1. by: Chao Lai, Stephen Kimble
Course Project
by: Chao Lai, Stephen Kimble

2. Main Idea Use Raspberry Pi as a multi-purpose media box
Music through bluetooth/bt devices
Youtube
Pandora
Implement UI to access all features

3. RPi Platforms Why Raspbian? Debian-based Strong support from devs
Powerful, customizable

4. Interface
Good support for Python on Raspbian, created implementation using tkinter
Automate process of opening different utilities
Uses Python’s powerful abilities to link utilities, perform diagnostics, logging

5. Bluetooth Bluetooth LE 4.0 Supports ‘low energy’ or classic mode
LE -- VERY LOW power consumption
not backwards compatible
Spectrum Range: 2.4GHz ~ GHz ISM Band
Frequency Hopping -- to counteract interference
1-3MBit/s data rate
128bit AES security -- for pairings, etc
Scatternet(Classic) and Star-bus(LE) network topology
3ms - 100ms latency

6. Bluetooth cont. 0.27-2.7Mbit throughput
LE uses DSSS (Direct-sequence spread spectrum)
digital modulation

7. PulseAudio PulseAudio to route mobile device to ALSA driver
Advanced Linux Sound Architecture
‘proxy’ for sound applications
allows routing of sound to different locations and sample rates

8. Youtube-dl Used to stream Youtube videos on Linux without a browser
downloads the video and opens it in a video player
youtube-search
fast -- command-line support for multiple platforms

9. Pithos Debian-compatible Python application for Pandora streaming
Lightweight
Media key integration
Python implementation

10. Challenges Challenges in achieving bluetooth connectivity
power consumption with keyboard, mouse, hdmi, speakers
Interface challenges
Initial attempt to create Qt app was unsuccessful -- difficulty in realizing cross-compilation to ARM architecture
adopted a Python UI using tkinter as an alternative
SSH cross-network

11. Limitations / Weaknesses
Bluetooth
Only pairs one device
Constant polling drains power
Limited testing
Youtube implementation
simple search function
UI limitations
Requires manual support for different multimedia sources -- no jack of all trades implementation possible
Bluetooth, Youtube, Pandora
Raspberry PI-related hardware and software limitations

12. Future Work Improve on GUI, boot into GUI
more flexible bluetooth pairing -- sleep until woken
support for more multimedia sources
Netflix -- difficult to implement on Linux -- uses Silverlight
Hulu, airplay, -- video streaming?
more wireless integration / capabilities
More mobile