for your playback device (eg 'My Echo Dot')^*.
3. In an official Spotify client, create or choose a playlist to use, then find the Share button, and note down the URI.
4. Install Raspbian (or the OS of your choice) on your Pi. NB: you will need a GUI with Web Browser to authorise the script to control your Spotify account, so don't use a 'Lite' version. I can't find a way around this (I've seen scripts that authorise via CLI in the past, but I can't figure out how they did it or if it's still possible).
5. sudo apt install python-gpiozero
6. pip install git+https://github.com/plamere/spotipy.git
7. Grab the one-button-spotify.py script
8. Edit the one-button-spotify.py script with the editor of your choice:
   1. Replace xxxYourUserNamexxx with your actual username
   2. Replace xxxYourPasswordxxx with your actual password
   3. Replace xxYourPlayListURIfromSpotifyxxx with your playlist URI from step 3
   4. Replace xxxYourTargetSpotifyConnectDeviceNamexxx with your Spotify Connect Device Name from step 2
   5. Replace xxxClientIDofYourAppxxx with the Client ID from step 1
   6. Replace xxxClientSecretofYourAppxxx with the Client Secret from step 1
   7. If necessary, replace http://localhost/ with the redirect URL you created in step 1
   8. If necessary, replace pin=10 with a different BCM pin number
9. Connect your button to BCM pin 10 (or whatever you changed it to in the script) and ground
10. python one-button-spotify.py
11. The script should open your browser at the redirect URL - simply copy the full URL and paste it back into the terminal as instructed - if your browser didn't open automatically, copy the URL shown in the terminal and paste it into your browser, then copy the redirect URL and paste it into the terminal
12. It should now be running - (short)press the button to start playback, press it again to skip to a random track. Long press will stop playback.
13. Stop the script (Ctrl+C) and (if required) make it run as a daemon.

^*If you're using (as I am) Raspotify for your playback device, you'll also have to configure Raspotify to log in to the same account you're using for my button script - as far as I can tell, the Spotify Connect API doesn't return Spotify Connect devices on the same LAN as you, they're only detected by official clients.

Use Case (aka: why did you do this?)

I have a 3 year old daughter. Toddlers are old enough to have their own taste in music, but not yet old enough to use a GUI (mainly because they can't usually read very well, but also due to hand-eye-coordination issues) or necessarily to remember a complex hardware interface. So I wanted to build a way for her to play her own favourite songs from Spotify in her bedroom, in as simple an interface as possible. I could've simply mapped a button to play/skip on a Raspberry Pi, but that would've meant having the speaker within reach, and I know I used to enjoy poking speaker cones when I was younger, so...

So the system uses two Raspberry Pis, although one of them could easily be replaced by any Spotify Connect enabled device (eg an Amazon Echo, a Sonos, or a phone or laptop running Spotify). One Pi is a ZeroW hooked up to a speaker via a Pimoroni PhatDAC, and running Raspotify, configured to login to my daughter's account (we have the Spotify Premium Family plan, so she's just a passenger account on that). I won't explain how to do that here, as the Docs for both the PhatDAC and Raspotify are both comprehensive and readable for novices.

The second Pi is a Pi3, which doubles as our BabyCam (even though she's not a baby anymore). It has a Pimoroni (love those guys) Pan Tilt Hat controlling a NoIR camera. It also (through some grubby physical hacking) has a button attached to BCM pin 23. This one runs the one-button-spotify.py script as a daemon when it boots.

So the Pi-with-a-button runs one-button-spotify.py. When you short-press the button, it either starts playback (if paused/stopped) on the Spotify Connect output, or else skips to a random track within a specified playlist. When you long-press (>1 second) the button, it pauses/stops playback (or does nothing if it's not currently playing).

How To

Hardware

You will need:

• A Raspberry Pi (any version) with accessible GPIO and either on-board WiFi or a dongle
• A button (I used the arcade-style button and lamp that came with MagPi's free Google AIY kit)
• Wires, wire stripper, soldering iron and solder
• A power supply for your Pi
• An enclosure to house your Pi and button (I used a cardboard gift box for some socks - it was sturdy enough to withstand toddler-bashing, but also easy to cut with a craft knife)
• Tools to cut your enclosure, plus stuff to secure your components (eg hot glue, blu tack, cable ties)

Steps

1. Decide where in your enclosure the button and Pi will sit, then cut holes accordingly for the button and power supply
2. Mount the button, secure the Pi
3. Cut, strip and tin two wires to go between the Pi's GPIO and the button
4. Solder one end of your wires to a GPIO pin (I used pin 10 - if you use something different, note it down!) and GND
5. Solder the other end of your wires to opposite sides of your button
6. Run the power supply cable to its correct position, but don't apply power yet.

