Music player Ansible Role

Description

This role installs a music player in standalone mode. By default, Lollypop, but should work with the player of your choice (Audacious, Clementine, Strawberry, …).

This is intended to turn a computer into a dedicated music player that can be used with a small touchscreen for view and control.

Features

Configuration:

• Install the music player of your choice.
• Run as a standalone fullscreen application using Wayland and Sway.
• Use Alsa without dmix for high quality sound output.
• Configure playerctl to allow the use with multimedia keyboards and compatible volume knobs.
• Ensure the Alsa device is unmuted on player start.
• Print track information on a serial alphanumeric display.

Security:

• Works with SElinux enforced.

About sound quality

With “Fedora minimal” as base OS, Alsa will be used by default by music players without requiring to specify it. This will result in a bit-perfect quality sound output.

Serial alphanumeric display

This feature plays track information (Artist, album, Title, Track number) on a serial alphanumeric display. Information is played when the track changes.

The utility is intended to work with the Matrix Orbital OK202-25-USB (an OLED USB alphanumeric display) and should work out of the box with other serial/USB displays from the same provider or compatible.

Dependencies

OS recommendation

• “Fedora minimal” is recommended.

Roles

• common

Variables

Optional

Name	Default Value	Description
musicplayer_alsa_mixer	Master	Alsa mixer used with the music player. Allow to ensure it is unmuted on start and allow to toggle mute state with player control.
musicplayer_alsa_only	true	If true, ensure the sound is managed only with Alsa and remove Pipewire. The alsamixer shell command can be used to configure sound output if required.
musicplayer_command	/usr/bin/<musicplayer_package>	Command to use to run the music player. By default, run the command based on the musicplayer_package name.
musicplayer_disable_hdmi_sound	false	If true, disable the HDMI sound. Useful if the HDMI sound conflict with another sound card and HDMI sound is never used.
musicplayer_gtk_theme	Adwaita:dark	Configure GTK based applications theme.
musicplayer_mute_ctrl_play_pause	false	If true, bind the “mute” keystoke to the play/pause action instead of the mute action.
musicplayer_package	lollypop	Name of the music player Fedora package.
musicplayer_serial_display	false	If true, install an utility that print track information on the serial alphanumeric display.
musicplayer_volume_ctrl_method	alsa	Name of the music player Fedora package. Possible values are alsa to use Alsa mixer or playerctl to use music player volume control.
musicplayer_volume_ctrl_percent	5	Amount of volume in percent to decrease/increase with the volume control.

It is also recommended to look at the common role variables to customize the server OS (SSH, NTP, Firewall, and more).

Example Playbook

---
- hosts: all
  become: true
  force_handlers: true  # See "jgoutin.home.common" documentation
  collections:
    - jgoutin.home
  roles:
    - common
    - musicplayer