Cornrow

Cornrow is an audio sink daemon for Bluetooth and Airplay streams. It is designed for low-powered boards like the Raspberry Pi, but can also be used for SBCs/VMs with a Bluetooth dongle instead of a built-in module (first Bluetooth adapter found will be used).

It is made for Debian based environments and compatible with Ubuntu and Debian. This means that this service runs as a dedicated user and can be cleanly installed and removed using Debian package management. Note: for Debian Buster and Ubuntu Bionic (18.04) please use cornrow v0.8.0. For Debian Bullseye and Ubuntu Focal (20.04) and later, please use cornrow v0.8.1. For Debian Bookworm and later, please use cornrow v0.9.0.

Installation (binary)

Compiled debian/ubuntu packages are available for armhf and amd64.

wget https://github.com/mincequi/cornrow/releases/download/v0.9.0/cornrowd_0.9.0_arm64.deb
sudo apt update
sudo apt install ./cornrowd_0.9.0_arm64.deb
sudo systemctl unmask cornrowd.service              # unmask service
sudo systemctl start cornrowd.service               # start-up service. You should now be able to connect any bluetooth audio device.
sudo systemctl enable cornrowd.service              # start-up service on each reboot.

Installation (from source)

Consider downloading the release tarballs. Master might be broken from time to time.

For Debian users

sudo apt install \
  bluez \
  build-essential \
  debhelper \
  fakeroot \
  libtool \
  cmake \
  libasound2-dev \
  libavahi-compat-libdnssd-dev \
  libavcodec-dev \
  libboost-dev \
  libboost-system-dev \
  libsbc-dev \
  libssl-dev \
  qtconnectivity5-dev \
  libqt5websockets5-dev
wget https://github.com/mincequi/cornrow/archive/refs/tags/v0.9.0.tar.gz
tar xf cornrowd-0.9.0.tar.xz
cd cornrow
dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc -nc                       # build unsigned debian package
cd ..
sudo apt install ./cornrowd_0.9.0_<your_arch>.deb  # install package
sudo systemctl unmask cornrowd.service              # unmask service
sudo systemctl start cornrowd.service               # start-up service. You should now be able to connect any bluetooth audio device.
sudo systemctl enable cornrowd.service              # start-up service on each reboot.

Arbitrary distro

Get the dependencies. Basically, these are ffmpeg (libav*), qt5bluetooth, qt5websockets

git clone --recursive https://github.com/mincequi/cornrow
cd cornrow
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make

Configuration

Cornrow can be configured via a configuration file /etc/cornrowd.conf. There are some options for inputs and outputs.

Snapcast integration

There is a 'tcp_sink' option in cornrow to send audio to a snapcast server (which acts as a TCP server). Add the following lines to your /etc/cornrowd.conf:

[tcp_sink]
host = "127.0.0.1" # the host you want to stream to
port = 4953 # the port your host is listening on

And this to your snapcast configuration:

tcp://<listen IP, e.g. 127.0.0.1>:<port>?name=<name>[&mode=server]&sampleformat=44100:16:2

Donations

Cornrow is free to use and developed during personal free time. If you like it and/or have a feature request, consider a donation. If you click on the button below, you will be taken to the secure PayPal Web site. You don't need to have a paypal account in order to make a donation.

Known issues

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B (BCM43143)

Firmware issues

Apparently, there are issues with on-board Bluetooth. Depending on the installed firmware i get stuttering Bluetooth audio playback. Additionally, there seem to be issues when operating in classic Bluetooth and Low Energy simultaneously. Here is an incomplete list of working/non-working firmware versions (https://github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-firmware/commits/master). Use the rpi-update to flash your Raspberry Pi to the according version:

sudo rpi-update <commit-id>

UART issues

A lot of Bluetooth packets seem to be dropped when CPU usage is low. As soon as the system is put under load, bluetooth packet reception is a lot better. This seems to be related to core frequency scaling (https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/uart.md).