Software

You will need:

• An SD card
• A working computer with Internet connection and a VNC Viewer^*
• A Spotify Premium account

^*I use VNC Viewer for Chrome, but there are many alternatives available

Steps

1. Download the latest version of Raspbian (full, not lite)
2. Use Etcher (or similar) to flash Raspbian to the SD card
3. For convenience, follow these steps to create a wpa_supplicant.conf file with your WiFi details, and copy this to the boot partition on your newly flashed SD card
4. Also add a blank file with the name ssh to the boot partition. The easiest way to do this (on Linux/Unix/Mac) is the terminal command sudo touch /path/to/boot/partition/ssh
5. On your 'main' computer, visit Spotify for Developers
6. Log in, and if you've never used the site before, accept the terms and conditions
7. Once your account is up and running, go to the Dashboard and click Create a Client ID.
8. Give your new app a name (eg One Button Spotify) and a short description.
9. Select relevant boxes for ‘what are you building’ – I think I chose Desktop App and Speakers. Click Next.
10. Click No: you are not developing a commercial integration.
11. Tick the three boxes to agree with the terms and click Submit.
12. You’ll now see your dashboard for your new app. Click Edit Settings.
13. In the text field under ‘Redirect URIs’, enter http://localhost/ then click Add and then IMPORTANT! scroll down to the bottom and click Save. You can change the redirect URI to something else if you prefer, but make sure it’s an address that won’t do anything weird (ie – one you control).
14. Now click Show Client Secret, and note down both your Client ID and Client Secret for use in the script.
15. Insert your SD card into your Pi and apply power, wait a minute for it to fully boot
16. SSH into your Pi (either with PuTTY or from a command line on your computer - I'll assume command line): ssh pi@raspberrypi.local using the password raspberry
17. Once connected to your Pi, run sudo raspi-config and make the following changes:
18. Change User Password to something of your choosing
19. In Network Options, change the Hostname to something of your choosing
20. In Interfacing Options, Enable VNC
21. When finished, don't reboot yet
22. Run sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get upgrade, don't reboot yet
23. Run sudo apt install python-gpiozero
24. Run pip install git+https://github.com/plamere/spotipy.git
25. Run git clone https://github.com/bishely/one-button-spotify
26. cd one-button-spotify
27. nano one-button-spotify
28. Make the following changes to the script:
    1. Replace xxxYourUserNamexxx with your actual username
    2. Replace xxxYourPasswordxxx with your actual password
    3. Replace xxYourPlayListURIfromSpotifyxxx with your playlist URI from step 3
    4. Replace xxxYourTargetSpotifyConnectDeviceNamexxx with your Spotify Connect Device Name from step 2
    5. Replace xxxClientIDofYourAppxxx with the Client ID from step 1
    6. Replace xxxClientSecretofYourAppxxx with the Client Secret from step 1
    7. If necessary, replace http://localhost/ with the redirect URL you created in step 1
    8. If necessary, replace pin=10 with a different BCM pin number
29. Finally, reboot with sudo reboot now
30. When the Pi has rebooted, use your VNC Viewer to remote access the desktop
31. Open a terminal window and run python ~/one-button-spotify/one-button-spotify.py
32. If you've done everything correctly up to now, this will open a browser window asking you to authorise the app. Go ahead and authorise it, and it will redirect to a non-working webpage (starting with http://localhost/?. Copy the entire link for that webpage and paste it into the terminal, then press enter.
33. The script should now be running.
34. Press the button once to start playback, press it again to skip to a new track, and press-and-hold to stop/pause playback.
35. To make the script run in the background even after you disconnect, you can use the command nohup python ~/one-button-spotify/one-button-spotify.py &. You can do this from SSH without needing to reauthenticate in a browser.
36. If it doesn't work, make the changes from step 28 to test.py and run it with python test.py - it should start playing for 5 seconds then stop, wait 5 seconds and start again. If this works as expected, you've probably got a problem with your button soldering. If it doesn't, you've done something wrong when editing the scripts or registering yourself with Spotify for Developers. Go back over the steps slowly, or get in touch!
37. Steps to run the script automatically on boot are coming: the usual method of running it at boot as a systemd service doesn't currently work for me, as it seems to require authenticating in a browser again.

Noted Quirks

I'm no expert coder, just a tinkerer who likes to play around with things. With that in mind, there are some parts of my code that probably don't operate the way they should (ie - the way a more experienced Python coder would do them). I'm listing them here in case you, dear reader, want to take a look and tell me how to do it right.

• The spotDevices function calls Spotipy's devices function, then does an overcomplicated bit of jiggery-pokery to get the ID associated with the device name stored in spot_connect_device_name. I'm aware that Spotipy's devices function already returns a dictionary with all the details I could possibly need, but I couldn't find a clean way of getting id for a given name, so I ended up using a for loop to create a second dictionary that only stores pairs of those values. I'd really appreciate someone explaining if (as I assume) there is a better way to do this.